Church planter’s shopping list

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:00

Hey everyone. Lee Stevenson here.

I have the privilege and joy to be the executive director of church planting with Converge and a local church planter and my co host here.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:15

I'm Danny Parmelee and I oversee church planting for Converge Mid America.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:20

And this is the unfiltered podcast where we're having just real conversations about church planting today.

Specifically, we're going to take some time and just talk about what are the essentials, what are the must haves kind of on your to do list, on your task list, whatever it is, when it comes to what you just need to purchase when you get ready to start that church. And there's a reason behind this because. Dan, why don't you kind of explain why this is an important conversation.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:44

I think for a lot of church planners just kind of knowing ahead of time some of the funds that they're going to need to raise, whether that's going to be outside funding or once you start to develop a launch team as you can kind of cast vision for them, for them to understand that it's more than just kind of renting out a space for a couple hundred dollars a month or a thousand dollars a month. But there is all sorts of that initial startup equipment that's needed.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:06

Yeah.

And obviously, I mean, dependent on location, where you're starting, what is there that you can tap into, what's not there, all those are going to come to play when it comes to what equipment you have. And so you gotta understand, contextualize, kind of the conversation what we're having.

I mean, I've seen church plants where all they literally had was a $5,000 budget to buy everything to working with church plants that had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to play with as well.

And so we're going to try to land somewhere in the middle of that, but give you some basic things that I hope you'll think through and place upon your list when it comes to that.

First of all, one of the things that I think is important to think is if you are portable, one of the things right off the bat that you're going to have to purchase as a church planner is probably a trailer. And it's going to need to be of decent size.

I would encourage you to look at probably more than 20 foot long trailer to be able to carry everything you need back and forth to your Sunday experience.

And specifically when it comes to trailer, you want one that has a ramp that drops so you can easily roll things on and off versus having to literally pick up and and carry them. Down off, off onto the curb like you do.

The last thing you want to do is have your entire setup and tear it out team have bad backs and you know, complain and then quit on you in the middle of trying to move that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:35

And this is just a really quick side note. But Lee, what do you think about putting the logo on the side of your trailer that also says filled with very expensive.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:45

Don't do it, don't do it man. I've seen too many times. Danny. I'm sure you have.

That's why you asked the question of, of churches getting broken into and all their stuff getting st stolen. If you do decide to do that, make sure I have a really good insurance policy that will cover all that stuff.

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:59

It's like you could just figure out brand some brand your own car if you need to that you're going to drive. Just not your, your equipment. Because it's basically saying steal me.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:09

No. And if you want it as a billboard, go get a billboard. Go get a billboard.

Or get something that you can magnetically put onto the side of it when you park it in the parking lot of where you're doing church. And as soon as church is over, pull it off and drive to wherever you're going to be storing your equipment and make sure you have good locks.

The other thing that I would say just kind of on the practical side of here, if you have that size of a trailer, you also need a vehicle large enough that can actually pull that.

In most cases, especially if your trailer is full and it's over 20ft in length, you're going to be looking at needing a 3 quarter ton truck or bigger in order to pull that. A standard half ton pickup truck is going to have a hard time pulling that. And honestly you're going to tear it up and tick off somebody.

And so just pray that God provides you somebody in your church that has a large pickup that'd be more than willing to drive and has experience driving a trailer.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:05

Minivan's not going to cut it for this.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:07

Minivan ain't going to do it unfortunately. So what are some other things that you think of?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:12

time if you've got an extra $: 1200

So if you're adding it to the equipment list and especially if you're going to have some church that's going to generously buy you a bunch of things, or you're going to do one of the church plant baby shower type things, throw it on there, commercial grade, 15 foot bounce house, you'll be able to use it to have lots of.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:42

You feel like easily. You'll get your money back on that, Dan.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:44

You'll get your money back on that for sure. So.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:47

And if you don't, you can send the remaining amount to Danny. No, exactly.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:53

Obviously, musical equipment is a big one.

I think one of the things is that it can be dangerous to just find another church plant that maybe didn't make it and just buy all of their equipment. And you might even get a list because there's lots of these lists out here. Like, hey, you know, our church plant didn't work. Here's our list.

And we bought this for, you know, we bought it for 20,000, but we're going to give it to you for 15,000 because it's used. And you're thinking, well that's great, I just saved $5,000. However, if it doesn't fit your situation, it's money wasted. It's money wasted.

And so it doesn't mean that you couldn't maybe pick and choose.

But if you don't know what you're doing with sound, this is where you really need to have, whether it's a company or someone on your team to go, yeah, this is equipment that will work in our space.

Now if someone's saying, I'm going to give it to you, then I say, absolutely, take it and just be honest with them and say, hey, if there's stuff that doesn't work for us, like if these speakers are too small or these speakers are too big, we may sell those, but we will still use those resources. So, you know, use those resources to buy other equipment, you know, Absolutely.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:57

And that's where, honestly, I do think it's worth spending a little extra of money to bring in a specialist, a specialist in AV and have them look at the space and the room in which you plan to meet and give you an estimate as to what would be most beneficial in order to have the adequate and quality sound, quality lighting.

Just have them do a proposal and then you can decide, do I want to continue work with them, have them help set up and teach our team how to do that, or can I go get most of the stuff on Amazon and get it cheaper? But it is definitely worth you engaging to get some level of professionalism when it Comes to, how do we maintain quality?

Because, honestly, sound quality, consistency is one of the most important things as you kind of get the church up and going when it comes to. I think also when you're talking on the musical side of things. Danny, what would you recommend?

Because I know some planters talk about we just purchase all of the musical instruments for the band to use and then their possession of the church. Do you think that's necessary? If so, why. If not, why not?

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:02

Yeah, I think there might be some elements. Obviously, the drum set and the keys are kind of one of those ones where it's like, you know, to just have there. Those there all of the time.

And if you need to, you know, switch up drummers or whatever, it's hard.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:16

For a drummer to always bring his own personal kit in every single time he's gonna drum for you.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:20

Yeah, yeah. So those are the ones. Other than that, definitely. Guitars, bass, a lot of the. I don't know, the other. Other.

Other instruments and auxiliary items of it to have people just bring their own for that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:33

And when it comes to equipment, for instance, like a drum kit, you're spending a fair amount of money to have a quality drum kit. You want to also protect it, you know, if it's being moved in and out on a weekly basis.

Look at building some unique boxes that can store that equipment, and in doing so, it protects it. So create some wooden shelving, some wooden boxes that can enclose it and keep drums from getting punctured.

And so, because the last thing you want to do is you show up, you set up your drum kit, and all of a sudden the snare's got a puncture in it, and it's unusable for Sunday. That. That kind of puts you up a creek. If drums are a major part of your worship experience.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:12

And there are companies out there that do design basically your church in a box type of thing, where it's every piece of equipment that you need. All the storage, the trailer, everything is in there. However, most of those are pretty expensive.

So if you have the luxury of doing that, you know, all the power to you. But you'll definitely pay quite a bit of money.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:32

Yeah, don't be afraid of. You know, they're. They're. This is one of those things that you can engage your launch team.

There's probably a people on your launch team that are actually fairly good with woodworking, and they're just looking for something to do. And so coming to them saying, hey, would you help build this?

Is kind of what we have in mind, they'll get pretty excited that they can use their skill set to help the church in that in a very practical way.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:53

All right. Besides musical equipment, a lot of times it's lumped together, but somewhat of a separate thing. Lighting costs.

And even if you're like, no, I don't want to have a light show type of thing and you still need lighting, you still need to be able to control your house lights. And you, even if you don't have moving lights and some basic stage lighting.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:13

You know, the last thing you want to do as a pastor, stand up on stage and be preaching in the dark, you know, or shadow, which I did do one side of your face, which is a time for another story at another time. But, but you do, you got to be careful of some of that.

And then you got to think about, are we going to Facebook Live, are we going to video, you know, record any of our, our, our sermons or our services?

If you decide to do that, then lighting does make a huge difference in enhancing the product and how the camera actually picks up the, you know, the, the stage.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:46

Yeah. What about children's equipment? So when you're starting.

And obviously portable is going to be different than if you're in kind of a longer term rental situation or borrowing a church. But what types of items and costs associated with children's stuff?

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:01

Yeah, that's great. I. From our experience in a portable situation, you probably want something to put on the ground.

Even if you're a school or a movie theater, it's nice to, you know, and I'm thinking specifically in the nursery space where you've got kids crawling, just learning to walk, where they're going to spend the majority of the service time on the floor. It's just helpful for the parents to feel like it's clean, it's safe. And so you want to think through it from that standpoint.

How do we present a clean and safe place for parents to drop their kids? Depending on the situation, you may need some baby gates to kind of keep people contained in certain areas.

I would get some collapsible rocking chairs, take up very little space.

Really low cost, but it's easy for your workers to be able to hold and rock babies that get dropped off in the nursery, you're probably going to need something that allows you to change a child. So some type of changing table. But again, you want something that's collapsible, it's not going to take up a lot of space.

You're going to want some tables and some Chairs for kids to be able to do crafts, sit down, have story time and have a place to be able to learn their lesson as well. Maybe a few toys, but you don't need a lot.

And honestly, a lot of that you can get dedicated, you know, will get given to you donated, or you can purchase at garage sales and just make sure they stay clean.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:17

Right. People are always getting rid of their, their baby and their kid stuff. Going back to the flooring part of it.

It is a very inexpensive way to make the room look great, especially when you can get a carpet and you know, it's got the, you know, the little city on it or whatever. Or you just get the bright, colorful. You had, you had mentioned earlier the kind of foam puzzle mats.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:37

Yeah. Interlocking. Yep.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:39

And it just really brightens it up because you want, yes, the parents to see that it's a safe place, but also for the kids to just be delighted that they're in an area that was created for them. So don't, don't skimp on that type of stuff.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:54

The other thing, what about, what are some essentials when it comes to just the dealing with money in a life of a church plant?

Because sometimes that even gets, I'm thinking about like you need some way to collect the, Collect an offering, collect people's tithes, whether or not it's going to be buckets, whether or not it's going to be a giving box, whatever. What else would you think, Danny, would be helpful on that end?

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:18

Yeah, I mean, obviously so much has switched to online, but yeah, you still need, you still need to pass around something if you're going to be doing that or even if you're collecting the connect cards or the new person, first time visitors type thing.

Yeah, there are tons of these, just little things that you don't think about and you need to have things that are functional and also just represent who you are.

I mean, I know places that I've met in a movie theater, so they intentionally, you know, pass popcorn buckets and it just makes sense, you know, to kind of, kind of do that where.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:51

Play with the theme.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:51

Yeah, just kind of, kind of go with that type of thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:54

Yeah, right.

And you're going to want some type of accounting software and we'll talk a whole nother session at some point just about essential software to include in the life of the church.

But you also need to think through ordinances, how you going to do baptism, how are you going to do communion, and you're going to have to put some finances into that whether or not you're going to do, you know, are you going to use a horse trough out in the parking lot when it comes to baptism? Are you going to go to a pool in the area and do baptism that way? But also, how are you going to present the communion elements?

Are you going to use a tray? Are you going to have a tabletop? What are you going to, you know, are people going to come up Catholic style? Are you going to pass through the aisle?

And so those are some things that you got to think through because there is a cost involved when it comes to that.

Well, there's, when you think of that, then, Danny, what do you think is a safe estimate of how much money is somebody going to need to raise in order to cover their bases from a trailer to basic, you know, kind of equipment to be able to move stuff in and out, some basic children's and lighting, sound equipment? What in your mind is a safe estimate?

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:01

Well, I, you know, I'm on a, I'm on a church plant launch team right now and actually just looked at some of the music or the sound equipment and that was around 25, 30,000. And that was not extravagant.

That did include though, things that, you know, that they felt were necessary, such as in ear monitors and some wireless thing, you know, wireless mics.

And in comparison to, you know, mics that are plugged in so you can go cheaper for sure if you need to go cheaper and you just don't have that type of money. But I think that the sound and lights will probably shake out right around 50, 60 thousand dollars once it's all said and done.

And again, it's not, it's not extravagant. This is a church plan. This is the pre launch phase, you know, so, and I think it is.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:47

Something for you to consider, like when you are purchasing your AV equipment, consider just go ahead and step into the next level when it comes to the quality. You know, instead of having corded mics, go ahead and purchase the, you know, the cordless.

Because honestly, if you get corded mics, you're going to replace your cords on a regular basis and eventually you're going to have the same cost involved in that microphone as you would in the other one. And I encourage you, especially depending on your space, look at just going straight to the in ear monitors versus floor monitors.

If you're in a movie theater particular, the space for your stage setup is very, very small.

And the last thing you want to do is take up more floor space by putting floor monitors down where you could Simply just spend a few extra dollars and would have in ear monitors, I think is a potential good decision.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:33

Yeah.

And from just a philosophy standpoint too, if you do have a high value on the musical worship part of it, the money that you invest in that will also attract and honor and appreciate the worship people. So in other words, if they're there and they're quality. Yeah. The worst of the worst.

It's kind of like, well, I'm always fighting feedback and I can't even hear myself. And it's just frustrating every single week to be able to do that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:00

Yeah, I think that's well said. I think it, you know, again, it depends on your context, a little bit of how you're planting. But if you're looking at a more.

A higher attendance launch, where you're trying to launch at a larger level, bigger group, you're probably going to be looking at somewhere of an investment of 75 to $100,000. And that's just kind of the basic minimum probably that you're going to be looking at raising in order to get to that. That point.

If you're going to have a slower launch phase, you can probably get by somewhere between 25 and 50. Under 25, you're going to be hard pressed to pull off what you need to pull off across the board.

You may have one area of your ministry that stays at a high quality, but when it comes to every area of your ministry, something's going to be lacking as a result.

Danny Parmelee: 00:16:48

And the one thing that we didn't discuss that much, which we did in a previous one when we were talking about the fac, is pipe and drape, which is a church planner's best friend. Or maybe not all.

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:01

I'm not a fan, so that's me personally.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:04

But if you have to at least try to control size of room, or sometimes it's just even using it for background stuff, sometimes it is even for kids areas that you have to kind of, you know, make one large room into some smaller rooms. And you can do things besides just black pipe and drape as well too, that sometimes that's added into the cost.

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:26

Yeah. And here's a little tip. Look at how arenas and ballparks manage moving people and kind of covering up unused space.

We just copied that when we were in some of our facilities that swallowed us up where we just put black cloth over the chairs we didn't want people to sit in versus just putting pipe and drape. It was a whole lot faster. It was cheaper and less demanding on our team.

So that's just a small tip to consider based on the facility you're in as well. Thanks, y'all. It's been fun having conversations, just.

But what are some of those essentials that you need to consider purchasing to get the church up and off the ground? Thanks for tuning in. This has been the unfiltered podcast Real Conversations about Church Planning. Again, until next time, keep it real.