Three critical questions church planters wrestle with

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:09

Hey, welcome everyone to unfiltered real church planting discussions. My name is Lee Stevenson and I have the privilege of overseeing our national movement of church planting for Converge and along with me is Danny.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:23

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

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:29

Awesome. We are excited today to begin just taking some time to talk about kind of key questions that I think every church planter somewhere wrestles.

I mean the reality is there's numerous amount of questions that we can answer.

But you know, we've taken some time to really focus on what I think are five critical questions that every church planner, probably every church planting spirit spouse is asking the same questions.

And we're just going to take some time wrestle along with you in these questions, but try to give you some perspective as well as you may be wrestling with this right now in your current life situation. Question number one is that question is how do I get paid? Okay, maybe you're ready to go. You feel like we got a green light from assessment now.

It's like everything the money hits the road here is how do I actually make a living, how do I support myself, how do I support my family? Whether or not you're coming out of the business world or whether or not you're coming out of a staff role at another church.

What was your wrestle with this, Danny, and how did God answer that? What advice would you give to somebody that may be wrestling with that right now?

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:47

Yeah, well, I think if those of you out there that are not familiar with church planting, maybe you think the answer is you don't get paid. And I wouldn't suggest that.

I would actually say that is not, you know, the, maybe the most even biblical and definitely not the most healthy way to kind of approach it. Or people would say, you know, I'm just going to save up all of my own money.

I recently talked to a guy and says, hey, I really feel called to church planting. I agreed. You know, I said, I think you have some of those building blocks. Let's send you assessment.

He says, well, I'm going to work on staff at this church for three years and I'm going to save up $100,000 so I can just use my own money to plant this church.

And I'm like, well, let's talk through this a little bit because that again might even point to a bit of self reliance because if God has called you to plant a church, he's also going to provide.

Lee Stephenson: 00:02:37

Great point.

Danny Parmelee: 00:02:38

And while there's lots of different Ways in which God does provide and can provide what we have found to work the best is that church planters raise financial support and that they actually get funding set in place before they even begin the process of developing a launch team and before opening the doors of the church.

So a lot of church planners think, okay, well my paycheck is tied to when the doors open and I collect an offering that day, which you have this huge ramp up period time. So that would mean you wouldn't get paid during that time.

And then the other thing I tell guys is you may open the doors but don't think that, don't expect the money's gonna come a full salary.

And especially if you are truly planting a church that's trying to reach non believers, counting on those offerings as being your paycheck can be a really, really dangerous thing.

So not that we'll cover all of it here today, but yeah, raising financial support and it is probably, you know, one of the biggest faith steps, faith journey of your life to raise that support. But God uses it. It's not a necessary evil. I think that's a real important thing.

It's something that I think God really even just builds into the whole, whole process of trusting him. And the reality is if you're called as a church planter, you're going to be in a lead position.

You're going to be raising funds and resources for the rest of your life. In that role. It might look different, but you will always be fundraising.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:11

Yeah, I think that's a great point.

And when I think about the fundraising aspect, one of the markers of a successful church plant and multiple groups, including Converge, kind of use this as one of their fundamental, hey, you made it. Is when your church becomes self funding.

When did you guys, when you planted the church, how long did it actually take you to become self funding as a church?

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:40

Yeah, so we were year three.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:43

Okay.

Danny Parmelee: 00:04:43

And that's a pretty. As I coach church planners now, I say raise funds, were you lazy or no for three to four years? Because that's usually.

And depending on the context, urban areas, it can take five, six, seven years. Certain suburban contexts, it can be a year.

There's some plans and depending and we'll get into some of the model stuff can be self sustaining on day one. I just tell guys to not count on it. And we were able to. So we raised financial support for four years. We became self sustaining at year three.

So we were able to write to our financial supporters and say, hey, guess what? God's provided, no longer need Your financial support.

And they said, we have never had that before where someone and people gave more money because they just thought that was so great.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:34

It's winning, it's winning.

Danny Parmelee: 00:05:35

I did not turn that money away. We just used it. We used it for other things. But it usually it takes a while.

And that goes back to what I said before about if you're reaching non believers and even if a believer comes to your church. I think the average they say is between 12 to 18 months before they begin tithing and giving significant.

Lee Stephenson: 00:05:56

And I would say even just tithing, that's probably even fast. Maybe they become a giver or percentage giver to go.

Unless God usually does some pretty major work, it's going to take a little while for them to give up 10% of their income. I know for us it was two and a half years before we became self funding as a church.

And I just see that routinely in church plants, it's two to four years that a church planter is going to be working to get the church up to the size in which it can truly be totally self funding as a church.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:31

Yeah, I'd love to share our story. So our first year's annual offering was $11,000 year, not month, not week. That was the entire year.

And we were predominantly college students and young professionals and nonbelievers. And so yeah, it took a while and we did things on the cheap.

But the advantages is that because I had raised financial support from outside supporters, I didn't have that pressure.

And it really is another reason why I say I've become a fan or that I'm passionate about raising financial support is I could do what God had called me to do in planting the church without having to worry about the money.

So if I had to make a hard decision and it was going to affect someone who was giving at the church, which I shared our numbers already, every single person counted. I could still lead in that because I knew that God was still going to provide for me and for my family.

So one of the things that I would say, and again, each denomination and even within converge each district does a little bit different. But what's been important for us is that we sit down with the planter and we establish their salary package and then have them raise that.

So it's not just, you know, this number, random numbers, random name and especially it's going to be different one part of the state, you could even say in one part of the city and compared to another part of the city, size of family, all these different things. And to sit down with a planter and to find out what is that healthy number?

So one that's not too low, that the family can, yeah, you're starving, you can't take vacations, your children can't be involved. But that it's also not high. That as you are planting the church and people begin to know your salary and they think, man, you're way overpaid here.

It can be a negative or that it takes that much longer for you to do the support. So we don't dictate a number. We sit down with the planter and figure that out together. We use different matrix and grid to kind of figure that out.

But it is really a conversation.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:33

I'd be curious, let's take a moment. What are some of the metrics that you do use to help define that?

So if people are sitting there going, man, that's a great idea, but I don't even know where to start. Give us some starting points that you've used that have been successful for you.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:47

Yes. So when I started, we did look at annual teacher salary.

So that worked, at least in our context, to say, hey, well here's what someone who's getting a teacher salary, but again, you've got first year teacher to 10 year teacher, 10 year teacher, all of those different things. You've got insurance stuff and again, depending on the district, but at least it's kind of a baseline.

And then again, it helped me in my own leadership. When people are like, hey, how are, how do you get paid? How much you get paid?

I say, hey, I just took the annual teacher salary to be able to do that. The other thing that we use is that I think church staffing is the one that puts it out.

But they print a pretty big book that kind of just looks at regionally size of church. But again for, yeah, Leadership Network or Leadership Network does.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:31

Leadership Network does that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:33

Does that. So that's kind of helpful.

Now if they're in a church right now, we kind of look at their salary and just their budget and where they're at right now is also kind of a helpful thing. Now if they're coming out of corporate America and again they're getting paid oodles of money and bonuses, which we've had.

We've had guys that have left very lucrative jobs to be able to become a church planner, there's no way that it would even be healthy to do that. And that conversation of course, was had before they made that decision. But looking at those family needs.

So those are some of the different ones that we at least use to start the discussion.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:13

No, that's great. We've very similar. We look at what the local school districts are paying teachers all the way up to principal levels.

We look at local health care, salary systems, cost of living. So we just look at what are the home prices in this area to live above the poverty line.

What would you have to make in order to be able to live in a median size house in that community and out of that kind of begin to put some numbers again, if you have relationships in those cities, it's great to be able to pull upon pastors that already live there and get their feedback of what are they sensing is going on in the community. What is the typical pastor salary of the area? Area as well.

And then you take all those numbers and kind of come up with a number that's agreeable for both parties in essence to be able to live upon. I do find that one of the bigger challenges is the health care, health insurance. Absolutely.

I mean we've looked at every option out there and I wish I could say that hey, just do this. I can't. They're just not, it's not clean. It's a messy process right now.

I would say just look at the gamut of different healthcare providers that's out there for you and just find what works best in your case scenario.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:36

So yeah, I think there's kind of three of the major options or routes that I've seen church planners take. The ideal one is if your wife works and she has a great insurance.

Lee Stephenson: 00:11:48

She works for the hospital.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:50

She works for the hospital and you can add that on. But there is a danger to that as well too. If all of a sudden she's feeling the pressure to carry the insurance and God hasn't called her to that.

A lot of our plants are using the share program. So Samaritan's ministries and that's what I used as a planter all the way up until I transitioned into this role.

So that was helpful because it's really all that we could afford. And even as a church, even as our church got larger health insurance, just so expensive, even in group policy stuff.

So Samaritan's Ministries, Medishare, I think there's another couple other big ones to kind of explore that. But then yeah, looking at the different insurance programs that are out there, but man, they're expensive and not a lot of coverage.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:35

In most group insurance you need to have at least five employees. And so most church planters aren't going to be in A position to be able to afford the group.

And the challenge is in maternity, if you're going into individual making sure that you have maternity coverages as well. Because most planters are young and they may be in that process of thinking of expanding their family at that time as well.

But I know both of us can talk from personal experience. God always gave us enough.

And there were moments and there were months where you're sitting there going, I don't know how we're going to pay this bill. Somehow it always worked out. We live faithfully and. And I would say not just faithfully, but live generously ourselves. God honors that.

And this is just one of those steps of faith. But you don't need to sacrifice your family. Don't sacrifice those type of pieces for this.

I think God will open the right doors if you're willing to ask and have those key conversations to be able to raise the finances needed to make this church get up and running.

Danny Parmelee: 00:13:38

Yep, absolutely. That was our thing. Once we had set our salary and raised financial support.

Never missed a paycheck and just really thankful for God's provision in that area.

Lee Stephenson: 00:13:48

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. The second question that I see, let me go back. The financial thing is such a big thing.

We're going to do multiple episodes later talking about the finance specifics to fundraising, how to do it, what are keys to it, unique things that guys are doing around the nation to help in that process as well. And so tune back later for more information on that.

But the second question I want us talk a little bit about is I hear a lot of guys go, now that we feel called to plant, how do I transition?

And that's a pretty major and broad question because you're going to have some people that they're on staff of a church, that this is the vision of the church and they are planning for this, they're excited for this, and they're working alongside of you to figure out a healthy transition, both to help create momentum for the new church, but also it creates momentum for the existing church. Then you have other people that are in positions where maybe the church doesn't know or they don't want this to happen.

And that makes it a little stickier of a transition. You also have people that are transitioning maybe from the corporate world and into a church situation. Those transitions can all be difficult.

I know one guy that he started a church, he was in the corporate world. The corporation did background checks on their employees, found that he had a second side business and they didn't like that.

They saw it as a conflict of interest, which I don't know how you could see it as a conflict of interest, but they basically said, choose one or the other. And it put them in a spot where they had to walk away from corporate America to do the. The church plan. It was a major financial hit for them as well.

But talk from your perspective, Danny. What have you seen work well in transitions? What have you seen not work well?

Danny Parmelee: 00:15:43

Yeah, I think that. Let me speak to the ministry 1.

If you're in a ministry, the thing that works well is a lot of communication, everybody being on the same page and clear expectations.

Because I think that what happens is sometimes there are these unintentional threats and insecurities that come out either by the planter or by the church and the ministry.

And if people were able to get into the rooms, just express and be honest and authentic, say, hey, well, this is what I'm scared may happen, especially for, like a church.

They may be nervous that this place plant that even though they love you as the planter, they're nervous that if you go out and plant, they're going to lose a whole bunch of people from their church. And they see that as loss of people, loss of money, a threat to their own types of things.

So then they make certain decisions or talk about it in a certain way, and then you get upset because of the way that they're handling it. So, you know, your counter thing is to have secret meetings and do all this. So getting in the room and to start having those discussions and.

And I think that the key to it is both people looking for that kind of win, win situation.

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:00

They quote Stephen Covey, the brilliant man.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:03

I mean, you can. Because if God is in it and God is multiplying his church, people are being reached for Christ and disciples being raised up.

It is a win, win situation. You just have to figure out how it is and what this looks like. How can this be a win for everybody, even the congregation members themselves?

Lee Stephenson: 00:17:23

Yeah, I think that's absolutely. And I think to reiterate, clarity is so important in this.

And if you can get things in writing even ahead of time, of how are we going to handle these type of situations if they were to arise?

It just helps both sides, both parties to be able to navigate some of those, you know, perspective rapids that are going to creep up as you're moving down the road.

Danny Parmelee: 00:17:50

Do you want to speak to a few of those? Like, what are some of the things that you see as being fears from the church who is losing the Planter.

And then how can a planter say, well, even be proactive when they kind of have that conversation?

Lee Stephenson: 00:18:05

Yeah, yeah. I think if you can bring clarity as to who you have permission to talk to about joining the movement and who you don't.

You know, some pastors will be, hey, you can talk to anybody. Other pastors will be like, you can't talk to anybody. And so if you can get that clarity ahead of time, very, very helpful.

If you could sit down, talk about even hard conversations like financial support. Will this church financially be supportive of the church? If so, how much? I mean, again, this kind of goes back to question number one.

You have a natural opportunity. You've been on staff, should be a loved connection there.

If you can use that relationship to help embolden and create some financial support, that's going to be incredibly helpful.

Danny Parmelee: 00:19:01

Give me. So what should a planter do? Because we all want them to say, hey, you can take anybody with that you want. What advice do you have for a planter?

Who the pastor says, listen, I'm for you, but honestly, I don't want you to take anybody from the church. How should they respond?

Lee Stephenson: 00:19:19

I think you have to look at how can we honor the relationship? Again, you don't trust man. You trust God. And sometimes you can look at it and go, oh, well, we're sunk already. No, you're not.

The reality is, I hope you're planning a church to reach those in the community that are far from God. That really should be the driving factor.

There will be people that God will bring in your midst that will support you, maybe within the church or outside the church. The reality is you don't want everybody. You don't want to talk to everybody. And if the pastor assigns, hey, you can talk to these two couples.

You want to make sure they're the right two couples that he's not just trying to get rid of. But I think it is rare.

I think church planning is getting enough recognition that a lot of pastors are realizing this is an area that they can be generous and God will guide them.

Now, you're going to still run into some situations that are going to be tough, but I think you got to honor the relationship and honor the authority that God has placed in their life.

At that point, there are going to be people that just because of relationship, maybe years that you've been on staff that are going to be wanting to know what you're doing.

Hopefully the church would at least be able to honor you, maybe stand you up front and say, hey, so and so is going to go plant a church, and if you'd like to know more, you can go talk to them.

And then you just use your relationship and say, hey, we're planting this church, and we're going to begin to gather and, you know, and just take questions from that. And I don't think that that's dishonorable if your heart's right in the way that you go about that.

Danny Parmelee: 00:20:58

Yeah, I think that's so great. I think just that key principle of how you honor them, because it's true they don't own anybody, but you don't own anybody either.

And people eventually will make those decisions. So don't just say yes to that and go, okay, I won't talk to anyone.

But really, behind the scenes, you're like, I'm sorry, I can't talk to you because a pastor is working for Satan. But instead, because God will bless integrity and character.

So even when someone is maybe being driven by fear or ego or insecurity, the more that you honor them and that relationship and you walk in that, I think that God will honor and bless that, whether that's people from that church or from somewhere else. I think that's such a good word, just to have that as a principle and as a church planner.

You may even be leading the person that's in authority by your leadership, by.

Lee Stephenson: 00:21:59

What you're demonstrating, and people will notice. I mean, I was on staff of a church and ended up having to transition out of that role. And we planted a church about 12 miles or so down the road.

Now, it was two different freeways, so it felt like a totally different area of town. But we had to really clarify our understanding, the relationship expectations on both sides. And there was just a mutual respect there.

And I'm very thankful it went very smoothly through that process. And I'll actually talk more about that later on when we talk about how to build a launch team and that relationship with a parenting church.

And how do you build a launch team? Who do you take? Who do you not take?

And we worked really hard relationally, the lead pastor of that church and myself, to make sure that that was done well. The next kind of key question that I think a lot of planters wrestle with is, how's this going to affect my family? That's a very real.

It's a very raw question that I think we have to take some time and address in this episode. Now, I know for you and Emily, you planted the church pre Kids. How did it affect.

Let's talk from that Perspective first, how did it affect your marriage early on? How did it affect the home dynamics when kids were introduced as.

Danny Parmelee: 00:23:29

Yeah, so I think our situation is unique. I had shared a little bit before that, you know, Emily was shy or had a little bit of hesitancy of church planting and what her role would be.

And because of that, she kind of got really started in her career the same time that the church plant was getting going. And we've actually reflected on this a lot over just the last couple years of saying we were kind of living almost two separate lives.

I was working as hard as I could at the church plant, she was working as hard as she could at her career. And then we would come home and have dinner together type of thing.

And almost living two separate lives and not even really realizing it and recognizing it until later on. And definitely then when we had our first child. So that would have been, I think, about five years into the plant.

Then that's where I think those things began to kind of surface for that. So in ours, it was a little bit unique because, yeah, we didn't have kids.

And because of my personality and her personality, we just kind of both went headfirst into our own kind of thing.

Lee Stephenson: 00:24:37

Great, great. I know for us, we planted. We had one child, he was man two. And our second child came along a couple years after we were into the church.

I think it helped for us.

We had a different perspective kind of going this, both of us being pastors, kids kind of understanding intuitively some things about the church world. It's still challenging. I mean, yes, we went through financial challenges. There's the challenge of people.

And I think for us, it was bonding for us to be able to walk through some of those things together and to be able to, you know, at least I knew somebody else was feeling the highs and the lows at the same time. I was. And we could pray through those things together, we could talk about them honestly.

And I felt like it balanced us out well, you know, if she is having a low day, I was probably having a better day and so I could help her out and flip flop, you know, when I was having a bad day, she was probably having a better day and we'd be able to talk to that. I know for my kids, kids, it was a great experience for them in those early days. I mean, we started in a movie theater.

My son still talks favorably about going to movie church and loved that experience and he loved the attention as a young kid of being the pastor's kid. I think as the church Got larger. It got easier for my kids, though, too, and that they weren't. Not everybody knew who they were. And so you do as a.

As a pastor and as a planter, you do have to protect your family and protect your wife, because the poles, everybody may, you know, they look to the wife to get things done. I found. I don't know if you saw this, but I know people would go to Melissa as a means to getting to me.

And I don't know, maybe it's because I am too intimidating or my look is different. Yes, there you go. But my wife, I mean, she's small, she's blonde, she's a whole lot prettier than me, that she's less threatening.

And so people would come to her, and I had to train her how to have key conversations and be able to say, I don't know, talk to Lee. But those were hard things that we had to learn to navigate in those early years.

And we just had to communicate and be constantly communicating because I'd see her frustration rise when people would constantly come to her about things she had no idea about. And so I had to learn to lead her through that process as well.

Danny Parmelee: 00:27:15

And did Melissa work when you planted or was she working?

Lee Stephenson: 00:27:19

Not working part time? Yeah, I would say she cleaned homes on the side to help make a little bit of extra money, but it was. Wasn't a business she did on her own.

It was more a few people that she had close relationship with.

Danny Parmelee: 00:27:35

For us, once Stella was born, and because our church was probably just transitioning at that point from being only college students and young professionals to people starting to have children, she grew up loving it. Same reason she looks back at that time.

And yes, she loved being the center of attention and being able to get up on stage and be the star of the Christmas program. And not because she was a star, but she was one of the only kids that we had. By default, you win by default.

And maybe our situation, I mean, we had good experiences in our church plan, so our kids look favorably on it. It may be different for others that maybe they're in a challenging church plan or church situation, but, yeah, for us, the kids absolutely loved it.

Lee Stephenson: 00:28:22

That's great. That's great. I think the biggest advice I could give to a planter is just stay in tune with your family.

And I find oftentimes your wife is the thermostat. She understands what needs to be tweaked or where it needs to go. And don't ignore those things. Don't ignore your kids.

You Definitely don't sacrifice your kids for the life of the church. You gotta be. Gotta pay attention to it. And it's easy to get out of balance if you're not focused and intentional.

Danny Parmelee: 00:28:55

Right. Without being legalistic, what are some of the things that you put in place that helped guard?

Lee Stephenson: 00:29:02

Great question. One of the biggest things I found was I had to put the cell phone away. I had a knack.

You know, I'd walk in the door at the end of the day, coming in for dinner, and I'm still on the phone. I'm still either emailing, texting in a phone call, and my kids would run up to me, excited to see me, and I'd almost ignore them.

My wife helped me see what I was doing to the family dynamics. And I made a very intentional decision at that point, even if I'm driving home, because most days I'd be driving, I'm talking on the phone.

I'd stay in the car in the driveway until that phone call was over. Then I'd shut the phone off. I'd walk in, I'd be present. I'd literally walk over to a certain drawer in our kitchen.

I'd put my phone in the drawer and close the drawer. And so it allowed me to be present with my family. And I found that that was very, very helpful. Early on, I really took a Sabbath.

As hard as it is in those early days, and as hard as you feel like, you just gotta go, go, go, go in order to make this happen. I found if I didn't care for myself physically and my emotional and my spiritual health, really, that is a Sabbath rest. I was no good to my family.

I was no good to me. I was no good to the church. And so that was critical.

I've always been an advocate for exercising, and so that helped me deal with stress of what was going on. It was a natural release. And so I've always kept a pretty stringent exercise routine for years through the planting. And I was unapologetic about it.

I put it on the calendar and I kept it. And usually it was 4:30 in the afternoon. And so from 4:30 to 5:30, I was working out. I was burning off the stress of the day.

Danny Parmelee: 00:30:51

How much can you bench press? I'm just kidding. You don't have to answer that. Even though it's unfiltered here.

Lee Stephenson: 00:31:01

Enough. Enough. Yeah, I maxed out at 365.

Danny Parmelee: 00:31:06

There you go. That's awesome. Well, sweet. Yeah, I think those boundaries are great. Same lessons learned here. I certainly wasn't always perfect at it.

But I would have to even stop like a street down because as soon as that car pulled in the kids are sitting there looking in the window type of thing. And then same with set. And that was a constant battle and always had my wife to remind me of that.

So now when I coach church planters instead of asking them if they keep their Sabbath, I either say how does your wife, you know, think that you keep your Sabbath?

Or asking them directly because it usually is the wife that will give the honest answer and that is usually representative how they're kind of just generally shepherding and taking care of their family.

Lee Stephenson: 00:31:51

That's correct.

Well, we've got a couple more questions that we're going to get to in the next episode of Unfiltered and so I invite you to come back, join us for that. It's been real and in the meantime, keep it real, guys.