Developing a multiplying mindset

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:10

Welcome to the Unfiltered Podcast. My name is Lee Stevenson. Excited to talk about church planting and all things church planting raw and real. My co host here say hey.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:20

I am Danny Parmelee and I oversee church planting for Converge Mid America and, and excited because we're going to do kind of a couple series podcasts. We're going to be talking about developing a plan to multiply.

So how do you, how do you kind of put in kind of the DNA, the culture from the beginning, to, to, to multiply in all levels. And so Lee, why don't you kind of get us kicked off here?

You've shared with this, with actually a number of even just different networks and districts on how to be thinking about multiplication before you ever even launch.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:55

Yeah, I think that's really the heartbeat of how we want every church plant to get started is having this written into their DNA of that we are a church, not just planting one church, but we want to be a church that plants continually more churches, more congregations, whether or not that's autonomous church plants, whether or not it's some type of form of multi site, multi congregational form of planting.

And the first conversation piece I think is important to realize in this process is you've got to be intentional about creating vision, alignment around why multiplication is important. I know, I've heard over the years, my guess is any church planners heard this number one question that a lot of times people push back on.

When we talk about church planners, well, don't we have enough churches already? And, you know, they just don't see the need or the desire of continuing the process.

They're excited about what they've experienced, but they also, you know, remember the difficulties and the challenges that have taken place maybe to get the church up to where it's going. And they're going, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. You know, we're good, we're healthy, everybody knows each other. Why do we want to.

Why do we need to multiply?

The other kind of pushback is, well, why would we plant new churches when there's already a lot of churches that are dying and they're looking to be rehabilitated like they're looking for pastors to maybe come in and breathe new life.

When you run into some of those moments, Danny, how have you processed that with church planters or even congregational members when they're wrestling with just the beginning vision of multiplying?

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:40

Yeah, I think that you'll be shocked as a church planter of how early you do get that pushback that in the beginning when you're sharing it, you know, in your vision meetings, everyone's like, yes, on board, we want to multiply, we want to grow, but people quickly slip into what is most comfortable and what's most serving to them. And so I think that we even first experienced it when we said we're going to multiply small groups. And people love that idea on paper.

And then when it meant. Wait, you mean so some of my close friends may no longer be in my small group to start another one.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:14

Exactly.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:14

And then, you know, I, it gets personal then and I still the story, I've shared this so many times, but still to me it was the funniest thing is and, and hard thing is that when we decided to multiply services it was just like, I mean you would have thought, I mean that I was just introducing the craziest thing ever in the world. Like well wait, but we all want to gather together for one service.

But so, so you do, you, you, you early on will push up against that and just understanding that it's change for people and it does require sacrifice.

And so part of the, the DNA or the value of the church is you do have to teach sacrifice almost before you teach multiplication because multiplication is always sacrifice.

Having children is great, but you, there's a sacrifice involved, it's going to cost money, it's going to cost time, you're going to give up your weekend, it's going to cost you dearly, I'm promising you. And it's the same with multiplication at every level of the church. Small groups, services, planting a church, going multi site.

And so if you don't have the culture in the beginning that says, hey, you know what, this isn't all about us, it's not all about your preferences and where you sit in church and what time, you know, you get to come to church and all these different things. So I think one of the key words as you've shared before, is you got to teach sacrifice before you teach multiplication.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:39

Absolutely.

And I think the first thing that you got to wrestle with as a, as a planter that is wanting to establish the DNA of multiplication in the life of the church. The sooner that you do it the better. But the reality is you won't do it. You won't become a multiplying church if you don't want to.

Like nobody's going to force this upon you. And so you have to own that vision.

But then you've got to create a level of vision, alignment of this is the type of church we are, this is why we are, this is important to us. And so it's going to require sacrifice. And I find that the costs really fall into three major categories.

And this is true whether or not you're planning an autonomous church or whether or not you're doing a multi site type of situation. There's a financial cost, there's a time commitment cost, there's also personnel cost. And so you want to begin to put thought to that process.

What are we okay to sacrifice? What are we, what level of cost are we comfortable with? And begin to actually, you know, write those things down.

So you creating a grid and a framework so that as a church planter rises up and you begin to engage them and have conversations, you can already have a game plan in place about how do we get this person moving forward and be efficient in that process. Financially is always going to cost you more than you think. And that's the reality.

And so one of the things you'll have to think through is as a multi site type of situation, if that's the game plan you're looking at, how long are we able to sustain this new work in giving it a timeline until it can actually become self funding as a new ministry in that context, how long did you guys as a multi site church, Danny, how long did you find that it took sometimes for that congregate, that new established work, that new congregation to actually become fully self sustaining?

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:37

Yeah, so we, we had two different sites.

Our first one became self sustaining if you, and it's always hard to kind of figure that out exactly because of, you know, people are giving in in different spots and in different ways. But that one became self sustaining within a year. So that was, that was pretty quick. We had pretty explosive growth in that one.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:00

And I want to say, like it a year.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:03

A year.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:03

Like, you know, that needs to be the reality. That's why you've got to sit down and count some of those costs. Like it took a year to get.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:11

To that, which that was great for us. We celebrated that. And then.

Yeah, and then with our third location, that was an area that was intentionally planned, it planned, planted or, or launched in a economically depressed area. And so we actually factored that into to never be self sustaining. So.

Okay, but, and, and even to the day that I left, I'm not sure now if it does become self sustaining, that's great. But we saw it as huge as, hey, we, we want to do whatever we can to reach the people there.

So there's actually going to Be there's actually going to be a sacrifice or a cost long term for us.

And, and we're okay if this is always at, you know, kind of a negative, like it's costing us more for rent and for personnel, you know, to be able to reach, you know, that, that part of the city.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:05

So yeah.

And even talking about more of a parenting model, if you're sending a church planter out, even with a core team of people, maybe from the, that the mother church, a lot of times churches will say, hey, we'll support this work financially over X amount of time period, you know, over three years, for instance. And I would encourage it. Yeah.

As if you're looking at parenting a church and that kind of fits your model that you have a decreasing amount as the church ages to of how much money you're investing into that project. So year one, you may go, hey, we're going to support the church Plan or 100% of his income so that he can just fully be focused in on this.

But maybe year two we're going to cut it to 75%. Year three maybe down to 50% and then by the, you know, the next year they need to be fully self sustaining.

And so in other words, there is health in keeping that church plant hungry. In other words, making sure that they don't feel like, well, Mama's always there and she's just going to take care of us.

That may be true, but there is a reality that they need to buy into this work themselves and become self, you know, personally financially self dependent.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:17

And this is just my own preference or opinion, but I would never support a church planner 100% for that exact reason.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:24

No, no, but I'm saying that, that, that, that could be just giving a.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:28

Broad example in speaking to this.

I mean we just, in a, in a recent episode we had talked about, hey, when you don't have very many resources, make sure you continue to save and express generosity. Part of that is linked directly to this.

If you plan on being a multiplying church and you're going to multiply services and sites or plants, congregations, whatever it is, you can't do that unless you plan for that right away in the beginning.

So you're saving so that you're going to have some resources to be able to plant a church or to, or to do a site and that you do have generosity based in so you can send out a planter or a team of people and, and it's going to be again the same thing with personnel as well too that you're going to have to demonstrate that generosity. The hardest thing actually to give away isn't to give a church planter a check for 10 grand.

It's to give your three best families that are serving, they're the glue tithing and inviting all their neighbors. And when all of a sudden they go, you know what? I'm going to be part of this new work. It's like no Big Gulp.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:32

Yeah, exactly. I don't want that to take place.

There's a cost of time because you're investing your time as a pastor in the life of whoever that planter or multi site pastor is. You're investing time in the teams and developing teams to go out and do this.

And then like you just talked about the personnel cost, you got to count that. What are we okay with?

And I would say the ones that do this the best are the ones that are the most generous, where they literally kind of open up the doors and say, hey, you have a free hunting license. You can take whoever you want to take. You can ask whoever you want to ask to consider being a part of this, this new work.

And there is a fear element to that.

But I've seen, and I know you've seen, where God steps in, where maybe the top tithing family from the mother church decides to leave and be a part of this new church plant.

God may not bring one family to make up that difference, but over time he tends to bring in maybe three, four or five families that give it some element that actually make up the difference. God honors the generosity in that process.

But I would say even you need to begin to calculate the cost of what are we literally putting away to be able to see this opportunity, this ministry get up and off the ground. And I would encourage a church to actually begin to set aside a portion of their income percentagely and just fork it away.

Maybe it's 3%, maybe it's 5%.

I've seen churches do 10% all the way up to 20% of their budget is being literally set aside almost in an escrow account to be able to be used, to be invested in this new work, knowing that someday we want to become that.

Those pieces help you align your key leaders, your board members around a vision that can unify and really becomes reality versus just a pipe dream of, hey, we want this to happen.

And so you got to spend time relationally with those key leaders, with your small group leaders, with your staff, with your board early on establishing this is what we want to be, but this is how we can actually get there, but make sure that you're very, very clear in the conversation in that process to establish expectations. It will require sacrifice, but I think it honors the heart of God in this process.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:53

Yeah, absolutely. And in convergement America, our planters do sign in their covenant that they will set their giving at 10%.

And so part of that is just because of the way that we do our grant process and that they're paying forward so that they're, they're, I don't want to say forced into multiplication and generosity and church planning, but we kind of set that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:14

But this is what you incentivize it.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:16

Yeah, we incentivize it and, but this is what we've seen and this is going to sound so prosperity gospel and no, I'm not prosperity gospel just to put that disclaimer out there, but the, the churches that maintain that and continue to be generous both with their funding and with their people, God seems to bless and honor that, to increase their funding and to increase the amount of people that, that they're able to steward. And we have just seen this over and over.

The more tight fisted church plants are with their money and tight fisted that they are with their people, they're the ones that seem to really always just be struggling, clawing to just kind of make it to the next month where those that take that, that risk towards sacrifice, generosity, they're the ones that are living in, in God's blessing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:11

Love it. Love it. Well, the first step is what we just talked about. You got to create vision, alignment.

And part of the alignment is clear expectations, but also defining the level of sacrifice we're comfortable with. This is just the first episode of several episodes series of talking about steps that a church can take to becoming a multiplying church.

Ingraining multiplication as a, as a key DNA factor in the life of that church. Thanks for being with us guys. This has been the unfiltered podcast. Until next time, keep it real.