How to create momentum before you launch

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:09

Hey, welcome to unfiltered real church planting discussions. I'm Lee Stevenson and this is my co host, Danny.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:17

Danny Parmalee from Converge Mid America work with church planters in that region.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:21

And we're glad that you're with us.

Today's episode we're going to be talking about what do you do in that launch period when it comes to actually putting together pre launch services, there are a whole lot of different ways in which planters over the years have kind of navigated this territory. We want to talk about from perspective.

How do you best utilize, engage and create momentum in those early days before you actually launch and go to your grand opening of your church? Danny, why don't you get us started in talking a little bit about what are some of the different methods that exist out there?

I mean there's all kinds of. But if we focus in on top three or so, what would you say?

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:01

Yeah, yeah. So I think three different ones. So the first one is just. You just launch. So you basically say, hey, today's the start of the service.

I've heard of church planters. Literally just, hey, we're gonna start a church. We're gonna start a church. So show up and next Sunday at this place. Absolutely.

And for some of them it has, by God's grace worked, but for plenty of them, that wasn't the best way to do it.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:26

Why do you think that's not a good way to do it?

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:28

I mean, yeah, there's no prep. There probably hasn't been discussion of even describe as a win what it's supposed to look like.

You haven't, you probably haven't involved a lot of people, to be honest.

And so then it's just you getting up there preaching and you know, maybe you hired a worship team or you knew a worship team to kind of start it, but then you've got nothing in place or you know somebody that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:50

Says that they know how to sing, but they really know how to sing.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:52

Exactly.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:53

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think it, it can feel so loosey goosey and just kind of pieced together that nothing fits. There's no flow, there's no strategy.

It feels more thrown together than really planned and like you're fulfilling a call.

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:13

Yep. The other one is maybe considered kind of like a soft launch before you launch.

So if you have your date set as you know, February 15th and starting Sundays and January 1st, you would meet, but it's closed.

So just your launch team, it's not open to the public and it's almost like dress rehearsal but you're going through things, and obviously it's a little bit more laid back. It's a little bit less presentation elements to it.

But obviously, as you get closer those weeks before, maybe you're even running through the same songs that you're going to do. Everyone's kind of preparing where they're gonna stand, what they're gonna do. So it's almost like a dress rehearsal.

And then you have, you know, the grand opening or the launch on that day. And then finally, the other one that's used quite often is preview services.

So this is kind of like four months before you launch that you do a public preview service. Even many planters will send out mailers and say, hey, if you want to get a taste of. Of what this is all gonna be about, come to this service.

And then you do that for, you know, once a month, for four months, and then you have your grand opening.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:26

Yeah, I would say we did kind of a smattering of multiple avenues of some of these. I would encourage church planters in the launch phase if at all possible. Don't go Sunday mornings until you actually go to your grand opening.

And the reason for that alone is the moment you go Sunday mornings, people just assume we've made it. You know, like, now we're at church, we made it, we're on Sundays, and now we're operational.

And they just think that this is the new normal, keeping it off Sunday mornings. It gives you leverage to be able to talk to them. We're not a church yet.

We're working towards establishing this church, and it keeps their feet to the fire a little bit more to be inviting and working towards the launch of that church. The second piece of it, it gives you time to prepare. It gives you the opportunity to make sure all the things are aligned.

But it also allows you to send your people out to other churches, just get ideas, and to feel so that when you do launch the church, you're putting your best foot forward for that, because you only get one grand opening, and you want to make sure that that's best. When we started, we started with 12 people. It was kind of a small group, ish meeting.

I did some Bible 101 stuff with them, and we met every other week or so for that period of time. As we began to grow, we had 30 people, maybe 25 people, was getting a little too big to be able to meet in a home.

We began to split it into, like, two small groups. But then we went Sunday evenings, meeting at one of our local churches that Was really blessed us in allowing to use space for free.

And so we started on Sunday evenings. And that Sunday evening, the way that we kind of programmed the evening was we asked people to set aside two hours of their night.

The first hour, I would say first 45 minutes was really more of a preview service style. Now, we didn't market was all word of mouth, but we want to give people a snapshot of what a service may feel like when they came.

And so we had greeters. I did kind of a short sermonette. It wasn't a full sermon. And I preached on the values and the culture of our church.

So I was trying to help reinforce into our launch team who we are and why we are, the way that we're and where we're going. We did kind of acoustical worship, just a couple songs. We took an offering.

I tell guys every time you get together, take an offering, even in those launch phase. And then we kind of have this break. And I just kind of bridged the gap.

Danny, where I'd say, you know, we're going to segue into our business side of moving towards getting this church open. If you're new with us, we're so glad you're here in the next 15 minutes.

If you have a question, I'd be glad to sit down and talk with you a little bit about this, but I invite you to stay.

We're going to split it up into specific teams and each team is going to talk about a specific area of ministry that they want to focus in and help us get that up and running. And I just walk them around the room and say, hey, children's ministry is going to be over here. Our worship is over here.

Our AV production is going to be over here. You know, guest services going to be here. And if one of those is intriguing to you, why don't you sit at the table?

And then I had team leads coached and pinpoint how to understand if somebody new sat at their table, how to engage them. And then once that momentum picked up, we went everywhere week. So we met every Sunday night.

And then we began to assign the teams going Sunday morning.

Children's ministry team, I want you to go to this church and see how they do children's ministry or go to this church plant and see how they do portable church ministry for their children's ministry. The setup and tear down team, I want you to go set up with this church this weekend and I want you to take notes.

What's working, how could they improve on what they're doing? How can we. What should we take from what they're doing and apply. Apply to our circumstances?

Part of the hard conversations, too was I was unapologetic in those meetings of telling guys, hey, if you're not reaching into the community, if you're not inviting somebody to come and be a part of this new church, don't come back. Like, this is why we exist. We exist to reach people who are far from Christ.

And I wanted to create the expectation like that is expected of each and every person in the room right now.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:56

That's great. Yeah, we did. For ours, we did a bit more of the soft launch where we had moved into. Some of the things were similar.

One of the things that we didn't do with the initial launch of our church, but that we did with our sites that I think is really important is that you do break up into the teams. Because that way, even from the beginning, you're starting to see leadership multiplication.

And so if you as church planners are thinking about developing your launches, as you have some of those key leaders and put them over different areas, that way they can be released and they can kind of even start building community and relationship with the teams that are going to be underneath them, I think that's really, really great. And for us, we were Sunday nights because that's. Or we were actually Saturday nights because that's how we started.

That's the only time that we could use that facility. So in your situation, that was good. But for those that will be like in schools or that only.

Or theater or theater where they have that lease, that's only in that time, that's where that's a little bit more difficult.

But what from a principal perspective is that the moment that it feels too much like church, you can begin to all of a sudden lose that momentum because, like, oh, we. Yep, this is it. We made it.

And my joke in coaching some church planners, I'd say in your launch team meetings, if there is a guitar that shows up, I'm going to break that thing over your back because it's going to, you know, all of a sudden that's now the worship service. Now that's just kind of a joke.

But it helped them to remember if it's too much like a worship service, then all of a sudden it seems like, yep, we're done. We've already launched. Where you have a very clear date. No, this is our public launch date. That's what we are going to market.

That's what we're going to invite all of our friends to. And if we're inviting anybody kind of to these pre services, they know that we're still kind of in the rehearsal, figuring it out type of thing.

And we don't post it on social media yet. The only dates that we're posting are the ones that are for the actual launch for the preview services. This is one where I'm just. I don't get it.

So I'd love for you to speak to it or how, because I know it has worked, but for me, it always just seems so weird to have something for the public that then says, come back a month later. So I'm personally not a fan of it, but again, guys have used it and it's worked really, really great. So I don't know if you have some.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:25

Yeah, I think the preview services probably work best in more of a suburban environment than any other environment. I don't think they work great in an urban corridor. I don't think they work great very well in a rural situation.

And partly because the rural, the urban, it takes so much work to get established that I encourage guys work on that side of things versus trying to just get services up and running and build the relationships that are necessary because they're going to be heavily relationally driven churches, especially in those early days. But the whole preview side of things, I think comes from a standpoint of, hey, we want to give the community a sense of who we are.

But they're very upfront and honest and we're not there yet. We are practicing. We're trying to figure this helps them see some holes before they get there. I'm personally not a huge fan of it.

That's why I kind of. We did a. A slight variation of that where we went. We didn't market anything. It was all word of mouth.

I think it's important those early days, if you do market it, you market it so your friends invite their friends. It's not a big show, hey, come see what we have, type of marketing piece.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:46

The other thing that I love that you said, and I think that this is just so critical is sending people out to other churches because I think it actually communicates to the launch team a couple things. One is it says, we don't have it all figured out. And I think that that is.

It's a posture of humility for the launch team for you to say, hey, I don't have all the answers. Let's go to these other churches and learn from them. So we're going to be in a posture of learning.

The other thing is, I Think it makes them from the get go, learn kind of observation and evaluation. When you're going into an environment that you're unaware.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:24

Bingo.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:25

And that is just so huge because if you've been in a church and maybe you grew up in the church, you kind of, you know where things are, you're used to the signage and all of a sudden you're going into a new environment and you're already a Christian, so you already feel somewhat comfortable. But even that, wait, where are the bathrooms? When do I sit? When do I stand?

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:41

Where do I take my kids?

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:42

Yeah, where do I take my kids? How does this offering thing, you know, how do they do theirs? With buckets, where am I supposed to pass it? And all those different things.

So I think that that's if you're doing a launch team strategy, if there's any way, and even if you're meeting and the only time you can rent your space is Sunday mornings and maybe you go to every other week and it's, hey, we meet together this week, the next Sunday we're going to go out, we're going to disperse and then hopefully it also is your opportunity to build relationships with other churches that are in the community or the nearby community, say, hey, we want to serve you, we want to make observations. And if they see that you're in a posture of learning and collaboration, it can be a huge win overall.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:25

And I would say as a planter, this is an opportunity.

You can serve your team as well because you figure out the churches that they should connect to, call, talk with the team leads, talk with lead pastor, introduce yourself, say, hey, I just hear reputation wise, you guys are doing an extraordinary job at this.

I'd love to send some people from our team as we're preparing and trying to figure some of this out to come and just serve alongside of your team members so that they can by osmosis kind of pick up what you guys are doing. So naturally at this point and what we found was all the pastors loved inviting us and welcoming us to come and be a part of that.

But it gave us new relationships in the community, established us and a lot of the other pastors and churches that hey, this is legit.

And they became excited about what we were doing, became not necessarily financial supporters, but prayer supporters and just encouraging to the work that we were getting ready to open up there.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:24

Yeah. What would you say? Do you have any absolute no nos during launch team kind of phase?

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:33

I would say stay away from Sunday mornings if at all possible until it's Absolutely. You're ready to launch the team church. That to me going Sunday mornings too early is a no, no, I'd say grand opening too early.

So you push so quickly and trust me, Planter, you are going to be so pressured to get to Sunday morning. Everybody on your launch team is like we should just go Sundays. And part of it it's easier for them and they just think then we've arrived.

And so you're going to have to fight that as much as you possibly can in those early phases. Avoid the core team language, stay launch team and keep the time.

Remind yourself like this is such a critical time to build the culture of your church.

This is the foundation to the church and where you're going to be going over the next couple years and the mistakes that you make in this launch team phase and even within the first six months of after you launch the church, it will take you six years to unravel those mistakes. And so be very careful to try to minimize the mistakes that you make. How about you, Danny?

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:46

Yeah, I think I shared a little bit. I'm somewhat the same way of just not doing an accidental premature launch type of thing.

I think obviously having a couple weeks of kind of rehearsal in the space with the timing of everything can be really, really important. But that's when you've already established, this is when the launch is type of thing. So I don't know if I have any other absolute.

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:12

Don't take people just because you need people.

Danny Parmelee: 00:16:13

Yeah, don't take people just. Or if you do that, you tell them to show up on launch Sunday and that's it. And don't give them positions of leadership.

And as we've already discussed a number of times that you do, you set this is launch team and then after we launch we will renegotiate what it means to be and we will assign people different.

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:34

Yeah, and I think. Let me talk about this side of things for a minute too.

In the launch team development and as you're developing pre launch services, you're going to run across all kinds of people and either other churches that want to be supportive, they don't know how. How do you engage people that you go, you're not a right fit to be on a launch team but they could still be an asset to the church.

And I'm thinking like short term missions type of ideas.

What ideas did you guys implement or what ideas have you seen Danny, on how to engage those type of opportunities in the prelaunch and you know, maybe on a grand opening type of Sunday.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:20

Yeah. So I think that finding those different roles where maybe they can't, can't mess it up, which is hard.

And it's different on each team because some people like, well, we'll just put them in the parking lot because they can't actually, maybe not parking lot is the first impression.

So if you have someone who, you know, they just have that look on their face where they look like they're angry and maybe whatever, you know, maybe they are constant frowner. The constant frowner. It's like maybe parking isn't, isn't the best role. So maybe that's more of the setup team or whatever.

But again, because you're looking at two things.

You're looking at both what's going to be best for the church, but also from their perspective, what might be those discipleship steps for them that actually get them on a team, get them in community.

And again, each launch team is going to be a little bit different, but from a principal perspective, looking at those different things, trying to find a place for them. And again, some people, they're going to be okay. And you just need to say, hey, I really do. I want you to just show up and to take, take a seat.

Because as much as we would say hey, it's not about just, you know, getting warm bodies in the seats sometimes for launch that can be helpful and that maybe there is a season where there's some people where they literally are.

Lee Stephenson: 00:18:32

Because they help you provide critical mass.

Danny Parmelee: 00:18:34

Critical mass. And they're there.

But yeah, don't just try to, okay, find a leadership position for every single person that comes and says, hey, I want to be, I want to be part of this.

Lee Stephenson: 00:18:44

What kind of facilities would you encourage a planter to look at to host their pre launch meetings?

Danny Parmelee: 00:18:53

Yeah, so I do think that this is where using other churches, if you can, is great. And don't think that you need the sanctuary.

As a matter of fact, using the youth room, using the basement, using the gritty whatever, it's actually better. It's more helpful and it's an easier ask.

Don't ask, hey, can I use your sanctuary that you're going to have to send in your sound guy to turn on the lights and yada, yada, yada. It's like you can take, if it can hold 50 to 75 people, it'll create some great memories.

And it's uncomfortable enough that people, well, maybe we should just stay here type of thing. So I think that that's great. Schools are harder unless you're especially pre launch Phase in the pre launch. It's probably hard and costly.

Yeah, and costly to be able to do that. So I don't know. Do you have other ideas?

Lee Stephenson: 00:19:45

I mean again, if you can find a local church that believes in the mission and it has a kingdom perspective of it, they'll probably allow you some portion of the facility free or a very minimum charge. I know we did talk to one church that was literally point zero across the street from where we were going to launch our church.

And they, they were going to allow us, but their rent was so high that they weren't allowing us, if that makes sense, especially for that early on. So I would encourage, don't spend a whole lot of money in the pre launch side of things if at all possible. In the community.

We were, There were several options. We utilized at different times a local karate studio and they allowed us to come in and do services there.

The only key was everybody had to take their shoes off before they could walk onto the mat. But I mean, we dedicated children in a karate dojo.

We met in the fire department, actually had a community room and they would allow nonprofits to use the community room free of charge. You just had to make sure you signed up and reserved the space far enough in advance.

Sometimes libraries, libraries have space like that that you can utilize. Some of the local restaurants had rooms that were large enough that we could gather in and do church type of meetings that were within our vicinity.

I mean again, homes are always a great point, but sometimes you get to a point where you may actually outgrow the home and it becomes stressful for the homeowner if you have 30 kids running around and no adult supervision as well. So you want to be cognizant of some of those natural pieces as you're kind of beginning to roll that parks.

We did several events where we just told everybody, hey, bring your family, bring lawn chairs, we'll meet in the park. And the nice thing is we'd throw a banner up and have some information about what we were doing. And it was natural publicity right there.

And it's free of charge as well that hey, this is coming, that's great, but be creative.

I think is my biggest thing is when it comes to figuring out the facility, figuring out how to do that, There are a lot of different ways that you can do this.

Use common sense when it comes to, you know, how you push the team, don't put over push them, but you do want to push them out of their comfort zone to engage the community, engage their neighbors. You know, Help get the word out.

Some of our best launch team members were connected because somebody knew somebody and they just shared the fact, hey, kind of new church you may be interested in. And they ended up being a gold mine for us in those early days of the church.

Danny Parmelee: 00:22:30

I think another thing with prelaunch that's important is that you do utilize your team members. So if you're looking for facility, invite them into that process. You don't need to be the one that does all of that.

So it's like, hey, we're in the park today, but next month if we could have somewhere else. Does anybody know of anyone? And it kind of helps to kind of build that where they're. Where they're building some ownership into it.

Lee Stephenson: 00:22:54

And this is the phase where you get to figure it all out.

You're trying people out in different positions, you're putting your audio visual guys together and you're making sure that they have chemistry and they could actually work together before the church operates.

It gives you the time to figure out the financial things and making sure that your record keeping and how things get deposited and all that are well taken care of before you have the masses show up at a grand opening and then move into church mode.

Danny Parmelee: 00:23:25

Yeah, that's great.

Well, I think for me, even just reflecting back, having given this a ton of thought since we launched, one of the biggest takeaways is definitely sending out your team to other churches. I just think that is just such a key and critical thing and can be so important.

And then the other thing is not doing a premature launch where all of a sudden you're just like, oh, we're going to start and there's no grand opening.

Lee Stephenson: 00:23:53

One of these phases with this that I want to address before we finish out the episode is what do you do with people that they're attending a church and they start coming on Sunday nights to your church and they're trying to understand, like, where should I go? Can I do both right now? But then they also ask the question, where do I give? You know, how have you approached those?

Danny Parmelee: 00:24:17

Give all the money to the church plan, man. I would say each situation is probably a little bit different and probably needs to be navigated.

Especially it's like if they have a relationship with the church or if you do and they're coming out of the sending church, then you're going to have to figure out maybe those were some of those conversations before of what does it look like to honorably have people transition from one church to another. There is something about launch Team members being able to go to church together. So I know some planters where there was a mother church.

And so they literally all kind of went to the same church. And if someone kind of wasn't a part, maybe they would go with them. Maybe they went.

I think it looks so many different ways, but it will be something that does need to be navigated.

Lee Stephenson: 00:25:05

Yeah. And I found for us, it really didn't become a topic of conversation much if there were no kids involved or young kids involved.

I found where it was most challenging for families was when they had a teenager and we had nothing other than, hey, join a service team for a teenager that really was focused on connecting to their needs. And I just coach families. I said, why don't you keep them plugged in in that youth group, whatever that may look like for your family.

If you need to go there on Sundays to make sure that they're going, that's fine. If it's on Wednesday nights and you want to be here on Sunday nights and then you go with the teams out on Sunday morning, that's fine.

Just figure out what best works for your scenario and your family. And so I gave them a lot of permission there. I encourage them.

I said, if you really feel like God is calling you to be a part of this, then you need to be here and be a part of this. And I would begin to allocate your giving here.

But have a conversation with a key leader or the pastor of your church saying, hey, we feel like God is calling us to this. You'll see us around. Because right now our kid is well connected to the youth group or something of that sort.

Danny Parmelee: 00:26:15

Yeah, absolutely. All joking aside, I think the important thing is not telling people what to do.

So don't make rules and say, hey, well, if you're a part of this church plant, you'll no longer go to those other churches. And our launch team meetings is what counts as your church or you must give all of your giving.

I think you can challenge people, invite them, but essentially let them make those decisions between them and God. And in conversation with you and in conversation with the church that they're at. And each one's a little bit different.

Lee Stephenson: 00:26:46

Great, great.

Well, great conversation on just how do you navigate those prelaunch services and conversations that are critical to have with your team in those days leading up to your grand opening. Thanks for being with us. This is unfiltered real church planning discussions. I'm Lee. This is my co host, Danny.

We're glad to be with you and tune in next time as we take some time to talk about the church website and what makes and breaks a good site. Thanks again. Until next time, keep it real.