Relaunch or die?

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:00

My name is Lee Stevenson and my co host here say hey, I'm Danny Parmalee and we are here with the unfiltered church planning podcast, just real conversations about church planning. Glad you could tune in with us today.

We're going to talk one of those conversations that I think it permeates a lot of church planners minds, especially in those moments where the church plan isn't going as the way you thought it was going to go, and maybe things have been slower, things have been more difficult than you thought. Maybe you're now a couple years into the church plant, and it's a conversation I know I've had a lot of times with other guys, should we relaunch?

And even some guys and church planners, it comes down to this point, maybe is it time for us to kill it and call it for what it is?

And so I want us to have just a real conversation through this, Danny, of how do you interpret the, the season, your, you know, the timeline of your church, what God is doing? Is it where you thought it'd be? If not, how do you, how do you make sense of that? So I'll let you kind of get us going in that conversation.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:17

Yeah, I think first of all, just to understand that probably the culture around church planning in general, and maybe even the kind of make common characteristics of a church planter is to persevere at all costs. So to even consider relaunching and definitely to consider killing, it just almost seems off the table completely.

And you add to that, you know, the kind of insecurity of, okay, did I, did I fail? You know, is this, is this, is this wrong? And everyone's telling you got to keep, you know, pushing forward.

So I think just even starting by, by recognizing that that's kind of, you know, in the culture, and yet there may be times where relaunching and, and, and, or killing it would be the best option. So that, that's what I hope we can kind of talk about today.

And I don't know if you've even in your experience, been at that spot of being like, man, I don't know if this is going to go forth or not, or what you hear from church planners are usually some of those first signs that they're asking those questions.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:22

Yeah, I think some of the first signs, I'm from the mindset to Danny, like, every chance you get to relaunch, you know, in essence, meaning if you're making a move or something significant's happening, relaunch it. Like, put the energy effort, we had three grand openings. You know, in our first church plan, it was the original start.

And then we moved from the movie theater to the high school. Well, we called it a new grand opening. We put as much energy and effort into kind of relaunching in that moment.

And then when we moved into a new facility that we went in as rentals, but it gave us a sense of more permanency. We had 24. 7 space. We relaunched again, and we had another grand opening.

And so I'm not against the relaunched mindset, but I think you have to understand what's. What's the flavor behind this? Why are we needing to think this way?

And there's kind of three main areas, and really these come to how we define church planning. Whether or not it's successful or not as a whole, is number one, is it self funding? Is it self governing?

And then number three is, is it self propagating? In other words, are there disciples being made? And so I think that those three kind of create a grid for you to begin to think through.

Where are we at on our health when it comes to where, you know, as a church plant, Are we self funding? If we're not self funding, you need to begin to ask some hard questions.

You know, by year three, year four, year five, if we're not self funding, you need to begin to ask the questions, why, why are we not? What do we need to change? Is there something we need to be doing different? Is our clientele?

In other words, the people that we seem to be coming in and sticking and growing with us as a church, do they have the financial means for us to be self funding? Am I going to have to be bi vocational for a lifetime? Those are questions as a church planter, you need to wrestle with deeply and honestly.

I can't answer that question for you, and neither can Danny. It really becomes, I think, a God thing between you and him as to what is he calling you to be as a leader? Who is he calling you to be as a church?

And are we actually fulfilling those, or is there a unique way we can be more creative about that? What would you add to that conversation?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:46

Clarity for you, when you talked about relaunch, you still kept the same name, kept the same leadership you were talking about. Hey, it's just another time to kind of give a. Give a boost of kind of re.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:58

Yes.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:58

Introducing yourself. And I think that.

And obviously anytime you could do that, I mean, I felt like we almost did that on a yearly basis with kind of our fall launch and used it as great times. And then yeah, you have those significant, significant times where you add a site, change a location, some, something like that.

But for those that are kind of in the dwindling, maybe numbers, not meeting some of those benchmarks or expectations like you said, with attendance and or finances, the thought of relaunching, which usually includes some sort of name change, logo change, website change, that type of thing, I would just caution guys of just thinking that that's the quick fix because it's, it's not. It's not your name, it's not your logo, it's not your website usually as the, the main thing.

And so, yeah, so if you do relaunch, I do think it is really important that you actually stop and especially stop meeting for Sunday services.

So let's say you're whatever city, community, church and you know, you're at it for two and a half, three years, you're struggling at 30, 40 people, barely making it week to week, don't have very many volunteers.

You can't keep meeting on Sunday and just change your name now to whatever the cool new names are that are happening out there and spend some marketing money, actually stop diagnose why you haven't grown and what the reason is for that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:33

Yeah.

If you're not willing to put in the hard energy and effort into honest evaluation of why are we where we're at before you relaunch and all you're doing is kind of the outward changes, you know, like you said, new website, new logo, maybe a new name. You're basically putting, you know, lipstick on a pig. And you really do need to.

This is where reaching out to outside help, bringing in a coach, a more experienced church planter or another pastor, get outside eyes on what's going on inside to give honest, hard feedback to be able to say this needs to change. If you are going to relaunch and don't change this, you're going to be exactly where you are right now.

And so honestly then you're wasting resources, finances and other things that. Those are very important conversations to have in that phase.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:30

Yeah.

And I think that you have to be open to the fact that you, you the lead planter could be the, the problem or the, the kind of bottleneck in the whole thing. But you also have to be open that you're not it either. You know what I mean?

Because there's some guys where they just also work themselves and kind of this mode where it's like, well, it's just my fault and I just need to throw in the towel. And there could be some external circumstances that are really prevented. It could be some leadership stuff. It could be just some. Yeah.

Some different ways in which you started off on the wrong foot. And it's okay to just have that objective evaluation to say what is really going on here and what does it take to move forward?

Now you may come to a point in the church where it does look like the best option is to stop completely. So it's not even a relaunch. It's not like, okay, we're gonna pause, you know, take the 15 to 20.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:24

Members that we have time to have a funeral. And.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:26

Yeah, and.

And I think that one of the things that when I have talked to church planters about this, obviously the word that comes out of their mouth is failure. And I hate to hear that word because here's the thing.

If God called you to plant a church and you were faithful and obedient to that, it may not have met your expectations. It may not have been self sustaining. But to me, if you were obedient to that, it is not a failure.

You know, I mean, obviously if you messed up the whole thing and it was all your sin, you know, it's a dramatic thing. But if you were faithful and obedient to that, to me, that is a win. And here's the thing.

Maybe you don't have thousands of people coming or hundreds of people, but I guarantee that if you were faithful and obedient to following Christ, that you made an impact, that some people came to Christ, some people grew in their faith, and that the kingdom moved forward because of your faithfulness. Even if it lasted a year or two years or five years.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:28

No, I think that's. That's well said and I agree. Too often we interpret not meeting my expectations as a failure.

And I think we have to remind ourselves as pastors, as church planters, God cares more about who we are becoming than what we actually are doing. And that's something we preach from the pulpit. But it's another thing for us to accept it in our own heart and we have to come to grips.

Am I okay with that? Do I trust in the sovereignty of God? And what he's doing behind the scenes may be way bigger than I ever thought.

Maybe God asked us to plant a church for my kids. Maybe God asked us to plant this church for that one person to come to Christ.

We can't try to interpret everything from just our limited point of view of how God is actually operating.

I know guys that have planted churches and five, six years down the road, they just didn't have any momentum and nobody knew was coming in the door and disciples weren't being made. Those that were there were being discipled, but not new ones. And they came to a point where they realized I don't have the energy to keep going.

And they, you know, five years after they decided to kill their church, I don't know, bury their church. I don't know what the right term to be politically correct in that is.

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:54

But no political correctness on the unfiltered podcast.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:57

That's true, it's raw, it's real. They didn't have any regrets. And I think that's a healthy place to be.

And realizing God can still use you and God will still use you if you're obedient and walk with him and trust that. It just may look different than how it may look right now.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:17

Yeah. What are some of the indicators you look for as you're coaching planters where it's too early for them to transition.

So maybe, maybe they even realize, man, the reason this thing isn't growing is actually my own either leadership capacity or circumstantially what's, what's happened and what's like too late. Like man, if you would have moved on, the church actually would have survived or would have done better. But now you've been here almost too too long.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:46

I would say the ones that have relaunched successfully that I know have reached out to somebody that was more experienced and got a coach that made all the difference in the world whether or not they were successful in making those changes and kind of moving forward for.

Because it gave them an advocate, somebody that can encourage them, but also somebody that could poke holes in things that weren't good or things that were accurate and help give honest evaluation. I do think a couple of things that need to be truly looked at. Number one is just overall leadership of the, the pastor.

Am I leading well and am I leading with energy or am I just kind of piecing it together on a week to week basis? Do I actually have a long term vision and do I have a strategy on how we're actually going to get there?

If you don't, it may be the fact that you just need somebody behind you that kind of ask some clarifying questions. But it may be the fact that I just not gifted or I don't have the energy to carry this on beyond where we're at right now.

So you kind of have to have a self evaluation on that point. I think two, we already hit upon it early is the financial sustainability of the situation. Number two, it comes down to discipleship.

Are we seeing new people coming in? Are they gaining ground? Are we actually having the opportunity to disciple them and release them?

I know churches of 70 and 80 people that are constantly discipling people, and they just said, our ministry is to send people out. That's a fantastic call. And. And that's an energizing call.

I also know churches of 200 where they've been pushing hard for two years and they're tired of being in a facility and they're ready to call it quits because they're. They're important. Well, to me, that's a perseverance thing. Those are just life's hard, ministry's hard. Church planning is even harder.

Like, you just sometimes gotta, you know, pull up your pants and tighten the belt and make something happen. So.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:50

Yep, that's great.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:52

Yeah.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:52

I think, you know, the number one thing, and especially if you're listening to this and find yourself in one of those, There is no. Here's the exact number or metric, like if you haven't hit 50 people by year three, you know, you must call it quits. There's.

There is no magic number or magic matrix. But if you can have some outside people speak into that and to have an open, honest evaluation of, of kind of where you're at. Because yeah, there's.

There's church plants that have been lagging and struggling.

And all of a sudden they took that time, they evaluated, you know, they either relaunched and rebranded type of thing, or they just kept going with their same brand but just, you know, fixed what was needed. And then all of a sudden they hit these different peaks and just. And took off. And there's others that, you know, didn't do that.

And then they just stayed long and it was this long, slow death that didn't need to be a long, slow death that they probably could have made the decision that would have been better for their family and better for that team of 20 people that were left that maybe are so burned out from the church and church planning that to this day they want nothing to do with it because it came about just this group, like church. I don't want to do that.

You know, where their kids were brought there every day and the kids that want to be in church because, like, oh, man, my family, we couldn't even take summer vacation because I had to be behind. My dad had to be behind the sound booth every week, you know.

Lee Stephenson: 00:15:14

No, I think that's well said. And to me, the final thing that brings the most clarity is the culture piece.

Are we the culture that we set out to become, or are we something different? And that can become a defining moment as to how did we get here if we're not where we thought we should be? And is it changeable?

Yeah, if it's not changeable, it's probably something that you need to kill. And. And then consider, do we have the energy to rebirth it or not?

And what would we do different this time around to actually create the culture that we want to create versus, you know, allowing this to drift off into no man's land? And it just is what it is.

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:55

Yeah. So my final words for some of those that are listening, some of you need to hear. Keep going. You can do it. This is awesome.

Just take some time, recalibrate, and then there's some of you. You know what? This may be the end. It is. Okay.

And if you were faithful to God, call it a win, celebrate it, and see what God has for you and for your people next.

Lee Stephenson: 00:16:18

Well said. Thanks, everyone. It's good to be with you all. And this has been the unfiltered podcast. Just real conversations about the church planning world.

Till next time, keep it.