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How to Survive Your First Year of Planting a Church

I'd like to introduce you to a resource that will be very helpful to you if you're just getting started in church planting.

I knew planting a church was going to be hard, but I didn’t know it would be THAT hard! Don’t get me wrong, I had a clear vision from God, I had a calling from God, I had faith, but there were some things I just wasn’t prepared for.  In this Sharp Churches resource I discuss the three most difficult challenges I faced, and the changes I had to make in our first year to survive and thrive.

• How do you balance your schedule so you have enough time to invest in your young church AND your family?
• How do you deal with the unmet expectations of yourself and others?
• How do you overcome the money deficit so that your church is properly funded?

These topics and more are covered as I shares the three biggest challenges I faced in our first year of planting Calvary Fellowship and how I worked through them in this MP3 download.

Start planting in the summer for your church to grow in the fall

In yesterday's post I discussed how churches can grow over the summer. Today I want to share an opportunity for churches to plant seeds in the summer months that will lead to a harvest of growth in the fall. Specifically, this is for New England churches and pastors.

Bob Franquiz, beyond being a great friend, has also been a great mentor to me in church strategies. In a few weeks I will have the privilege of teaching  his "21st Century Outreach Strategies Seminar" live in West Hartford! I'll teach his content and share how our church has successfully implemented it locally.

What will you learn in this 2 hour seminar?
- The #1 mistake churches make in promotion (and how to avoid it)
- The do’s and don’ts of direct mail
- How to triple your effectiveness with direct mail while spending less!
- How to harness the power of Google and Facebook to increase first time guests
- The most underutilized resource your church has to reach people
- The unique benefits of on-line and off-line promotion
- How to track the results of your promotion efforts
- The 3 keys every piece of promotion needs to be successful
- Plus, much more!

If you're a pastor/church leader in New England, I hope you'll join us! Register here.

Is it Wrong to Target Christians?

(Here is my guest post that appeared on Bob Franquiz's blog yesterday)

When I left South Florida and returned to my home state of Connecticut to plant Calvary Fellowship in West Hartford, I had a solid conviction: We're going after lost people and we aren't interested in reaching Christians. My thinking has expanded on this point!

Let me explain. The reason I didn't want to go after Christians is we wanted to catch fish, not swap sheep. I felt there was no value added to God's kingdom by stealing sheep from already churched people. I still believe that (and still find it distasteful and undesirable to try to lure people from other churches), but what I discovered is that just because people already believe in Christ, it does not mean they are already part of a healthy church.

In fact, through the course of newcomers' potlucks and some one-on-one conversations, I discovered there were people that had moved to our area and had been searching in vain for weeks, months and even years for a home church (yes years...many of them). This was especially true if they had come from an area in the south or in Southern California for instance, that offered them a variety of great churches to choose from. Many of these people moved to our area for a significant job promotion, only to discover how spiritually desolate our area is and how few good church options there are to choose from.

What I have come to discover is it is not only fair, but it is also very wise to go after these "new movers" (as we call them) if you are in a difficult area to reach. Here are a few reasons for that:

• They want and need a church family to belong to (Christians need discipleship, fellowship and encouragement; your church can be a place of refuge and refueling for them)
• They often add much needed wisdom and maturity to offer the locals you are reaching
• They add critical mass to your body (seekers are going to feel weird and uncomfortable at a mostly empty church service)
• They already know of the responsibilities required of a Christian like giving and serving that are vital to the sustainability of a church (new converts are wonderful and necessary, but they don't get this right away)
• They expand the number of people committed to accomplishing God's mission for your church (though you have to be very intentional to cast vision and help them see that they now live in a wide open mission field to be salt and light in)

Reaching "new movers" should never be done in place of reaching non-believers, but in addition to it. And once they become a part of your church, they need to join you in reaching out to the natives. But God loves these people, and wants these disenfranchised believers connected to a church family. Especially in an area that is tough to reach, a wise pastor will not only warmly welcome new movers, but will also intentionally pursue them.

In the new resource "Ministering in the Hard Places" that Bob Franquiz and I collaborated on, we expand on this point and reveal some specific strategies for reaching new movers that have been very effective for us. We also get into some other contrarian ideas about how to be effective in difficult areas to reach. If you're ministering in a hard place, you should check it out! (You can save $20 on Ministering in the Hard Places by using the coupon code hardplaces during checkout.)

Brand New Resource: Ministering in the Hard Places

Copy by Bob Franquiz: We’re releasing a brand new resource at church-strategies.com today called, “Ministering in the Hard Places”. My friend Bill Lamorey (Senior Pastor, Calvary Fellowship in Hartford, CT) and I co-teach this resource where we talk about the unique challenges of Pastoring in areas of the country (and world for that matter) that are more difficult.

But this resource is about giving you the the tools to reach more people and build a healthier church no matter what area you’re in. When you’re doing ministry in a tough area you have to do things differently. This resource outlines 9 contrarian ideas that will give you the tools you need to reach and disciple people despite your circumstance.

Bill & I know how the tough areas work. I think you’d agree that New England and Miami aren’t the easiest places to reach people, yet God is doing something amazing in both of our churches. We want to share some of the practical steps we’ve learned that will greatly help you in your ministry!

You can save $20 on Ministering in the Hard Places by using the coupon code hardplaces during checkout.

You can pick up a copy of Ministering in the Hard Places here.

Here’s what you can expect to learn in this 2 hour plus resource:

- See a stream of first time guests who are easy to reach

- Build a team that stays together and loves your area

- Leave the keys to lasting in your community while others leave

- Discover who to listen to and who to ignore

- H0w to be missional and attractional at the same time

- Learn how to read your community and connect

- Plus much more!

You can save $20 on Ministering in the Hard Places by using the coupon code hardplaces during checkout.

The Challenge of Managing Expectations as a Church Planter (Video)

The top 3 challenges in my first year of planting a church Pt. 3

UPDATED 4.20.11: Click here to get a resource to help you succeed!!!

This concludes a series of posts on the top three challenges I faced in my first year of planting Calvary Fellowship. The 3rd is...

Making the big ask -When we started the church I had to learn to ask for help. I did step out of my comfort zone initially and ask our friends, family and other churches (softly) to help with the start-up costs of our church. All together we raised $20,000 to cover the basic costs of launching the church (a paltry sum by most current standards). We probably should have done a better job of being more assertive, but honestly I was just uncomfortable making the big ask (don't misread that, I am very good at making a big something else of myself). This did a couple of things; a) It kept the church budget extremely lean and b) it kept me from being focused solely on the development of the church because I had to work an outside job (I received no compensation from the church for the first year).

At the one-year mark a friend told me I really needed to go fulltime at the church to take it to the next level. He was right, and he also had a plan. He showed me a letter that he had written sharing the vision of the church, our mission field, and our current need. He told me that with my blessing he intended to send that to all of his family and friends to ask them to help fund my salary for the next year. I was very moved. Not just emotionally, I was also moved into action! After all, if he could be bold enough to ask his network for help, than how could I not do the same? He contacted everyone he could think of and I contacted everyone I could think of. Together we raised enough money and monthly commitments for me to quit my job and go fulltime with Calvary. That led to me having more time to prepare for the weekend services and to work on the big picture issues of the church, which soon led to more rapid church growth. At present we have 3 fulltime staff people and 1 parttime staff person all funded internally. I am convinced to this day that had I not learned to make the big ask, we would have remained stuck in gear.

Here are some things I learned about making the big ask:

• I thought I was showing humility by not asking for financial help; I now believe it was a form of pride that I had to work through.
• Those that gave financially didn't see themselves as philanthropists, they saw themselves as investors. Many that gave began to pray for us regularly too. To this day people that gave at our early stage tell me how thrilled they were to invest in something that through their partnership is having a great return for God's kingdom.
• People are more generous than you think; by asking I gave them an opportunity to express that.
• The provision won't always come from where you expect. -In some cases, people I never thought would give were generous, and others I assumed would give large didn't do much of anything (in fact even though some commitments where made but never came through we were OK because  the resources still came from unexpected places).
• Where God guides, God provides -this ties to the prior point, but I'd like to make a footnote on this one. It's God's job to provide, but He does it through people. Therefore it's not wrong to ask people to help and then trust God for Him to touch the hearts of those He would like to funnel His treasures to you through (I had to learn this because that thinking went against some of what I had learned in some circles.)

I truly hope these lessons I learned the hard way are helpful to anyone doing the challenging but rewarding work of planting a church!

In case you missed them:

Pt. 1 -"Maintaing Life Balance"

Pt. 2-"Managing Expectations"

The top 3 challenges in my first year of planting a church Pt. 2

UPDATED 4.20.11: Click here to get a resource to help you succeed!!!

In yesterday's post I talked about how maintaing life balance was one of the top 3 challenges for me in my first year of planting Calvary Fellowship. Today I am going talk about the 2nd biggest challenge (though they're not necessarily ranked in order):

Managing expectations:  There is actually two parts to this one.

Managaing my personal expectations: Prior to starting our church I had the rare privilege of working for two awesome churches that have both experienced great success and momentum; Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale (the 6th largest church in the US according to Outreach Magazine) and Calvary Fellowship (with my good friend and mentor Bob Franquiz). Serving in those environments each provided me with incredible learning opportunities and firsthand experiences that many aren't fortunate enough to get; I can not overstate how valuable serving at both of those church was for equipping me. However, it also created a problem -it set my expectations VERY high! I just KNEW God could and would work in big, powerful, and epic ways QUICKLY. So imagine my disappointment when the church started small and then got even smaller by the end of the first calendar year! It was deeply discouraging and I often thought about quitting.

Manging the expectations of others: I knew enough to cast the vision God have given me for our church constantly, but I wasn't prepared for people to constantly cast THEIR for our church too! Some early attenders had expectations for big growth they weren't seeing and they expressed frustration (which only exasperated my prior struggle), and others had expectations for certain programming or ministries. The second was by far more difficult to manage. Though I was (and still am) very intent on keeping a narrow focus and emphasizing quality of ministry over quantity of ministries, others wanted what they used to have in their former churches (men's ministry, women's ministry, sports ministry, etc.) I failed this challenge in the early stages by making implicit agreements to meet someone's expectations in the future. I didn't lie, but I wasn't forthcoming enough.We were already small so instead of just saying, "No, we never plan to do what you're saying even if we have 10,000 people attending," I would say something like, "Sounds interesting...we'll see" (parents, you know that classic technique to avoid the conflict of saying no). This created some level of fear for me (would I sacrifice the vision or simply disappoint people even further down the line?) and some level of frustration of others (they were expecting something we wouldn't deliver on in some time if ever).

Here are a few things I did to manage expectations:

• I made a conscious effort to stop comparing the vitality and vibrancy of our church plant to that of the churches I came from (we were in different stages of growth after all).
• I made a conscious decision to stop comparing ourselves to other church plants (so what if a church in the South had 2,000 people in 6 months a) it's not an apples to apples comaparison to church planting in New England and b) so what if it was?).
• I determined that I would enjoy our church at every stage of development, maturity and size just like I do with my children rather than missing the moment by wishing it was further developed (my wife helped me connect the dots on this one).
• I decided to be very honest with people about what we would do and would not do. We would lose some people, but I would not create unnecessary fear for me or frustration for others
• I became determined to clash for our vision when necessary. I was casting the vision, but I also needed to be willing to clash for it (fight for it - not being mean, but being firm) when other well-meaning people attempted to push it an a direction I knew it wasn't meant to go.

Yesterday's post: Maintaing life balance

Tomorrow's post: Making the big ask

The top 3 challenges in my first year of planting a church Pt. 1

UPDATED 4.20.11: Click here to get a resource to help you succeed!!!

Planting a church anywhere is incredibly hard work. Planting a church in New England is...ridiculously hard work! Someone recently asked me what the three hardest things were for me in the first year I planted Calvary Fellowship. He was curious because his friend was planting a church. I was surprised by how quickly the answers came out of my heart and mouth. I thought I'd share those here in case there are any other curious friends out there.

#1 Mantaining life balance -In April of 2005, my wife Rebecca and I sold our home in South Florida, packed everything we owned into a Penske truck and moved with our 1-year old daughter and toy poodle (Rebecca's of course) to CT. Within 4 days of being on the ground I started a job at ADT (I was bivocational the first year), within 1 month we were pregnant with our 2nd child, and within 2 months on the ground we held our first weekly church service. We couldn't convince anyone to come with us from FL (though we had some takers if we planted in Hawaii) so initially it was just us without a launch team and without the support of local family and friends.

So the challenge of maintaing life balance was that I had to juggle three big important things at all times: My family, my job and the church. What I discovered is that I was only really good at keeping two of those balls in the air at any given time. Unfortunately, it was my (growing) family that often suffered the most. I had removed my wife from all her support systems and then often left her lonely and alone while I pushed myself hard working 7 days a week (I only took a couple days off in the first year). It was hard on my family, hard on me, and I'm sure it was not optimal for the church either. The stress of trying to juggle everything finally got to me and I eventually realized my pace was unsustainable.

Note: I won't attempt to explain thoroughly how I worked through each of these three difficulties in this series of posts for time's sake, but I am working on some things that will go into depth on these and other issues that I'll release soon enough.

Here are a few things I did to balance my life and create a sustainable pace:

• Quit my fulltime job to give more time to the church and to my family
• Raised outside support in order to go fulltime with the church
• Repented of not taking a Sabbath
• Started taking a day off each week (which turned into 1.5 days 2 years after that)
• Began delegating more
• Made intentional efforts to be more fully present with my family

 Next -Pt. 2: Managing expectations.

Church Plant Statistics Challenged

UPDATED 4.20.11: Click here to get a resource to help you succeed!!!

Many church plants fail...sad but true. In fact, most fail. Which is a sobering reality that keeps people like myself praying hard and working hard to get our churches to not only survive, but to thrive.

Knowing that, my friend Bob sent me an article the other day that was very encouraging. In it Ed Stetzer (co-author of "Breaking the Missional Code") asserts that the number of successful church plants is actually higher than most believe (80% failure rate is usually the # thrown around).

He also gives some shocking average attendance stats for church plants (hint, average attendance is much lower than most believe). As a church-planter, you read so many blogs where people start churches and they grow to hundreds and even thousands within the first year or 2, and you can get easily discouraged -until you realize that is way above the norm. In fact their stats show that the average church plant has about 80 in attendance at the 4-year mark. Which encourages me as our 20-month-old church had 79 attend this past weekend. Yes, I am encouraged, because while it's not stellar, it's still above average, and it reminds me that God is up to something in our church.

I share that because I think the reason many church plants fail is unrealistic expectations (in fact that's what Ed shares in the article). It's like we read everyone else's stories and we feel like a failure because we compare our church with the ones that are way above average and have had tremendous success with numbers. Church planting is a difficult enough undertaking so the last thing we need to do is add more pressure by having unrealistic expectations. I'm not saying don't dream big...just suggesting that maybe our big dreams won't happen overnight. Paul had a word that might apply to us church-planters:

"So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up." (Galatians 6:9, NLT)

"Eye of the Tiger!" I'm not quitting!