2020 year in review

Lee Stephenson: Welcome, everybody, to the Unfiltered podcast. My name is Lee Stephenson. I get the privilege to be the executive director of Church Planting and a church planter in Orlando, Florida.

Danny Parmelee: I’m Danny Parmelee. And I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: I like how you started that. You’re about to say my …

Danny Parmelee: I’m trying to figure out what, who am I? What do I do?

Lee Stephenson: There’s so many things you do. So it’s kinda, which title do I bring to the table today?

Danny Parmelee: Yeah.

trends. What are we seeing in: 2020

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, well, I think, I mean, just sharing a little bit of the backstory to it when COVID did hit the church planting pipeline. You know, for me, that’s part of part of my role. And as I interact with the other district church planting directors, same thing, pipelines completely dried up, literally people said, Hey, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go assessment all pulled their name, said there’s just no way, can’t do this to my family, can’t do it to the church I’m in right now. Too many unknowns, don’t know. And I’m thinking, Oh, my goodness, I need a new job. Time to start looking at Home Depot type of thing. And then once, man, it must have been, you know, maybe towards the end of summer, maybe it was even the middle of summer, the pipeline started to fill back up. And there’s probably a little bit of an artificial increase or blip. That was just the catchup, those that were saying, OK, it’s kind of on hold. And then now, you know, they’re kind of reengaging. But even as you said, considering that, overall, there has just been an overwhelming response, where people are like, Hey, I feel called the plant a church. So I think there’s a couple things partly, there probably is a lot of pruning and shifting and things that are just happening within the church world. I do think that there’s also an opportunity to plant churches in maybe a little bit of a different way. And there’s an openness and a receptiveness. Maybe some of these guys are going, Hey, you know, I didn’t think I could be a church planter before. But during COVID, I started a group online and started, you know, gathering some momentum, and now we’re meeting together in the home. And so I think that there’s some of that where there’s just maybe kind of a renewed sense and awakening that there’s a need for the local church, and it might look different, and maybe I don’t need to try to compare myself to the mega church. And that’s not the, you know, the mark of success is having, you know, a couple thousand people all meeting in one auditorium.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, and I do think it it’s, I know, it’s been helpful at a level even for me personally, but I think what we’re experiencing is COVID caused people to hit the pause button at a level in their life and ministry, programming and gave space probably for people to begin to ponder, what do I want out of the next five years? And God has used that to raise up that next generation of pastors, of leaders, of planters. I think, too. I know, for us, even at the local church level, it forced us to really go, this is a season of individual development. And so we’ve kind of repositioned our conversations and what we’re doing right now to really be about how do we grow our people in this season, to be deeper disciples and to embrace what it may be to be a leader on mission. And I’m excited because I think we’re going to see even out of that, personally, a couple of planters step up over the next year, just because of this season, and so it’s been a unique blessing in seeing how God is working and how he continues to do that in and through the church.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, and I’ve had a lot of, you know, people ask me, Well, do you think that this is just people that are getting fired from their jobs because of cuts? I haven’t had that to date, where someone’s like, Hey, I’m in church planting. Why? Um, because I got, you know, fired as the associate pastor or the missions pastor, and there just wasn’t enough money in the budget. It all seems to be coming from this kind of missional sense, this missional drive of wanting to plant a church. Like I said, I think there is some excitement, that church doesn’t have to look exactly the same as it did before. And if you were to ask me eight months ago, like what I thought about micro church or house church, organic church, I probably would have given you a little bit of an eye roll or maybe nodded, but in my own mind and heart, I don’t know, I just, our culture isn’t ready, that might work in a foreign country, you know that, you know, that’s under persecution. But I just I don’t think that that works in America, we’re now we’re seeing it, because we almost were forced into it even just because of quarantine.

Lee Stephenson: Absolutely. And I think there’s probably been a different release and willingness to release staff to pursue those missional causes as well. Realizing, you know, there’s just too great of a need out there in our communities of people that are hurting. People have lost jobs. And we’ve got to find new ways and quick ways to reach those people with the truth of the gospel. And I think it’s fired up our existing churches at a different level, to rethink their mission, and even how they’re carrying out their mission. And I just think it’s been a neat season. I think it’s been a gift from the Lord for the majority of local churches. Obviously, there’s churches that are closing. And some of them, there’s nothing they can do about it. You know, I know one church planter I was talking with recently, that 75% of his congregation lost their job. That’s hard to overcome. I don’t care who you are. That’s just a cultural reality for some of our planters. But for existing churches, if they didn’t pivot, if they weren’t willing to change, and stay on mission, then they’re going to definitely take a major hit as well.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, I’m wondering too, if there’s going to be a little bit more of some experiment in the economics of it. So in other words, we have a pretty good system now where it’s like, this is what it looks like to plant the church. OK, you quit your job, you raise support for a year and a half, you raise, you know, funds, x amount of dollars. Where now it’s like, Hey, you know what, I might have a three quarter time job doing something else, so I’m getting paid less as a pastor. The pace is maybe a little bit different. And I’m not trying to necessarily launch large, but I can, you know, grow it this way. And, again, using the whole organic thing, but grow it organically and see if, you know, a faith community develops out of that. So I think there’s just maybe a sense of experimentation and ingenuity where it’s kind of reignited in the church.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, most definitely, I would say some of our candidates, I think we’ve seen an uptick of those that want to pursue strategically from a covocational or bivocational method of planting, at least for the first couple years. And I think there’s been because of that more receptivity, because of the COVID season, towards that type of planting as well. I can’t wait to see, honestly, what continues to grow out of this season when it comes to church and the mission of the church and church planting. God’s already surprising us. I think that those surprises will continue to come. And if you are one of our listeners out there, you’re seeing some unique trends taking place from church planting as well, would you let us know? We’d love to be able to interact with you. And you can just email us directly at info@converge.org. And we would love to be able to interact and hear those trends. Thanks for tuning in with us. Fun conversations about current trends in church planting, and we’re just celebrating God’s goodness in that. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep it real.