Models of church planting

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:09

Hey everyone. Welcome to unfiltered real church planning discussions. Glad you're with us.

My name is Lee Stevenson and I have the privilege of overseeing church planting for Converge and around the nation. And here's my co host, Danny.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:23

Danny Parmelee and I work with church planters in Converge Mid America. And excited to be here today. Talking about church models.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:31

Church models. And what we're not talking about are little buildings that look like churches.

But we're talking about ways that people look at really wanting to establish themselves and begin the process of church planting.

And we'll hit upon a little bit of the language and lingo, talking about attractional versus missional versus incarnational, but more talking about individual church planters coming. How do they get going, how do they begin to create momentum?

And for instance, one of the first way, you know, one way in which church planters sometimes go about planting a church is what we call the pioneering method. Danny, why don't you explain what a pioneer method of church planting is?

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:16

Yeah, so pioneering is really starting from scratch.

So it really resembles a lot of a missionary maybe going into a new land or a new city, not having pre existing relationships and kind of going in and starting. Yeah, really starting from scratch. That's what we did. That was our experience.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:34

We moved to, didn't know anybody, didn't.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:36

Know anybody, and literally just went to a coffee shop, opened up my Bible and waited for anyone to have eye contact with me. And from there kind of strike up a conversation.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:46

Yeah, well, what do you think the gift set or the wiring of somebody to be a pioneer planter? Because I don't think everybody is wired in. Even planters are wired to do the pioneering thing. What do you think needs to be distinguishing marks?

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:02

So we do talk about, just in general for church planters to be entrepreneurial. But in that, of course you have that at a higher degree. But I would say probably the biggest thing for pioneering is networking in relationship.

So because with that you're really having to be able to establish relationships. I want to say out of thin air, but kind of.

So you're going and you're meeting city people, you're joining a sports team, you're volunteering at this, you're even networking with other churches and pastors. If anybody is willing to have a conversation with you, you'll have a conversation with them.

If you are uncomfortable or if that doesn't drive you or come natural, that when you're meeting someone that you want to meet who they know as well, then it's going to Be a lot. It's going to be difficult for you.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:49

For a pioneer, what do you see are advantages or disadvantages to the pioneering way of planting?

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:55

Well, certainly from the pioneering perspective, you are starting with a clean slate. So, again, just comparing it to some of the other models that we'll talk about.

If you have a number of people that are coming from another church, it can be a positive thing to have DNA or expectations that those people bring with, but it also can be a negative as well, too.

So with a pioneer, if you're going into a new area, especially if you're trying to maybe reach a specific group of people, and I know we'll talk about Target later. Being a pioneer, you literally have an absolute clean slate to do that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:32

Yeah. How do you. I see guys do this. I mean, all over the nation, they'll drop into a rural corridor, urban corridor, suburban corridor.

They feel like God has called me to this location or this community per se. How do you know you're winning as a pioneer? It can be such hard work that it can become, I would imagine, very discouraging very quickly for guys.

How do you find little wins that keep you motivated? And what do you think is a second question to this?

What do you think is an honest timeline for a church to get going when a planter is in a pioneering situation?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:22

Yeah. So I think that that's part of, honestly, God's grace. And it's funny because my wife and I, we talked about this.

It's when you can reflect back on it. And she only shared this later on. But so we moved in January and started with small groups.

And I remember when we had 10 men meeting in our living room, I thought revival broke out in Milwaukee, so that was a huge win. But I honestly did think it was. I was like, oh, my goodness.

I mean, it's crazy to look at how God brought about those relationships and brought about this small group. And what I was sharing about my wife is that I think even Easter. So this was like a year, maybe a year and a half into it. At our Easter service.

This is after launch. We had 30 people. Okay. And we had launched.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:20

Where were you meeting at that point?

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:21

We were meeting in a church, Old Presbyterian Church. It was either Saturday night or Sunday night. I can't remember if we had made the switch yet.

And my wife was certain that I was coming home that night to say, you know what? We gave it our best shot, but time to go look for another job. God guarded me from that because I still thought amazing things were happening.

And I thought, man, the world is probably talking about what is happening in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And so again, I really do think that part of it is that wiring where maybe you just really do have that confidence that God is working and God is at work.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:59

How many of those in the early days as you were building your launch team and even maybe when you actually launched, were Christians versus those that had come to faith because of relationship or of your engagement and starting the new church?

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:13

Yeah, so I would say we did actually have more non believers and that might be partly because of the age. So I was 25, 26 when we started. And so we were attracting college students and young professionals.

And so a lot of them were just looking for relationship. And because we were a pioneer, we didn't have a lot to offer in comparison that there might be in other churches or churches that are in the suburb.

I mean, we didn't, we didn't have established ministries. And so we probably, I wouldn't say maybe as high as 75 non believers to 25 believers, but it was still pretty high. It was over 50, 50%.

But that also means that it takes a lot longer to grow and to kind of establish kind of a discipleship, kind of kind of process.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:09

Give us just, we'll talk about this in another episode, but give us just one or two real quick thoughts on if you're a pioneering planter, what's one or two things you can do to make community connections that are like you found were very successful for you guys in those early days?

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:25

Yeah, to me it is serving in non Christian ways.

So whether that's finding the business district improvement place and say, oh, you're, you know, you're running the parade, fourth of July parade, what do you need me to do? Or if I could bring 10 people.

And so maybe it's not even being in the parade and it's picking up garbage or whatever because then you get invited to the table and you start to make relationships that way. Join a sports team. Don't join the church softball league, just join the sport.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:58

Regular city league.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:59

Regular city league. To be able to do things like that again, I think for pioneers, it's really building those relationships and those networks quickly.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:08

Fantastic. Second model to talk about is branching. Branching.

Church planting is kind of when you have a core group of people, maybe a small group of people from existing church, it's kind of hiving this group out saying, hey, we want you to go be seeds in this new church plant. It can be anywhere from 5 to 100. When you think about Branching that was kind of our model in some ways. We came out of an existing church.

We had 12 with us and we went through a rigorous process to get 12, but they were 12 people that were kind of all in some of the.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:53

Wait, can I stop you there? So when you said you had a rigorous process because did you tell some people? No.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:59

Yes.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:59

Okay.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:00

Yes.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:00

And tell me how that went and why. Because every church, planter, I mean, it's all about get as many people as you can.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:08

No. For us there were several factors that really were factored in, in helping us make this decision.

One was we were planning a church and very serious about reaching those that were far from Christ in our community. That was a non negotiable for me. I didn't want to have a church full of Christians that we stole from other churches.

To me, that was a failure if that's what was accomplished.

The second piece was I knew for us to be able to actually make that vision happen, it took an unusual group of people and we had to have a very specific DNA in the culture of the church that we were wanting to create. And so I wanted a. I was looking for what I would dub DNA carriers of that culture.

And so like our first information meetings, I mean, we had a couple hundred people show up interested in wanting to know more about this and how do you be a part of this? And I just told them right off the bat, like, this isn't for all of you and this is what it's going to take.

And I said if you're interested in being a part of this.

And I'll go in great detail when we talk about building a launch team later, but I'm going to have you pick up a packet and in the packet is an application and I'm going to actually ask you to fill out the application. And once you fill that in, turn that in and we'll set up an interview. And just the fact alone that there was an application like wiped out.

Two thirds of the people were gone, too much work, which means they're not.

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:42

Going to be able to set up chairs.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:43

Exactly. Which means they're not going to put in the work when it really matters. And, and then once the application and I asked very personal questions.

I asked about their practice of sharing their faith. Have they ever led anybody to Christ? I asked about their giving habits and very specific percentage of giving over the last couple years.

I asked questions about what they think the toll of this is going to be on their family. And I want to see if they live in reality and based on the answers.

I mean, we'd look at people and we'd sit down during the interview process and we'd get done and say, this isn't for you. And it wasn't that their hearts were wrong. Some of them were, if I'm honest, their hearts were in the wrong place. But some of them were great people.

This just wasn't for them. This was going to stretch them too much. They weren't mature enough in their faith to handle that.

And so we knew the Christians that were coming on our team to help establish this, they needed to have a certain DNA in order to help make this happen. And we just knew not everybody would have that. In my honest opinion, 12 was good enough for Jesus. So give me 12 and let's see what can happen.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:56

Wait, are you Jesus in that?

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:58

I'm not Jesus in that. So I'm relying on Jesus.

But at the same time, you know, we were reaching people and we had really strong conversations with those 12 saying, your expectations, you're bringing new people in that don't know Christ to our meetings. And it was fun doing baptisms before we actually launched the church because people were coming to know who Christ is during that period.

But I would say if you're in a branching model, guard the culture you're wanting to create. Like, don't just take whoever wants to come.

If you get just whoever wants to come, I promise you, you're getting people that are coming for the wrong reasons. They're mad at the existing church. They don't trust the leadership.

And the reality is, if they don't deal with those things first, they're going to show up in your church and you're going to have battles that you're going to be fighting that you had no expectation of fighting that quickly in the life of your church.

I mean, I laugh still that within the first two weeks of us actually opening the doors of our church, how people would walk in questioning like, well, where's women's ministry? Where's men's ministry? Where's youth ministry? I'm like, we're a week old. We have what you see is what you get.

So you do have to guard those expectations and find those people that get that are willing to work the extra grit factor to make this happen.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:25

Yeah. What would you say? You asked me about gifts that are needed for that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:29

What.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:29

What's some of the things and maybe even in comparison to pioneering.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:33

Yeah, I would agree with the entrepreneur thing. I think if you're a church planner, you got to be an entrepreneur. So that's just a given.

I would say you need a good reputation or a level of credibility with the parenting church or the church that's hiving you. And that will help the transition so much better. Especially if you.

Like we talked about earlier episode, if you take the time to create clear expectations on how that transition is going to flow out, it will just really, really help in that process. I think you have to.

I think there has to be a level of wisdom in how you facilitate people because they may be used to a certain type of leader and watching a leadership style operate in the church that they were coming from. And you have to help them learn that that's not necessarily the way it's going to be now. And that's not saying that the other one is bad.

It's just saying I'm different. I'm not the same type of leader, I'm not the same person. So just by default this is going to be different than what you experienced there.

And so you have to help facilitate them towards understanding. Being comfortable with that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:43

Yeah, great.

Talking about adopting, this is probably used to be, I think probably a lot more common and I know is a lot less now and that adopting is where there's already a pre existing core group and a church planner kind of comes into it. I don't know if you want to speak to any examples that you have or why you think it's less of an embraced model nowadays.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:07

I know of examples because I got asked to be a part of a couple of them and we actually turned them down. Where there was a small group of people, I think of two instances.

One was in Colorado, one was in California and they were wanting to start a church, but they knew none of them were the leader to do it. And so they were looking for a leader to come in and be that planter, that pastor.

They had already pooled some funds and they were going to try to help do whatever they could to support. There are several challenges to that.

One is sometimes because you haven't built a relationship there over time and been stretched together, that expectations aren't the same and certain things that they expected the church to be aren't necessarily what you wanted to see happen as a leader. And so it can become very quickly an us versus them type of perspective, which really makes it difficult to get the church up and operating.

It doesn't mean that's going to happen every single time. The other challenge is sometimes the planter isn't seen as being the true leader because there were People there before the planter got there.

And so they look at the planters more as a chaplain role than actually a servant leader who's guiding the ship towards the direction it needs to be. They just want somebody there to teach, bury, marry type of perspective. And I don't know any planter that plants with that being their goal.

Yeah, sign me up for that. That's all I want to do.

I think they really want the freedom to lead and to affect change in the group of people, but in the community that they're landing in. And that's a hard thing to navigate as well.

Danny Parmelee: 00:16:52

Parenting model actually we've seen this quite a bit more and especially as movements and even within Converge and district movements.

So instead of just having a single church, plant another church, that there's a cooperative of churches kind of coming together, pooling their resources together. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages or challenges with that?

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:18

Boy, I think there's a lot of advantages to this because you get the best of all of the churches involved. And we were in a situation like that when we planted in Arizona that there was a group of like minded churches there called Vision Arizona.

And they were churches that said, we're in this together. We want to plant aggressive churches that are going to reach people for Christ in and around the entire Phoenix metro area.

And they were, they committed themselves to financially giving and pulling their finances towards church plants.

They pooled their resources when it came to coaching opportunity and it was great because yes, I had an assigned coach, but my coach may not be the expert in this, you know, for instance, marketing, but there'll be somebody, one of the pastors of one of those churches on the team that's committed to this work that probably is. And we're able to say, you know, I'm not the best person to have that conversation, but so and so is.

And let's go have a conversation with him and he can talk to us a little bit about marketing. So you have a greater shared expertise in that kind of effort, let alone resources from finances to people.

I mean, some of those churches stood us up in front of the church on Sunday morning and said, hey, I want to introduce to you one of our new planters. They're going to be planting in this area. I'm going to ask that you guys pray for them.

If you know anybody in that area or that community that needs to go to church, send them this way and they'd love to be able to talk to them about that. Man, that's just huge to know you have that kind of support behind you as you're preparing to launch this. What have you seen?

Because I know Wisconsin operated very similarly for a long time.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:04

Yeah, we did. In that district in Wisconsin, they were called lead teams.

So I think that one of the things that was learned over time, one of the challenges with it is that if there wasn't an identified, at least mother church, so to speak, then it was kind of. There were times where church planners did.

Lee Stephenson: 00:19:21

Kind of get lost.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:22

They got lost because it's like leading by committee.

Lee Stephenson: 00:19:24

Like nothing worse than a lost church planner.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:27

Yeah, it's like, okay, well, who's really in charge? Who's. Who's really holding this person accountable, who really can speak and.

Or who really does need to step up to the plate when they really are in some sort of challenging scenario.

So obviously there's workarounds for that where you can literally still plant collaboratively as a group of churches, but then there's still an identified one church. But yeah, I mean, the other thing is within teams, within lead teams.

If you can find churches that almost even take on that role and they're kind of knowing, hey, that's the one that really is going to put the big muscle behind it, and then others will kind of come alongside, like you said it a lot of times, brings the best of all worlds together.

Lee Stephenson: 00:20:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you brought up the idea, though. It's easy for them to get lost sometimes in that perspective.

Next would be what I would say the new phraseology around would be missional community starts.

Another phrase I've seen used is propagating the idea that you have small groups, cell groups, house churches, whatever that gather, and eventually it leads into a broader church movement. What's your experience with that? What have you seen? Advantages, disadvantages to that model?

Danny Parmelee: 00:20:45

Yeah. So before the term missional community came out, that's a little bit how Epico started.

And I wish I could say that it was like this grandiose model plan that we had, but we just, as I said, we started with a men's small group in our living room.

And because many of those men had girlfriends or fiances or a newly married wife, we said, well, we have to start a women's small group so they can have something. So we actually had four small groups going before we ever had any launch team type of development.

Now, the huge advantage for that is that once we launched the church, small groups had always been part of the DNA and small group multiplication. So not saying that that's like the only Model to.

But man, that was really, really helpful because it wasn't like, oh, now we're adding on this ministry of small groups. It was really even before the church was ever launched, that small group multiplication was really a part of it. So I think that.

So there's some major advantages to it.

You know, one of the things I would say even as we discuss models and we talk about, you know, attractional versus missional, is that I think there's a lot of false dichotomies. And I see a lot of guys that are into missional and they're very anti attractional. They might even be more anti attractional than they are missional.

They're about what they're against. And then I see the same thing with attractional who are anti kind of missional. And I think that this.

We are losing a lot when we go down those paths because I think that there's a lot to learn if I think that Christ is attractional. I think that having great worship and having good facilities can all be to the glory of God.

And if you're discipling people and moving them along, praise God. Now, are there examples of attractional where it's attracting people but not discipling them? Of course. And I have issues with that.

And then the same thing is attraction. Guys can look at mission and say, well, you're not legitimate because you're not organized to say. And you might not have certain physical buildings.

You might not have the same structures. And again, I just think that that's really unnecessary. And there's so much, I think, to learn from both of those.

It's really important to not get sucked into the anti because I hear it from church planters and all they're talking about is what they're against.

Lee Stephenson: 00:23:03

Yeah. And I've seen even on the missional side where, hey, everybody gathers for the right reason, but they're not reaching anybody.

And so I love how your perspective there is. It can easily be a both.

And in the way that you approach these things, I think anytime you have a group of people that are committed to the word, committed to prayer, committed to the reach in the community, God's going to be honored. And it can take multiple facets in the way that that looks.

And I know guys that are doing the missional community or propagating model with the idea we may never actually gather on a Sunday morning, I'm fine with that. If you show me how people are being discipled and people are winning and multiplication is taking place. Absolutely.

Same thing on the attractional side of things. Don't just gather people to gather people. What are you doing with them? You know, you got to be discipling.

That's the call that Jesus has for us to do. And I want to see how multiplication is taking place at that level as well. Jesus was both missional and he was attractional at the same time. Time.

I do think if only missional community is the style in which you're going to go and run your church. It's good to be an entrepreneur.

You probably don't have to have as strong of upfront gifts and you can be more of a trainer or a coach type of personality and do fine in that perspective because it's more about the one on one relationship than mass motivating a major crowd.

Danny Parmelee: 00:24:40

Right? Yeah. One of the things with missional is that I think that some people think that it takes less leadership gifts.

I might argue that it takes more leadership gifts because to try to keep track of organic missional growth I think would be really difficult. But I agree that strategically trying to make it happen. Yeah, strategically trying to. Trying to do that.

But I agree it's going to be a lot less of the woo or the charismatic that people gather communication skills from up front.

Lee Stephenson: 00:25:10

Yeah, absolutely. And ultimately, I mean, I hope and my desire is that you mix all these things together.

You can create a catalytic movement of churches multiplying in churches. I mean, that's really our heart and that's our desire.

I know on the personal front, but also from a corporate standpoint with Converge is we want to see churches, planting churches that plant churches. And we know that's what it's going to take. And it's going to take a large commitment of planters.

Like, to me, you don't succeed as a church plant when you just get your church up and going. The ultimate goal is once you get yours going, now you have the ability to seed more church plants.

And it's going to take an army of churches committed to doing that to reach those that are far from Christ.

Danny Parmelee: 00:26:00

Yeah. And I think with models as a general thing, that models are really important in the planning phase of stuff that you're just laying out.

How do we reach people for Christ?

And once they reach for Christ, how do we raise them up as disciples and just understand you're married to Christ, not to the model, because things will look good on paper and you can have all your drawings with your circles and your arrows and your creative words and all of this. But you know, and I think again, like our planters, they have to do that. We make them work through that, make them work through a model.

But it's going to be different for each city, each location. Even as a church, maybe they even go multi site. It may even look different at each of your locations.

So that's what we try to push our planters towards. Don't just look and say, oh, I really like how Andy Stanley did his. Or I really like, you know, Jeff Vanderstilt and how he did.

God has to speak to you in your community, in your context to make sure that it works there.

Lee Stephenson: 00:26:56

Absolutely. And you gotta, I mean, live flexibly.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times we came up with an idea, this is the model we're gonna run, and then three months later, you know, we're throwing it out the window because they're going, yeah, that didn't work. Or there's a better way to do that now. I think the biggest driver needs to be Jesus at the center.

Make sure that you're committed to making disciples and live with a level of flexibility on how that's going to accomplish. Because it may look totally different two years from now than what it is right now.

Danny Parmelee: 00:27:24

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us at Unfiltered Real Church planting discussions. And we look forward to having you back for our next episode.

Lee Stephenson: 00:27:35

Yeah. Next episode. As we talk about how do we target those that we want to reach in the community that God has called us to?

Danny Parmelee: 00:27:43

Or should we even.

Lee Stephenson: 00:27:44

Or should we target. So great, Great conversation. Glad you're with us. Till next time, keep it real.