Special guest: Brandon Petty

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:08

Welcome to the Unfiltered Podcast. My name is Lee Stevenson. I have the joy and opportunity to be a church planter and oversee church planting for Converge.

And my co host here, I'm Danny.

Brandon Petty: 00:00:18

Parmalee and I oversee church planting for Converge Mid America.

And we've got a special guest with us today, Brandon Petty from Generations Church in Portland, Tennessee, which is a booming metropolis outside of Nashville. Gonna overshadow Nashville sometime soon. Brandon, thanks for being with us today.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:37

Absolutely.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:37

Thanks to be here. Thanks for asking me.

Brandon Petty: 00:00:40

So we would love to just ask a little bit about your story.

And one of the things we want to maybe focus in on is to talk about the size of the city that you're in, because I know that as I deal with a lot of planters, they think, you know, bigger the city, bigger the plant, and, and you're in one that's not a huge city, but you guys have had a huge impact. So tell us just a little bit about your story when you planted kind of where you're at, and then we'll kind of drill in with some questions for you.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:08

Sure, yeah. Grew up in middle Tennessee. I was born in the Nashville area and I was moved around a whole lot as a kid. People always ask me, where are you from?

I just say middle Tennessee. And so I've lived in the rural part of Nashville and I've lived in. In the city. I've lived in Murfreesboro.

And so when we got ready to plant, we had been in student ministry for 15 years. I didn't know where God was taking us. A lot of people thought that I would end up in. In a bigger city or whatever.

But, man, there was just something about the area that my story correlated with. I grew up around a lot of drugs, abuse, addiction, you name it.

And so in that area, when we started looking at demographics, there was just a draw to the area. And I think my story really lines up with a lot of people's story in that area.

And I think that's why God's really kind of given us his grace and, and success in that area.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:04

So give us a some clarity then on, like, who is in that community. And, you know, obviously your story, you felt connected with the people there, but give us a, give us an understanding of.

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:16

So, you know, up until: 2008

And so when that happened, not only was there a shift in Nashville, where over the next four or five years would there be growth in Nashville? They started basically trying to fix up some of the rougher parts of the city. Well, those people have to go somewhere.

And a lot of the rough part of the city moved north. And so you had an influx in poverty. And so now you're talking about in. In the elementary schools.

It was about 60% poverty level with the elementary school kids. And so you have. The majority of them have been divorced, have either been in a sexual abused or some kind of drug addiction.

And so a high, high percentage of that lies within the area. And now that Nashville is booming again, the place continues to grow. And that's.

Sometimes it's with families who may be moving from out of state and want to live in a cheaper area and work in Nashville, or it's the people who are being pushed out of the city.

Brandon Petty: 00:03:33

And what is the population of Portland or what was it when you planted. What is it now?

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:37

in eight years. We planted in: 2012

So there's definitely been some growth in the last eight years.

Brandon Petty: 00:03:56

That's great. What are some of the advantages of planting in a city of that size?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:04

What.

What we've noticed, and this is kind of something that some of our network has really kind of honed in on, is when you go into some of these suburbs or some of these rural areas, there's really. We talk about the vacuum effect. If you're planting a church that's reaching young millennials or young families.

Honestly, there's not a lot of churches in those areas. They're more traditional. They're more of your, you know, your big denominational type churches. And.

And so I think what we've discovered is, like, there's just this spiritual vacuum where people who maybe grew up in church are no longer in church. And so a lot of the demographic will reach to our d. Church. They're.

They're the kids who went to church as a kid, but as adults, they got away, and now they have kids. Some of them are, you know, pondering their spiritual life with their kids, especially.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:50

When the kid asks, like, what mom, dad, what happens when I d. Right.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:53

So, yeah, and so we've seen some success and just saying, like, hey, what if we hit some of These outlier cities in these areas where there's just not a lot of that going on. Because if you go to the city, I mean, especially Nashville now, there's a church plant popping up, you know, seems like every other day.

And so, yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why we found success.

Brandon Petty: 00:05:13

lding, and so you launched in: 2008

You're about: 1100

Some favor there. What are those. Some of the challenges of being in a town that's. That's that size?

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:41

Yeah, I think mindset. I think if. If you're in the traditional or I like to say, established church world, I think there's too much traditional versus contemporary.

But in the established church world, you know, depending on how is governed, you know, that's. It's the. The majority rules and so to speak.

And so when you go into a smaller community, sometimes the people who run the city have the same kind of mindset. And so when you're trying to expand or grow or do something that's innovative, you can receive pushback. You know, like, even in our.

When we went to build our building, there was just so many people who were opposed to how we were building our building, the style of building we were building. So that's some of the issues.

Brandon Petty: 00:06:22

Be specific about that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:24

What do you mean, like, when you talk about sty.

Brandon Petty: 00:06:26

Yeah.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:26

Well, okay, so like, we, you know, some of the codes that were laid down, if you can imagine trying to establish a code that was meant for, like, Nashville, you know, inner city, and you have a smaller town going like, hey, we want to try to be like the big boys. And so they're trying to establish codes that are almost, like, ridiculous for the area.

So you might drive by and see four metal buildings that are about to fall in they won't do anything with. But then they're saying, hey, you can't put any kind of metal siding on the. On the road frontage of your building. Just stuff like that. That's.

That's really hard. It's like, so it's the whole, like, intent of the law instead of like, okay, is it the letter of the law or the intent of the law?

And so we ran into some issues like that. Obviously, some of the Local churches. You know, we've ran into some. To some pushback and issues.

That's some of the challenges that you face is that there is a lot of traditionalism, especially when you're living in a rural area where, you know, grandpa grew up there, great grandpa grew up there. And this just isn't something that's that they're used to seeing or being a part of, you know. So.

Brandon Petty: 00:07:30

Tell us a little bit of your launch team development. So did you come in, were you already living in the area? Did you come in fresh?

And then how did you actually meet people in a small town where oftentimes it is just who you know. So you're the outsider. How did you break into the community?

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:46

So we, we lived in a little community called Westmoreland, which was about 20 minutes west of there. Whenever we were getting ready launch and we. But. But we were youth pastors in Bowling Green, Kentucky and so we drove 30 minutes back and forth.

And so we.

, we moved there in August of: 2011

But once we got into the community, we were really, really intentional about. We did monthly outre reaches. We put up a billboard and we just said, whatever the city is doing, we're going to be there. You know, the city.

We have an annual festival called the Strawberry Festival. Portland's known for its strawberry farms and where there'll be, you know, anywhere from 15 to 20,000 people at this festival.

Yeah, but so anyways, yeah, we just said, hey, whatever's going on in the community. We met with some of the leaders at city hall.

I actually went to several of the big churches and met with their pastors and just kind of talked about like, hey, we're not here to intrude or try to take people from your church. We're just here to reach the people who are lost and reach people who aren't in church.

And so I actually sought out counsel from some of the pastors who had influence in the area. And we actually received a lot of encouragement and support from some of those guys. And they've still been supporters to this day.

And so we were just intentional about going in and saying like, hey, whatever's going on in the community. And I think it helped when we started getting people on the launch team from Portland.

They either had relationships and Networks that they brought in. And, and we just, like I said, we met at least once a week, and if not, two or three times a week with a core team.

We were just really, really super aggressive. And whenever we would do outreaches, we would invite people to our informational meetings.

And so it really was like, you have a relationship with this person and they have four other relationships. And we were just really, really intentional about challenging people.

Like, if you're going to come to an informational meeting, don't come alone in the journey.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:00

Now that you're eight years old as a church, moving through the launch, team development, at what point in your history did you know it's kind of a tipping point where people began to understand vision? Buying into, hey, this is my church, and excited about what was going on.

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:16

So we're about to celebrate eight years, probably eight years in.

Brandon Petty: 00:10:21

You're still waiting for the tip? Still waiting for it to tip?

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:23

a launch team that summer of: 2011

And it really was just something that it's almost unexplainable. I mean, we. We set out six months before we launched. We had a.

Basically a prayer weekend where we just prayed and cast vision and kind of just prepared for, like, you know, hey, what's. What's day one gonna look like? And, man, I just told everybody in the room.

I was like, guys, I don't know what it is, I said, but I just, I believe that if we do what we envision to do and we set out and we're sold out to this, we're gonna see 400 people on the first day.

And so, man, there was just an excitement and a buzz and such dedication of people saying, like, hey, this is something that I've wanted to be a part of because half of our team or more were unchurched.

,: 2012

482 people showed up on our first Sunday, you know, and so it was just one of those deals where I think, again, though, we met for almost a year and a half. So you're talking about up until like, four months in, it was like, okay. And I did. I just.

Every single week, every single month, I repeated the same thing over and over and over again. You know, just vision, vision, vision.

Brandon Petty: 00:12:01

That's great. So it's unfiltered, so you can obviously say whatever you want. We kind of actually like that. Talk about some of the difficulties with.

You said it's a smaller town. It's. There's poverty, there's drugs. How does that make it difficult administering in that type of environment?

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:19

Yeah, some of it is obviously financial stuff. You know, as a church, I always tell people our.

Our financial situation is pretty good for a church our age, but not good for a church our size and because of the demographic that we reach. So not only are you trying to teach people, it's not just about teaching people to tithe.

Like, you can't even teach people how to steward what they have very well. And so it's an ongoing process and struggle because it's not just poverty. And, like, I don't have a lot of money.

It's a poverty mindset to, like, whatever I have, I'm going to spend. So there's a lot of irresponsibility.

And with that leads to marriage problems with that leads to, you know, family issues, because a lot of problems are financial.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:01

So, Brandon, I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and sharing a little bit of your story. And if you're ever in the Portland Nashville area, I'd highly encourage you drop on in and say, say hi, see what they're doing.

And we're excited to see what God will continue to do through your ministry and at the church and really reaching a greater Nashville area. So keep up the good work. Man. This has been unfiltered podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. And until next time, y'all, keep it real.