Money wasters

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:00

Foreign. Welcome to the Unfiltered Podcast. I'm Lee Stevenson and my co host here.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:12

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

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:15

Glad to be with you guys. We are going to be talking a little bit on this episode.

It's going to be kind of a fun conversation as we look out in the landscape and even think through our own personal experiences. A lot of money gets wasted in the church planning efforts, especially that pre launch phase up to the year one.

And we're just going to kind of go through some of our list of things of where we've seen money wasted when it comes to developing a church plant.

So when you think of it for you, what's like your biggest pet peeve, Danny, like you know, that you see repeatedly done but it's a major mistake when it comes to investment and finances.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:54

Yeah.

Well, let me start out by saying this is unfiltered and yet at the same time kind of a disclaimer that obviously context, you know, for each of these is going to be different for each, you know, each area. So maybe we'll ruffle some feathers as people are listening, going, well, I bought this but this is why I needed to. But maybe that's okay.

Maybe it's okay to ruffle some feathers as we do this. But I think one of the biggest things is kind of the haphazard marketing. And I'm, what do you mean by half hazard marketing?

Yeah, I'm a big advocate of using dollars to help create awareness and to present opportunities for people to know whether that's, you know, mailers and websites and you know, all of that stuff. So I am for marketing but when you, when you don't think it through or you're like, oh, well, I'm going to do a mailer.

So I'm going to send out a thousand mailers which might even sound like a lot. But there's, it's, it's not, it's actually not enough to do anything and you'd be better off using that money for something completely different.

And the same thing with radio. I see a lot of guys like, oh well, I'm going to do radio.

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:54

Because by this ad campaign on the.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:55

Local it's going to reach 250,000 people. Well, yeah, that's great.

But you're, you know, it reaches 250,000 people because it's like a hundred mile radius and they're people that will never come to your church.

So it's just not thought out of how you're who you're actually trying to reach and how you're going to, you know, make, make them aware of what, what you're doing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:17

Oh, I, I think that's, that's great. So if you were like, let's talk about the mailer. Yep.

If you were going to invest in a mailer, what number is kind of the classic number to shoot for when it comes to how many homes this should land at and what, what would be an honest figure in order for that to actually happen?

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:37

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously there's a couple different schools of thought. Some will say that you really need to do, you know, three different mailers instead of just doing, you know, one big one.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:46

Why? Why?

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:47

What's the, you know, the marketing principles behind of like, it just takes multiple times for someone to see something before they actually look at it or to take action. And sometimes I buy into that, sometimes not.

So again, it kind of, some of it will depend resources, but I, I think that you really have to be getting into at least 10,000 as a, as a minimum before you start kind.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:10

Of making anything a return on your investment.

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:13

Yeah, that, that type of thing. And, you know, I think mailers are about a quarter a piece once you include print.

You know, if you're doing 10,000 mailers is just to kind of like factor that. So that's not, it's not a small amount of money.

But some guys will do, you know, they'll do a smaller geographic area and they'll do 5,000, 5,000, 5,000. So that is another way. Or they'll say, you know what, I'm just going to do one, and I'm going to do, you know, 15,000 type of thing.

But it's definitely more than just, all right, I'm just going to spend a few bucks and kind of sprinkle something out there and think that something's going to happen.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:46

You know, if you were looking at doing it again, what would you do differently versus a mailer? How would you maybe use that money in another marketing strategy?

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:54

Well, I, I absolutely believe that your website is your absolute front door.

So if you're even going to be spending more time on the design, the functionality, the ease of use of your, of your website, which you can get for very inexpensive. There's lots of talented people out there that can, can help, can help do that.

And then I would say if you have a small budget, that you can put some money into the social media stuff. And it's, it is a little bit complicated, but whether it's Facebook Ads which are now connected to, you know, your Instagram ads. It's worth it.

You can, you can make a. You can make a pretty quick dental in doing things that way.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:35

Oh, no, that's great.

So one of the things I see it too, all over the place, Haphazard marketing or just plain old wrong marketing strategies when it comes to money that gets invested. The other one I see is conferences. Sometimes we want the next biggest best.

And I see pastors, church planners specifically, travel a lot from conference to conference to conference and because maybe, well, here I can talk to this person and here I can learn about this. What do you see as some of the dangers of just being a conference junkie?

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:11

Yeah, so I love that you use that term because there are those conference junkies where they're just kind of chasing the Christian celebrities and doing the selfies type of, type of thing. But I actually think that content wise, you can get all the content that you get at a conference. You can get that on YouTube, online, all of that.

So there is the value to pull away a little bit, get yourself in, you know, a worship, being encouraged, surrounded by, you know, a group of church planters or other, you know, Christian professionals.

I think the biggest advantage of conferences if you're taking someone with you from your team to kind of just get away and be inspired together and, and maybe you do that once or even.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:53

Maybe a key lay leader or a.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:55

Key lay leader to be able to do that and for them to, you know, be influenced by that.

But you can start sinking tons of money into travel and that's time that you are away from your city, away from your community, away from the people that you're trying to reach, away from your other, you know, leaders.

And while you might feel really special because you, you know, zoomed around on a plane and hung out with some, you know, Christian celebrities type of thing. So just be cautious of that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:23

Yeah.

The other, like, one of my biggest, probably my biggest pet peeve is money that gets put into staff that honestly could be put in the bank and you could raise up volunteers to fill most of those spots. Especially in those early days.

Sometimes it's so easy to think, you know, we try to predict our sustainability or predict our success based on how many staff we can bring on our team right away.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:50

Right.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:50

And we can oftentimes be very staff heavy as we get the church up and off the ground, which honestly becomes a strain on the overarching budget of that church in the early days. And then it can actually backfire because if you don't grow into a sustainable level to be able to sustain all those staff salaries.

Who are you going to let go?

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:11

Right.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:12

And how are you going to pick up the pieces both in the ministry, but now in this person's life that may have quit a great job in order to be a part of this new adventure. And so you've got to be very, very careful with that. The best staff are free. I mean, let's, let's be honest. It just is.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:30

Yeah. And I would say to it, I have seen that happen a lot more with planters who have transitioned from a large church.

And you forget when you're in that environment, like, oh well, yeah, we hired someone to do this, this, this, this and this, you know, so you just think, oh well now that'd be great. Yeah, now, now I'm a planter, so I need to have someone who's hired where a lot of times in the beginning, you, you are all those things.

You are the janitor, you are the youth pastor, you are every. You're semi the accountant looking over things.

Lee Stephenson: 00:07:59

And it's so easy to overlook the, the time period and the sacrifice that was required to get to that level of ministry and output. Right. And I, I liken it to, you know, when I graduate college, I want to live at the same lifestyle my parents with living at currently.

And I, it was easy for me to just bypass the years and years and years of hard work and sacrifice that they put in to get to where they were.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:23

Yeah.

And in addition to it, it can accidentally create a culture where you don't have a culture of volunteering and instead that it's just, hey, people show up at the paid professionals, you know, put on a show or do whatever needs to get done to, to have church. And so you really rob that opportunity.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:44

And that easily carries into the musician side as well. Do we hire musicians early on? What's kind of your philosophy on that for a church planter?

You know, they may sit there and go, we have a limited team talents, just not there. But we want a quality worship experience. Is this an area that you would recommend go ahead and invest some money into it?

Or you say no, we still got to work with volunteers.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:06

Well, you're asking someone who's been identified as stingy. I like to call myself thrifty, but I always again, am leaning on, on volunteer first.

It was a bit of a learning experience, especially as we became more multicultural that like especially in the African American setting that it. Almost all musicians are, are, are paid. I mean it's just they'll get paid more than even the preaching pastor type of thing.

So there's definitely some multicultural things that kind of play into that has been kind of a learning experience, but for the same reason of staff stuff before, if you could have a volunteer first.

And I would say that when you want to start paying someone, if is more about not just what they produce, but if they can multiply themselves, if they're a leader and they're leading the team and they're doing beyond just like, hey, I can shred on the guitar and I have an amazing voice to lean more towards that direction because of course I think that musicians can work themselves into a place where they are a valued member of the staff. They're doing more than just, you know, playing music on Sunday.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:16

Yeah. What other kind of hot buttons do you see kind of rub you wrong when it comes to where money gets invested in those early days?

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:24

Yeah. I don't know if I have any other ones that like stick out completely.

I think there's just kind of that general thing where you have a small amount of resources. So before you spend things, just kind of look at it through that lens of stewardship. Like I only have this much.

So even though I've seen this or I read this in a book that I have to do that be bringing that really before the Lord and saying, God, these are your resources. How should I be able to spend it? What are some other things maybe you've, you've seen?

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:54

I think sometimes we think technology, for instance, AV equipment or, you know, if I have these lights, if I have this projector, if I have the sound system, then we're going to be instant success.

And though I think it's important to have quality on that end, I think sometimes we, we can delegate culture development to technology and not put in the hard work that's necessary.

And so I think we, we can create a false premise if we're not careful that, well, I've got the stuff and the stuff's going to help me get to where I need to get.

And the reality is it's time spent developing leaders, developing your volunteers, developing the culture that really is the most important thing of your church as you get that church up and going.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:37

Yeah, absolutely.

Because you can have a value of excellence and a value of worship and still not have a, you know, six figure sound system and do it, do it really well.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:48

Absolutely. And have seen it done and that is a great place to be in fun experience.

So, so there's a just a random rambling of kind of things that maybe get under our skin where we see mistakes made when it comes to how finances are invested.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:06

Well, before you close it off, Lee, I think we should ask each other if there was a thing that you waste that hindsight in your church plant. We're like, you know what? I think we spent way too much money on that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:19

That's a great question. Time one or time two.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:24

So, you know, go further back because then it's less. You know.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:30

I would say first time around, we didn't have a whole lot.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:36

To work with, so we didn't have a lot of. You didn't have a lot of money to waste.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:40

We didn't have a lot of money to waste. So we were really, really thrifty and we were leaning on spending some money, leaning to spend money a certain direction.

When we got advice at the last minute going, I think you spent the money this way, you'd actually get our bang for your buck. That was priceless information. You know, like, don't.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:01

What was it about?

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:02

One was simply, I'm thinking of a projector. Like, we're going to buy this projector and it's going to allow us to do this, this, and this.

And we began to talk with our consultant, and he said, no, I understand. It would be nice to have that quality. It's not necessary, given your room.

You could actually accomplish more by just investing a little extra money in your lights by this projector. And in the long run, we actually weren't going to spend nearly as much money. And so it allowed us freed up space to invest into other things.

You know, some of it was marketing, you know, that. That we tried some unique things, creative things that we haven't seen done before.

And I don't know if it actually worked for us, like, we got that much of a return on that investment. It was fun.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:44

Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:45

But I don't think it actually brought new people into the doors. And so I do think you got to be.

You need to be thinking very specifically, if I invest this money into marketing, are we actually going to see people in seats as a result of that?

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:57

Yeah, I think for us, one of the things that sticks out is that we bought a technology package that we were hoping would fix some of our leaky bucket, if you will, of trying to a CRM that was kind of a church management system. And we got, you know, the deluxe package that would, you know, essentially disciple people for you. I mean, obviously there's no such thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:22

You put their name in and they.

Danny Parmelee: 00:14:23

Take care of the rest. Yeah, you just. Just do that. And I'm like, wow, that is great. They didn't say that, but that's kind of what we. We felt.

And we invested a lot of money in and what you were even speaking to before, it was really a people and a culture issue that we had, and it wasn't a technology fix that would fix it. And so we actually ran that for a couple years and then had to start completely over, and all that money was down the drain.

Lee Stephenson: 00:14:48

Wow. Yeah, that's a good point. So. Well, I appreciate the time and great conversation.

Until next time, this has been the unfiltered podcast Keep It Real La.