Category Archives: church planting

One Month to a New Church Plant

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Church Planting Exercise: If you only had one month to start a church, what would you do with your time?

Let’s add some context: You find out that your town doesn’t have a church. You may very well be the only follower of Jesus. You know that you should love God, love people, and make disciple-making disciples. You have no team and no resources other than food, clothing and shelter. What do you do?

Before answering the question, let me also say that I’m curious to hear from people in the missional and attractional church planting camps (and all the other church plants that don’t fall neatly into one of those two categories).

I should also point out that this is simply an exercise. I know it is God who establishes His church. This is a fun activity to help us think through what is most important to us about church planting (plus I’m hoping you’ll help me with some good ideas! :)

So, what are your thoughts? Would you spend your time on budgets, buildings, and bodies? Would you spend your time in prayer? Would you spend your time on relational evangelism, event evangelism, servant evangelism, or mass marketing? Would you spend your time on demographics and ethnographies?

What would you do?

Bridge Element Website Design for Church Planters

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Update: The following offer from Bridge Element to ChurchETHOS readers is only available until September 26th!

Bridge Element is a flash driven website design service for churches and Christian ministries. The team at Bridge Element is especially passionate about helping church planters. They are a part of a church plant in the Boston area so they know our unique needs (money?) and challenges (time and money?). As a church planter, I need a website that is sharp, clean, easy to find through search, and doesn’t take a lot of my time to add content. Bridge Element makes all of that possible. They will work with you to make sure you get exactly what you want and they are about half the price of other similar services.

Their service includes:

  • $499 setup fee for a full flash website design from dozens of templates (includes hours spent on customization)
  • $20/mo hosting and full support
  • Unlimited storage space, bandwidth, and email addresses
  • Easy to use content management system (CMS)
  • Branding, printing, and other media services that are more affordable than the big names (trust me, I’ve looked!)

The best thing is, they are offering my readers a reduced rate on website design if you mention “ChurchETHOS” when you order. Rather than $499 for the setup fee, you only pay $399! That’s about $600 less than some of the other leading website design companies.

Below are a couple of screen shots of their website, but feel free to go on over and check it out for yourself! Make sure you mention ChurchETHOS and get that $100 off the initial setup fee!

This is the front page of Bridge Element! Check out the link in the bottom right to try out their easy to use CMS. That way you know exactly what you are getting!

This page is a template that you can play around with. Notice the free backgrounds and other free stuff they offer to add some snap to your website design.

What other website design services are you using for your church? Do they include a content management system, hosting, and support? If so, how much are you paying?

God’s Faithfulness in Church Planting

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Yesterday was a great day of ministry in Swampscott. For the past few weeks we have had some volunteer help from a group of eight college students. Since the annual Strawberry Festival was happening in Swampscott yesterday, we decided to deploy this small army of students to make and give away cups of cold strawberry lemonade. Of course, what sounds like a simple plan actually required a lot of faith on our part.

Faith Challenge #1: Food – It has been a pleasure working with these students and they are basically octo-multiplying (made that up) our efforts here in Swampscott with the time they are spending meeting people, conducting surveys, and blessing people! It has also been a pleasure sharing meals with them. For the most part, people in our church have volunteered to give meals. However, on Sunday, we basically had nothing lined up for them.

God Is Faithful #1: Food Provided – On Sunday morning, just 8 hours before we needed to provide a meal, the youth pastor of Grace Community Church in Marblehead approached me and asked if we could use some hamburgers and hotdogs that they had left over from a previous event. We graciously accepted! Praise God for providing the food!

Faith Challenge #2: Lemonade – As we are still in the process of raising our own support, we don’t really have a budget for things like strawberries and lemonade. In fact, not only do we not have a budget, we barely have a bank balance. Yet, we knew we wanted to bless our town with a small gift of love, and giving away strawberry lemonade at a Strawberry Festival with smiles on our faces and an invitation to a Bible study for the adults sounded like a good idea.

God Is Faithful #2: Lemonade Provided – We basically had a little bit of money in our account and decided this was the way God wanted us to spend the money. It was not a waste of resources! We met dozens of people and left a positive impression and talked with several people about our upcoming Bible study and about our church. Looking forward to seeing how God uses this in the coming weeks!

Additionally, this morning I found that someone had made a donation to our ministry through our online donation tool. The amount was about four times what we spent on the strawberries and lemonade in the first place!

Faith Challenge # 3: Rain – An hour before the Strawberry Festival, I drove down to see if they were still setting up because it was raining outside. Even the weather forecast was for rain all evening and into the night. There were a few people setting up and they said they were still on. However, even if the event was still being held, we had no tent or enough umbrellas to protect our team from the rain. No one wants to stand in the rain and give away watered down lemonade. Besides, who wants to drink watered down lemonade?

Thirty minutes before the event, the rain was coming down even harder and so I called the team and said they could still come over to our house but that we wouldn’t be handing out lemonade. I went upstairs to cancel the printing job on my computer. No need to print anymore invitations to the Bible study right?

God Is Faithful #3: Sun – A couple of minutes later the team leader called back and asked if we were sure we were canceling and I started to say yes but I looked outside and it was crystal clear. Within minutes the clouds had rolled away and the sun was shining brightly! The team got to my place at 4pm and we prayed that God would grant us good weather and that He would be glorified through our small attempt to be a blessing in our community. From that point on, it was the most beautiful weather for an outdoor event: sunny, partly cloudy, light breeze, not too warm, beautiful!

Faith Challenge #4: Fuel – This is a small little miracle, but I thought it was a fun way to end the day. We have been running low on our gas for the gas grill for a week or two now. I’m sure I will need to go and fill it pretty soon but I’m not really looking forward to that right now. Yet, we needed to cook the hamburgers for the team after spending a few hours giving away lemonade.

God Is Faithful #4: Fuel Provided – The beef patties were pre-formed and were frozen so all I had to do was throw some on the grill, get out the condiments and pour some drinks (actually, some of the students helped with a lot of the preparation). After two minutes  of cooking, the fire was so strong that I simply shut off the gas. The burgers were on the grill for about 10 minutes in total and I probably only used two minutes with the grill turned on. The rest of the time, the fire continued simply by feeding on its own grease. I’ve never seen my grill or any grill do that…sure, sometimes you have to turn the grill off to let the fire die down, but I’ve always had to turn it back on at some point.

Just one more way that our Father shows His faithfulness!

Thank you, Father, for a beautiful evening and the opportunity to show your grace to our neighbors.

Conducting a Community Needs Survey

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There are a lot of resources out there for church planters to be able to determine the needs of their community. In the early stages, it makes sense to do some ethnographic research. Basically, ethnographic research is qualitative, rather than quantitative, research. Most ethnographic research in any field includes interviews and observations from someone who has immersed himself in a particular culture.

This kind of research isn’t meant to be completely objective, but should be participatory. In other words, when a church planter engages in ethnographic research, he is trying to understand his neighbors and enter into their world (yet without sin).

This month I am spending most of my days engaging in two activities that fall under the category of ethnographic research: prayer walking, and community needs surveys. Both activities, I hope will bring about a better understanding of the needs of my community and will give me a deeper burden for my neighbors.

Prayer Walking

The first and most important step in determining the needs of the community is to prayer walk. I can’t believe how often my eyes have been opened as I walked, drove, or rode my bike through my neighborhood and interceded for my neighbors. My wife and I really benefited from a resource on this from Randy Sprinkle called Follow Me: Becoming A Lifestyle Prayerwalker.

The goal of this time is to allow God’s Spirit to open our eyes to the needs in the community. I’m including a few observations of how to make prayer walking a normal and fruitful part of your ministry.

1. Go together – Prayer walking alone is natural and should be happening even if you are walking to the store and back. However, prayer walking with someone else provides accountability and intentionality. It’s exciting to see the insights God gives to someone else, or to see Him confirm something He is speaking to your heart when your partner prays the same thing.
2. Limit conversation and increase intercession – It’s easy to gravitate more towards conversation with a prayer walking partner because it’s more comfortable. Just realize that God is there with you and turn more of your attention to Him than to your partner.
3. Record Your Observations – Take a small notebook and keep track of any major insights or observations that God reveals to you about your community.
4. Share the Stories – If several teams are prayer walking at the same time, come together at a specified time and share what God has shown you.

What ideas do you have to make prayer walking a regular and fruitful part of your ministry? How have you seen it help in developing an ethnographic profile of your community?

Community Needs Survey

Next to prayerful observation, the best way to determine the needs of people in your community is simply to ask them.

I’ve heard of a lot of church planters who develop a short survey (maybe 4 or 5 questions) to determine the needs of their community. When I started a church in Boston, this was one of the first things we did and it is something we will be doing this month. My personal goal is to knock on 1,000 doors and prayerfully receive at least 250 completed surveys.

Of course, there are a lot of ways to do these surveys. We had a lot of success the last time simply standing in a high traffic area and asking people for a couple of minutes of their time. There are a couple of spots that we could potentially do this in our current town but we want to try the door to door thing and see how it goes.

Also, there are a lot of different goals in conducting surveys and certain types of information that people want. Ours is going to be a basic community needs assessment. We want our community to know that we care about them and want to present a positive first impression rather than getting into doctrinal issues.

Here are some of the questions we will be asking:

- What do you think are the greatest needs that this community faces right now?
- Describe the kind of church that you think would meet the needs of this community.
- What advice do you have for me as I start a new church in this area?

I also developed my own series of questions based on the following pictures:

What questions would you ask to determine needs in your community? Would you go door to door or stand on a busy street corner? Other ideas?

How to Stay Connected to Your Sponsoring Church

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This week I have already done a lot of work connecting with churches who are already sponsoring our church plant or are praying about their involvement with us. These churches are supporting us (or potentially going to support us) in a variety of ways: they are praying for us, sending us money, volunteering time, and sharing our vision with others.

This sort of involvement from churches in neighboring towns or from around the country is crucial during the beginning years of a new church. In New England I’ve even heard some denominational leaders say that the typical church plant requires ten years before it is self-sustaining financially. I’m a little bit more optimistic than that, but the truth is, there is a lot of money, time, and resources that need to come from outside before a church can be planted.

So with all of this outside support coming in, what do those of us who are planting churches have to give in return? Is your church plant only receiving and never giving back?

Our church plant has attempted to answer those questions by identifying six ways we can give back to our church planting supporters (we call them planting partners) and stay connected with them.

Six Ways to Stay Connected to Your Sponsoring Church

1. Write a Monthly Newsletter – This doesn’t have to be fancy and it shouldn’t be too long. The goal of your newsletter shouldn’t be fundraising but story telling, vision casting, and glory giving. You are giving back to your supporters when you share stories of transformation and spiritual victories. I think every newsletter, whether it is mailed or emailed should include pictures, stories, praises, and prayer requests. Here’s our most recent newsletter from March to give you an idea. You can sign up for our newsletter here.

2. Pray for the Sponsoring Church – Keep a prayer list of the struggles and needs of your sponsoring church. If you are asking them to pray for you, pray for them too! If we only receive and never give, we get the mentality that our field is more important than the field our sponsoring church is plowing. They have prayer concerns and we should be lifting them up to our Father. After all, He is the One who establishes His church.

3. Share a Church Planting Vision – Your church plant may be the only touch the sponsoring church has with Acts 1:8 types of activities. Use your influence to provide a context where THEY can grow in their understanding of mission activity. For example, if the sponsoring church sends a mission team, train them how to do “evangelism that results in new churches” (HT: JD Payne). The short-term goal is to get a little bit of help in your own neighborhood. The long-term goal is to train them and equip them to engage in the same sorts of activity in their own neighborhood and around the world for the rest of their lives. Make it fun! Teach them! Equip them! Make an impact!

4. Send Them a Video – Related to sharing a church planting vision is the idea of sending a video of greetings, thanks, praise and bullet point prayer requests to your supporters. With vimeo and youtube and a $150 pocket camcorder you can record a simple video that personally addresses your sponsoring church. Keep it under a couple of minutes and they might even show it on Sunday morning to the whole congregation. Or, they might just send an email to their members with a link. Either way, you are able to connect with them in a more meaningful way than just a monthly newsletter. Here’s an example of a friend of mine in New York who has planted a church and stays connected with sponsoring churches with short video clips.

5. Visit Them In Person – Take a week each year to travel and visit as many churches who are supporting you as possible. This will solidify their support when they can hear from you in person. On the other hand, don’t do too much of this because it can be extremely costly and time consuming. If your supporters are in more than a handful of states, or if they are only sending you $25 a month, it might not be worth spending $1000 to fly around and visiting everyone in person (not to belittle the churches that can only send $25/mo). If it works out for you to preach or share your vision at a sponsoring church, then it’s just that much more exposure they have to what God is doing through you in your neighborhood!

6. Build a Website – Any church in the 21st century should invest at least $500 into developing a great website. Even as a church leader I wouldn’t even give a church the time of day if I can’t find them on the internet (okay, I need to exhibit a little more grace than that) but hopefully my hyperbole reveals how important it is for an unchurched seeker to be able to check you out from a distance before diving in headfirst! So, build a website but you should also build a site that is geared towards your supporters. You can set one up in minutes with wordpress or blogger and start to communicate your vision, values, strategy, and demographics of your neighborhood so supporters can get a sense of what they are giving to. Here’s our website as an example.

Bonus Ways to Stay Connected

Many of our supporters are also connected with us here at ChurchETHOS and on Twitter and Facebook. One day maybe I’ll write a separate post on how these tools are helpful for church planters.

So these are six things we have decided to do to stay connected with church planting supporters. Do you think it’s important to stay connected? Or do you feel entitled because your area is the lostest of the lost? What are you doing to stay connected with your supporters?

JD Payne in New England

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Today I was a part of a training event for church planters hosted by the Baptist Convention of New England. The guest speaker was JD Payne, author of “Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting” (Affiliate Link). Everyone in attendance received a copy of the book so I’m sure I’ll be reviewing it here at ChurchETHOS soon.

JD Payne is a national missionary with the North American Mission Board and is an Associate Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY where he also directs their church planting center. He has written two other books and is the founder of northamericanmissions.org.

Here are a couple of insights from JD Payne’s research and missiology from today’s talks (and also from some blog posts and other data I’ve gotten from him in months past):

There are 29 metro areas in the US with fewer than 5% of the population who are evangelical.

When I looked through this data, I discovered that 11 of the 29 metro areas are in New England and I’m living in one of them! Here are some more nuggets:

The way we are planting churches in North America must change. There are 4 billion people around the world who are not following Jesus and 2 billion who have never even heard of him. Our methods need to change if we are going to reach them with the gospel.

Payne’s definition of church planting: evangelism that results in new churches. Question: can you plant a church without evangelism?

If you have a shaky theology then your missiology will be shaky, if your missiology is shaky then your missional practices will be on shaky ground. Our theology informs our missiology informs how we do mission.

Suggested ethical guideline for church planting practices: Since the global need for the gospel is so great, unless God reveals otherwise, we will begin our ministry among people with the greatest need and with a high level of receptivity to the gospel.

Another suggested ethical guideline: Since the world consists of four billion unbelievers, with two billion who have never heard the gospel, our strategy will involve the use of highly reproducible church planting methods.

I couldn’t agree more with JD about these guidelines and some of the thoughts he conveyed at our meeting. I will be sharing more of his insights and my responses in the weeks ahead, but for now I thought I would share some of the highlights!

What are your thoughts to some of his research and insights about church planting in North America?

Embodying Our Faith by Tim Morey

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Embodying Our Faith:
Becoming a Living, Sharing, Practicing Church
by: Tim Morey
Paperback: IVP Books, 2010.
Buy now:  [ Amazon Affiliate Link ]

Tim Morey (D.Min., Fuller Theological Seminary) is a church planter and pastor. His church, Life Covenant Church is located in Torrance, California. He is also on the national church planting team for the Evangelical Covenant Church and is an adjunct professor teaching practical theology at Talbot School of Theology.

Tim Morey asks the following question in his introduction to “Embodying Our Faith”:

“How do we bring the message of Jesus to a culture that is deeply skeptical about truth claims, rejects metanarratives (such as the gospel), considers the church a suspect institution, takes offense at moral judgments and believes any religion will lead them to God?”

When put that way, our task seems a bit overwhelming. However, Morey does a great job of developing a philosophy of church planting for those of us who are church planters while simultaneously making evangelism in a postmodern context a simpler concept to understand. This book is a must read for church planters but it’s also a must read for anyone in the church who seeks to understand how God is moving in our post-Christian, postmodern culture of relativism and how we can join Him in showing love to our neighbors.

Embodied Apologetics

At the root of this book is the concept of “embodied apologetics”. He writes

By this I mean an apologetic that is based more on the weight of our actions than the strength of our arguments.

I underlined this sentence 12 times in my copy of Morey’s book. He’s not saying that we abandon our logical understanding of Truth. In my head I envision a person standing on two feet. One foot represents logical arguments for the gospel. The other foot represents our experience of the gospel. In today’s society, I believe Morey is suggesting that the weight is shifting from one foot to the other; from the logical foot, to the experiential foot. However, we still stand on both feet. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” We need to maintain our understanding of the truth but realize that many people need to see our faith in action before they will ever consider the truth. Morey spends a lot more time explaining an embodied apologetic than most others who have talked about the concept and I appreciate his ability to take an abstract concept and make it concrete.

More from Morey concerning an embodied apologetic:

The Christian life is not meant to be an objective pursuit of orthodox doctrine but is embodied in those who follow a Person rather than a dogma.

Seldom do you find [in the book of Acts] a proclamation of the gospel without an accompanying experience of the gospel.

Contextualization

From describing an embodied apologetic, Morey then turns to contextualization in the chapter entitled, “Same Wine, Different Skin”. Again, he is able to succinctly describe a vision for the present about how we should contextualize the gospel. Morey wants the church to start being on mission. As church members, we are missionaries in our own neighborhood. He writes:

The task of every missionary is to understand the culture to be reached and to bring the undiluted gospel to that culture in a form that will be understandable to the hearers. This process is known as contextualization.

His point is that we shouldn’t think that this process is only for the missionary in Japan who wears a kimono or the missionary in Ecuador who learns to speak Spanish. In our own communities, we need to begin to grasp the “language” of our neighbors and begin to think more missionally about how to share our lives with them. He quotes Eddie Gibbs:

The contextualized church “represents a serious attempt to engage with the cultural setting in which the local church is endeavoring to bear witness,” whereas the market-driven church “signifies a church that tailors its message and employs any gimmick in order to attract a crowd.”

Clearly, Morey believes we should be more relationship-driven and he calls this “the contextualized church”.

Disciplemaking

Evangelizing baby boomers is like picking fruit from an aging tree, while evangelizing postmoderns is like fertilizing the roots in hope that fruit will one day appear.

Agree? Disagree? In chapters 3 and 4, Morey talks about what it means to make disciples in a postmodern context. In Morey’s mind, we shouldn’t be separating evangelism from discipleship. Jesus didn’t seem to reserve spiritual practices only for those who were “members”. Here’s what Morey says:

Jesus seemed largely unconcerned with who was in and who was out (“You do not want to leave too, do you?” [Jn 6:67]), but simply called all to follow regardless of where they were at in the process, always inviting them to go deeper.

In other words, Morey believes that we are seeing a shift in how people come to Jesus and it may not be a one time event…it might be a process. He describes several shifts for us to consider today:

  • Evangelism as an event to evangelism as a process
  • Impersonal evangelism to personal evangelism
  • Rational apologetics to an embodied apologetic

Too often we present the gospel as a set of truths we must subscribe to, as opposed to a relationship with Jesus.

Elements of an Embodied Apologetic

Throughout the book, Morey is developing a way of thinking about the needs of our postmodern neighbors and how the church naturally meets those needs through an embodied apologetic.

An embodied apologetic must be experiential. Our worship gatherings are, by nature, experiential. Especially when we include elements of communion, prayer, silence,  music, food, Psalms, ancient writings, story, giving, art, meditation, preaching, teaching, and benediction as Morey suggests. This experiential worship resonates with postmoderns who have a need for transcendence.

An embodied apologetic must be communal. This happens through our small groups, hospitality in our homes, mentoring, accountability, confession, etc. These practices really meet the needs of postmoderns who are longing for authentic community.

Finally, an embodied apologetic must be enacted. The church should be active in compassion and justice both locally and globally. This meets the needs of postmoderns who are trying to find their purpose.

These three elements of an embodied apologetic – experiential faith, communal faith, and enacted faith – are the subject of the final three chapters of the book. These last three chapters are extremely practical and helpful. Notice also that all three of these expressions of our faith are extremely natural and Biblical. They may not be easy, but this is the essence of how God wants us to live. There is nothing new about the gospel or even about how to share the gospel, Morey simply does a good job of matching the needs of our postmodern neighbors to the fulfillment of those needs in Jesus as we live, share, and practice our faith in front of others.

Church Planting is People Planting

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There’s a lot of imagery in Jesus’ parables of sowing seeds. We use the same imagery when we talk about “church planting”. The essence of church planting is simply sowing seeds of the gospel into our neighbors lives. This becomes harder and harder for established churches as the outward focus shifts inward.

But that’s okay! The good news is that anyone can be a people planter!

Regardless of whether or not we are starting a brand new church or are a part of an established church we can be involved in people planting. Every church leader can invest in people. Every church member can invest in people too! Another way to say that is, we are all called to obey the Great Commandment and fulfill the Great Commission.

Plant a seed. Pray! Water it. Pray! Watch it mature. Pray! Repeat!!

Our neighbors need to know about the good news and all of us are called to share it with them. People planting is about investing in the lives of our neighbors. We need church planters to be people planters. We need established church leaders to be people planters. We need church members to be people planters.

He is like a tree planted beside streams of water
that bears its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers. (Psalm 1:3)

Are you a people planter? Are you equipping others to be people planters?

Marketing Your Church Plant: Biblical Foundations

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Does marketing play a role in the Great Commission? Now that we’ve looked at the philosophical foundations for marketing your church plant, it’s time to consider what the Bible has to say on the matter.

But, does the Bible say anything about marketing? After all, modern marketing techniques didn’t exist when the Bible was written. So, maybe we should ask, “Would Jesus create a website? Would Paul? What about a direct mail campaign or creating a logo? Would they have invested money in spreading the Gospel? Or would they just invest time? Is one more holy than another?

Since there were no facebook ad campaigns in Jesus’ day, we first have to ask, “what is accomplished through a marketing campaign?” I’ve come up with a few reasons why we should use modern marketing concepts to help us reach our neighbors.

1. Church Marketing is Creative

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As His image-bearers, we are creative creatures. God’s children enjoy using their creative abilities to glorify God and it’s no different for those who are versed in graphic design or are able to create a catchy slogan for an invitation. Just because we aren’t using paint or marble, doesn’t mean we can’t use our creative juices to do our best on a website or a postcard.

This is also an argument for bringing excellence to everything we do whether it’s a bulletin, a website, a banner, or a banner ad, but that’s a different discussion. In short, let’s use our creativity as we reach out to our neighbors!

2. Church Marketing is Proclamation

The purpose of sending a mailer, creating a website, or hanging door hangers is to get the word out. We had a new family come to our church this week just because we have a website. Of course, those are the ones looking for a church, but you never know when someone is going to start looking, right? Would we have reached them eventually? Who knows, but we definitely reached them through our website.

Romans 10:14-15 says, “But how can they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How welcome are the feet of those who announce the gospel of good things!”

Do these verses only apply to word of mouth? Or can it refer to sign language, billboards, semaphore, braille, html, and ebonics? Somehow, I get the feeling that we are to use all means at our disposal to reach our neighbors with the gospel! Didn’t Paul say something about that?

Which leads us to the next point…

3. Church Marketing is Contextual

Paul did indeed say that he had become all things to all people that he might by all means save some (1 Corinthians 9:19). Most people in my community work from 7 to 7 so that they can afford the homes they live in. People are more and more anti-social. We want the church to be a communal gathering where we can fellowship but most people don’t know what that’s like.

Modern marketing methods are a form of contextualizing the gospel. My neighbors don’t want to answer the door, but they will watch TV for 3 hours each evening. How will we reach the people who are withdrawn in their own homes, isolated from society except the occasional beer buddy? Well, if they are going to be online, or watching TV, or checking their mail, isn’t it reasonable to find ways to reach them so that we can develop a relationship?

The church should be about relationships, but sometimes people need to be given permission to have relationships. When we use our creativity to love and serve our neighbors, and when we use our creativity to get the word out about what God is doing in our community, we are using contextual methods that work here and now through communication sources that are recognizable and embraced by our neighbors.

4. Church Marketing is Responsible

Church marketing can be creative and contextualized proclamation, but it is also an exercise in stewardship. In “philosophical foundations” I talked about how time and money should both be seen as resources we have been given to use wisely. There are some things that well spent money can accomplish and there are others that can only be accomplished through time. Then there are still other things that use a mixture of both resources. It’s important to note that not all marketing campaigns are a wise investment, but I’m simply making the point that just because it is marketing doesn’t mean it’s not biblical.

In the Parable of the Talents, we see Jesus teaching a spiritual truth using the example of money. The first servant is entrusted with 5 talents and he wisely “puts them to work” and makes 5 more. The second servant is entrusted with 2 talents and he makes 2 more. ”But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.” (Matthew 25:18)

Want to hear his reasoning? “Then the man who had received one talent also approached and said, ‘Master, I know you. You’re a difficult man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. Look, you have what is yours.’” (Matthew 25:24-25) This man didn’t take a chance with the money entrusted to him and the master returned and called him evil and lazy and suggested that he should’ve at least put it in the bank so that he could’ve collected interest.

Do we believe that our money and our resources will multiply just like we expect our time to multiply? Good stewardship of time, money, and resources in an effective marketing campaign can be blessed by God and bring glory to Him. This is being responsible with a portion of our resources to announce an event, a Bible study, a sermon series, etc.

5. Church Marketing is Seed Scattering

Jesus also tells the Parable of the Four Seeds. I was always frustrated at the less than economical way that the sower goes out to sow. Why didn’t they just put all the seeds in the good soil? In this parable, really only one fourth of the seeds that were sown were effective. The rest were eaten by birds, scorched by the sun, or trampled under foot. Seriously, was it that hard to keep the seed off the path?

On the other hand, I wonder if part of the imagery is just to get us to sow the gospel as broadly as possible. Jesus taught huge multitudes and from those crowds, some became disciples. Sure, he also focused a lot of energy on His twelve closest followers, but there were hundreds of committed followers because Jesus sowed broadly. People need to hear and it’s not our job to limit that to just the ones we think want to hear. After all, Matthew 9:38 tells us that we are to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into “His harvest”. It’s His harvest and we are simply sowing seed. Even the seed that falls on the path, among the thorns, or on rocky ground serves a purpose.

As I consider the seed that fell on good soil, I sometimes wonder what it would be like if the sower had spent all his time checking every inch of ground in advance to make sure it was good soil. Would that have been a better use of his time? I believe this parable is giving us permission to use our resources to rapidly and broadly sow the seed so that all of the good soil is found and all of the bad soil is at least invited.

Do you think that some marketing methods today can be a creative, contextual, and responsible way of announcing and broadcasting the gospel?

Marketing Your Church Plant: Philosophical Foundations

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Image courtesy of flicker user au_tiger01

Creative commons image courtesy of flickr user au_tiger01

Would Paul use modern marketing techniques if he was planting churches today?

Did Jesus need a direct mail campaign to establish the Church in the first place? The Church was established and spread through the power of the Spirit and by word of mouth so why would we waste money on telemarketing or a smokin’ website? Why should we waste time developing relationships with social media? Is it a lack of faith? Besides, even today in the Majority World the Church is spreading much in the same way that it did two thousand years ago.

With all the talk today about “viral marketing”, we can only hope (and pray) for the kind of movement that swept through the Roman Empire in the days of Jesus and Paul. In the West in general and the US in particular, it seems like the main technique is to market a worship event through mailers, calls, websites, and tweets. The church that invests the most in these techniques will be the most “successful” (at least numerically, but there are numerous churches who used these techniques and are genuinely making healthy reproducing disciples).

A Simpler Church?

Others in church leadership are calling for a simpler approach; one that rejects all the artificial means of propagating the Gospel and focuses only on personal, intentional, authentic, and meaningful relationships. If truth be told, I lean Continue reading →