Developing your church plant launch team

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:09

Well, welcome to unfiltered real church planting discussions. My name is Danny Parmelee. I work with church planters in Converge Mid America, and I got Lee with me here today.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:19

Hey, I'm Lee Stephenson, and I work with Converge nationally overseeing our church planting movement as a whole. And glad to be with you guys. So today we're going to be talking about launch team development.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:33

Were you hoping that we were going to say that at the same time?

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:35

It would have been pretty amazing if we did that in unison. So we're working on it, but we'll get there one of these days. Launch teams. What do you think about launch teams?

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:43

Man, I think that they're pretty necessary to get things started. And, man, there are just. I think there's just a number of different ways to go about doing it.

And I think for a lot of church planners, it is that question, how do I get this started? How do I gather a group of people?

Or if you are coming from one of the models that we talked about, where you're coming from a group from another church, how do I now take these people and mobilize them into a team and how do we launch this church?

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:15

Yeah, as we get there, I want to kind of give us a little bit of a foundation, because I do think there is a distinguishing mark because I hear different terms used, and I do think your terminology around what that team is, that's going to help you get this church going. It matters. And the two often I hear used, and sometimes interchangeably, is core team versus launch team. I'm a proponent. I'm anti core team language.

I'm pro launch team language.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:46

Core team's a swear word.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:48

Yeah. Explain why we have a little bit of a pushback on the idea of core team.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:53

Yeah.

Well, core team does set up a leadership expectation that that is the core of the church and that they're going to lead the church even past the time of the launch, which I'd much prefer to say, hey, there's a launch team. You have a very specific goal, and that's to launch the church. And you can form leadership in core after and out of that launch.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:16

Yeah, absolutely. And so, like, what he's saying is, core team, typically there's not a timeline associated to it.

And so they see themselves being the core of the church.

And what it can create in the life of the church very quickly is an us versus them mentality, that we're the insiders, they're the outsiders, and they can create coldness towards anybody that's new or Anybody that's even different because we want what we have, and we don't want to change. Launch team usually has a definable timetable. You know, we exist until the launch of the church, and once we launch, our job shifts.

In other words, now we have different responsibilities.

And so it's much easier for us to embrace new people that may be different that are coming in from the outside, not see the world the same way we do and bring them along the journey with us. And so that's why we will focus in on launch team language versus core team language.

And I think making that difference there from the very beginning is an important distinguish.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:27

And if either of us say core team, we have a swear jar here that will be used for the church.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:32

We'll be dropping dollars in. Yes, yes.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:34

A dollar in for each one, for sure.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:36

So, talking about launch team development, Danny, what did you guys do when it came to developing your launch team? What worked? What would you do differently now, in hindsight?

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:47

Yeah. We use a very sophisticated model called Wing It. Have you heard of Wing It?

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:52

Totally. Yeah.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:54

So, all joking aside, we did a bit of that because there weren't as many materials that were out there.

And so for us, I shared it in the earlier episode that we kind of started with small groups and kind of did a small group multiplication strategy there. And then once we had about.

And the people that were in those small groups, they knew that eventually there was a church that was going to come out of this. I always shared that. But there were people in those small groups that didn't know that they were kind of becoming part of a church.

And once we had enough people, I would say it was about 30 adults. Then I started to kind of have these informational meetings, these larger group gatherings, say, hey, do you want to come and be part of this?

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:39

And.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:39

And we started meeting. I want to say that we met on Sunday nights, or maybe it was. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Sunday nights. As I look back on it now, we began to just.

Or I began to just teach through mostly mission and values type of things. And it wasn't a church service, but it did have certain elements to it. And there's some pros and cons. You ask what we would do different.

And I think that one of the biggest things during that launch team development phase is that you're managing momentum.

You want to gain momentum, but you don't want so much momentum that you are kind of forced to prematurely launch the church, but you don't want it to drag on for Otherwise people lose interest. This is never going to materialize into anything.

And so again, I don't feel as adequate to talk on launch stuff because honestly, we really did kind of just wing it.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:40

Were you okay because with having Christians and non Christians, were you focused on just non Christians? Were you just focused on Christians? Because I see that rustle happen a lot in that early stage.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:54

Well, when we had first started planting, the what was coming out of the church planting world was that you said you don't want any Christians like you just want non Christians and build it up out of that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:08

Hopefully win them to Christ, hopefully win.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:10

Them to Christ and then build them up out of that. So in some ways we kind of went down that road. And that's also, as I shared earlier, that's kind of naturally what happened for us.

But I would say, and as Christians came, I would kind of try to redirect them back to their church.

And I would do that differently now, especially since more research has come out that you do need some mature Christians on your launch team, that there's a certain element of health that will come of that.

So as I coach planters now, I think that there is a healthy way to take Christians from other churches with a kingdom perspective and to have them part of the launch team. That that's really, really important.

I do think though, that it is important to include non believers and new believers even on the launch team because you will learn so much. You will say, hey, we have this excellent outreach idea. And when you see them kind of raise their eyebrow and go, what in the world?

That doesn't make any sense. I would never come to that. Well, if you're trying to, as we talked about before, target audience.

If you're trying to reach, you know, non believers, then have the non believers inform what would draw them closer into a relationship with God or giving a chance to a church to kind of proclaim the gospel.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:26

You mentioned that there are some healthy ways to help people navigate transitioning from a healthy church or another church situation into the launch team. Give me one or two of those ways in which you go about that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:41

Yeah, I think first of all is just helping them to identify is it a healthy leave? Are they leaving out of mission or are they leaving out of some sort of issue that's going on?

Because if they're leaving out of an issue, more than likely it will follow them or it'll just remain unresolved. So if they're leaving a church because they don't like the pastor or they got in a Fight with some different people, that's an unhealthy reason.

But if they're saying, hey, you know what?

I feel called to this, whether it's you personally as the leader, the community, just something new and fresh to kind of have that discussion with them first. And then I always encourage them to speak to the leadership of their church.

Now, depending on the size of the church that they're coming from, maybe that is the lead pastor, and especially if the lead pastor or senior pastor of that church has had relationship with them, has poured into them, you know, to go to them. But if it's a larger church, maybe it's just the ministry teams that they're serving on to have those conversations.

And what I found is that people want to subconsciously have a better reason.

And so they'll subconsciously sometimes make stuff up and just be like, I'm leaving this church because it no longer is feeding me or is theologically accurate, where it's like, no, that's not what's going on. So maybe that might sound better, more justified to other people, but don't do that. Instead, go to the church, say, I love this church.

You guys have done such a good job of raising me up as a disciple. I feel called to be part of this church plan. Don't ask for permission unless you really are asking for permission. Don't say, can I leave this church?

If the pastor says no, you may not unless you're willing to follow that great advice.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:24

I found that routinely people leave churches for four main reasons. One is they don't feel respected or they feel like they can't respect the leadership anymore. One is number two would be a loss of prestige.

You know, maybe they had a title or position and that got taken away from them and now they're upset. Which brings us number three, which is an area of power. Maybe they lost some level of power or voice.

And then the last one is, it really comes down, is there's hurt and bitterness, and it becomes a forgiveness issue. And the reality is, all three of those things previous are forgiveness issues.

And I always challenge people, hey, I want to make sure that you're leaving for the right reason because you feel like God is calling you to this and you're excited about this new work. Make sure not any of these things get in the way because this is such a critical stage that we can't.

We don't have time and we don't have the ability to handle those issues at this time of the game.

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:25

Yeah, I think the other thing too, which happens Before a person leaves that other church, the more that you can have real relationship with pastors in the community. And that's not always easy because you're the one that wants to have a relationship and you're kind of the one seen as the threat.

But if you can, that's a helpful, helpful thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:46

Yeah. And there's ways to go around that.

I mean, I had one church in the area that I reached out to the pastor, wanted to try to get to know him, introduce myself, tell them what we were doing, how we were going to be even a little different than what they were doing, and wanted to create a bond there. And he didn't have anything to do with me. I couldn't get him to call me back and get any emails back.

And so I just decided, well, I have no idea what the conversation's going on, even behind the scenes here. And so I picked up a bunch of donuts and showed up and gave donuts to all of his staff and just said, hey, you're sly. Yeah, this is who I am.

This is what we're doing. Why don't you know, we love you guys. If there's anything we can do to serve you guys, we're here for you as well.

And so at least I could win over his staff if I couldn't win over him. And it went a long ways. It honestly did.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:38

Did you have people that did come from other churches that you did sense and that you sent back or times when you had conversation because you had built relationship with the other pastors that they said, hey, just a warning, this person's headed over your way?

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:56

Yeah, I would say yes on all those. I mentioned in a previous episode that when I did an information meeting, I actually had people apply.

I was looking for any Christian that wanted to be a part of our work. And word gets out, you're going to find people coming from all over the place.

I wanted people that I said had agenda and philosophical harmony with us, and agenda value harmony. And so I, in the questionnaire would question little things like how does somebody get to heaven? And I'd have them rank on a scale one to five.

You know, is Jesus the only way to heaven? And I wanted to see, understand where they were in their faith.

Then they fill out the bigger application from there, which we talk about giving service, you know, past history. They have to write out their testimony, talk about their evangelistic efforts. Have they ever led somebody to Christ?

And we get a pretty good snapshot by the time we got to that. And then we sit down and do an interview with them.

I required that from anybody that came from an existing church and identified themselves as a Christian. So I'm glad you're interested. Why don't you come be a part of a launch team service?

If you're still interested and wanting to do it, here's the next step. So it wasn't just, oh, great, it's a warm body, you want to be a part of this? Super.

If they were relatively new in their faith and they just were eager to be a part of something like this, or they were a truth seeker, they hadn't crossed the line of faith, but they were intrigued by it. Didn't make them do that. I definitely encourage you, if you're in a pioneering situation, be cautious of doing that kind of thing.

But it did help us protect that DNA and make sure that we had the right people to be able to move the ship forward at the right time.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:52

Yeah, you asked me of my launch team kind of development. What for you and how did you come up with your kind of launch team kind of development and how long?

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:06

We did ours at hyperspeed. So I went full time church planting in March. So March 1st really began. Hey, we're going to make this happen.

I had 12 people that I kind of worked with, some of that were on my team. I had discipled for years. And so we knew them really well.

Their first conversations like, we're going to be planning a new church, we would want to ask you, would you be a part of this? Those were easy decisions for us to make. So we got it down to 12. Then we began to meet. Word begins to spread.

At the same time, the group of churches that we were planting with, the Vision Arizona had a very unique way of planting. So we had to have the equivalent of three full time staff before we were allowed to launch the church.

And the idea is it was a launch large type of perspective, which in the Phoenix metro area was a good way to try to reach the Phoenix metro. And so I brought on the first staff member in June. So March we had 12, June 1st staff member, July 2nd, July 1st the next staff member joined us.

So now we had three. We raised support from outside, got them covered.

We had to have a minimum of 50 committed adults to the project before we could ever open the doors of the church. And so we were 12 in March, we were 50 by July 1st. We were at 75 adults by the end of July and we launched in August.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:46

Okay.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:47

So it really was warp speed for us, which it can be done. But it took a lot of meetings in between and during the week to make sure that people were in the right fit.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:59

So your launch team at August had 75 on the launch team. And then how many did you launch?

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:06

We launched with 360 people on our first Sunday.

Danny Parmelee: 00:16:09

Yeah, and then you had mentioned before that your goal was 50. Speak to that number a little bit.

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:15

Part of it is when you think about beginning actual church services, you've got to think through programming. From a programming standpoint, who do we need and where do we need them? You know, so think through children's ministry.

Well, what level of children's ministry do you want to run from day one? Are you just going to have nursery or are you going to have, you know, zero all the way to fifth grade?

If we're going to do zero to fifth grade, how many people do we need in the unique positions to actually make that work? So then we were able to kind of come up with a number. Second question was guest services.

You walked around the facility that we were going to start in, and we identified key positions, like, we need somebody at the front door. We want somebody here. We want somebody here, you know, and. And so, okay, now we have that number.

And, you know, a second grader is not going to work well in some of those positions. So we just knew, well, that needs to be an adult. Then we went from a worship standpoint, how many people do we expect to be on our worship team?

Well, then we have that number. Who's going to do the tech, the lighting, the sound?

Okay, well, that gives us another number who's going to take the offering, you know, and so you begin to think through all those elements, and you can come up with a number pretty quickly that's gonna be close to the 50 mark just to have the unique number of volunteers to be able to run the programs of a church at the level you may want to run. Yeah.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:46

And I think 40 to 50 is something that is usually the number that I do here. That's kind of that critical mass, too, and kind of gives it some of that legitimacy and, of course, filling the space.

So those of you that are listening out there and asking, how many do I need on my launch team? I do think that for 40 to 50 adults is really a really.

Lee Stephenson: 00:18:09

It's kind of a standard.

Danny Parmelee: 00:18:10

Kind of a standard number. And obviously, if you can get more than that, you know that that's going to be great and it's going to help you.

Lee Stephenson: 00:18:18

And the original 12 that we had, the way we used them was they were small group leaders and they were kind of team leads to get us going. So one of them led our setup and tear down team. Another one led the AV team, another one led the guest service team, Another was the children's team.

And so that really did help us early on having those 12 that were very well established.

Now, part of the dilemma, and I don't know what you guys saw, is I hear the statistics all the time, that when you build a launch team, expect that within the first year or two years, 50% of your launch team will be gone, that they won't be there anymore. You look around going, where in the world they all go. I looked at those numbers and said, we're gonna beat that.

You know, I'm like, we made our people apply. They had to do this. They had to go through the interview. They are in like they're giving. And I was like, you know, you don't know our team.

And I'll be honest, man, two years into it, absolutely true, 50% of them were gone.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:23

So I was the same as you had the same confidence. Two years in, I think we were like 80% gone. So why is that?

Lee Stephenson: 00:19:31

I mean, Danny, why do you think?

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:33

I think that the people that come to it at that stage come because they come for certain reasons. So part of that reason might be like, well, I am a part of something. I'm making all the decisions. I have a close relationship with the lead pastor.

And if the launch team is successful and the launch is successful, you have to change. And so I feel like at every point in the growth of our church, there was change.

And as you change, the people that came to it because they loved 100 person church, I know everybody there. Okay, well, now suddenly you become a 200 person church.

And the people that came in at 200, they love it because it's 200 and the dynamics that are there and other people come in because they like it at 500, it's like, well, it's scattered enough. There's enough. You don't know everybody. You don't know everybody. And then all of a sudden it changes again.

And so I think that's kind of what happens.

And that was a growth thing for me because I used to just judge people and be like, gosh, well, you just, you don't love Jesus as much as those that are continuing to kind of go through and just understand that maybe that's part of the way God and his kingdom works, that he's bringing people in at different phases. And, you know, as. And I Think we should probably do a whole episode on this.

But what I didn't learn, I learned it very late, was sending and releasing people.

Well, I released people with guilt and whether I showed it or not, bitterness in my heart and a sense of betrayal when, hey, I should have been really happy that God had brought them there for that season, for that time. And then God may have sent them out to do something else and to help someone else.

So I think I don't want to get into it because I know this episode where there's a couple other things that I think will be important to talk about, but that's something I learned way too late.

Lee Stephenson: 00:21:28

I think that's a great thought. And I wish I would have been a little more open handed in those early days too, because I absolutely agree.

I think there are certain people that God brings to you in a certain season and then he may have used that season that they're at your church to prepare them for what he has next for them, for them. And we have to challenge ourselves to, to continue to look at all of this from a kingdom perspective versus my kingdom perspective. Absolutely.

I look back and see the people that God brought to us in that early days on our launch team, helping us get launched. And they were critical in that first year in helping us get established. They did unbelievable things.

We would not have had the success if it wasn't for them. But there was also the next season going. They probably weren't the right fit.

Danny Parmelee: 00:22:17

Right.

Lee Stephenson: 00:22:18

And in God's grace, he moved them on to the next thing that he wanted to use them for. And if we can see that from a kingdom side of things, I think it takes a lot of the stress and the grief out of watching people walk out the door.

Danny Parmelee: 00:22:33

Absolutely. Launch team stuff. What did you do for your meetings? Did you guys meet weekly?

So once people said, yep, they signed up on the application type of thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:22:47

Yeah, we started from a small group standpoint kind of meeting as a small group, I would say every other week. So the first 12, that's where we were at. And then as things expanded, we began to change and shift, which I think would make.

We'll get into more details here in our next episode talking about what do we do in those pre launch services. But we started a small group and the idea was you're part of a small group but you have the freedom to invite people to come join the small group.

It was a basic Bible study. We dreamed, we prayed, we talked about the new church, we wrote ideas on the board. But I really wanted them to be grounded.

So what I actually did was I created a Bible 101 class for them and just walk them through every book of the Bible, helping them understand what each book was, what the theme of that book was, how it all encompasses each other and how it points to Christ. So I wanted to educate them beyond just where they were at that point in their life.

Danny Parmelee: 00:23:53

Cool.

Lee Stephenson: 00:23:55

What did you guys do in that early phase?

Danny Parmelee: 00:23:57

So I think for us, again, man, sorry, I just laughing at how this church ever got off the ground.

We did a few vision and value stuff and then I did a little bit of preaching, kind of, if you could call it that, just to kind of give them a little bit of a taste. And because it was one of our values to be rooted in God's word.

And so that we weren't always talking just about, okay, here's how we're going to run this program. This is how we're going to do our outreach type of thing. But it was, it was pretty organic and pretty relational.

Lots of food, lots of pizza, lots of nachos, just kind of gathering together and then, yeah, planning for the launch and kind of working backwards from there.

Lee Stephenson: 00:24:47

Right on, right on. Well, it's been fun talking about launch team development and thanks for tuning in to unfiltered real church planning discussions.

Next episode, we're going to take some time and actually talk about what do we do with in that pre launch side of things when it comes to services, in developing and moving that launch team forward in a way that really is accomplishing the mission that God has called us to accomplish. Until next time, keep it real, y'all.