Twenty-first century church planters may want to imitate the pastor who launched his outreach with an electronic strategy that included a blog, Twitter and Facebook. He was so avid sending Facebook messages to prospective attendees that the network expelled him until he persuaded them that he wasn’t selling anything.
Veteran church planter Ed Stetzer shared that story during the opening session of a recent church-planting conference in Louisville, Ky.
“He planned this all out and had 500 people come to his first service because of a Facebook and Twitter strategy,” said Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research in Nashville. “I was kind of surprised. The church is doing well.”
One reason the former seminary professor thinks the approach worked is people had been checking out the pastor’s messages for three months prior to the inaugural service.
“High Touch” Still Alive
“High tech” methods don’t necessarily eliminate “high touch,” though. Stetzer spelled out numerous ways new churches seek to reach their communities, including forming partnerships with established congregations.
That may lead to a method he favors—hand-addressing envelopes, a task that can be handled by a large congregation. Hundreds of churches have relied on another’s members to take a $44 mission trip, or the cost of 100 stamps to mail announcements about the first service.
Large churches can handle 10,000 envelopes at a time. One new congregation enlisted enough partners to send out 80,000 pieces of first-class (never bulk) mail.
Make sure volunteers follow the direction for hand-addressing, Stetzer said, recalling the time someone put the list onto his computer and ran labels. That defeats the purpose of hand-addressed envelopes, which most people are more likely to open.
The most common method of promotion is direct mail of a brochure or announcement. Advertising is another way new churches reach their communities, something that Stetzer said often draws frowns from missional advocates who see that as appealing to consumerism.
However, he said it doesn’t have to, recalling the time he responded positively to a telemarketing call because it came at a time he was looking at doing home improvements.
“Ninety-nine people (out of 100) don’t like telemarketers, but one guy turns to his wife and says, ‘We ought to put siding on the house,'” Stetzer said. “It’s the same thing with church plants (advertising). Some guy turns to his wife and says, ‘Honey, we ought to get back in church.'”
Among other outreach possibilities he reviewed:
- Telemarketing, generally handled by an outside firm that asks a few questions. When it identifies interested persons, the church follows up with several mailings.
- Newspaper advertising, although he says that usually covers too broad an area, unless it’s a community or ethnic newspaper.
- Billboards in a particular area.
Launch is a Big Deal
Promotion is important because the first service, typically called the launch, is a big deal. Stetzer compares it to a store’s grand opening, saying it’s much easier to get the public to attend the first of anything.
“Getting them to come to the first thing is a key thing and making a big deal about the first day is a big thing,” he said.
The best time of year to start a church is the fall, generally between two weeks after Labor Day and mid-October. Stetzer likes it better than the spring. Not long after Easter attendance fades when people return to their “native” church for Mothers Day, followed by summer vacations, he said. While summer is generally a poor time to start a church, he said the exception is a resort area, where vacationers flocking to the area swell the potential attendance pool.
Relying on God
Although Stetzer spent a good portion of his session discussing planting tools, he included the admonition that a church should never start until it has its theological approach in place.
He also reminded attendees that the most crucial element of the process is God’s involvement. To illustrate, he concluded with the story of his second church start in Erie, Pa.
A core group of 25 to 30 people had overseen the mailing of 50,000 pieces of mail and calls to several thousand homes, with about 200 expected for the launch service.
The day before the launch, Stetzer lost his voice. He asked for members of a church from Virginia who had come to help to lay hands on him and pray. It didn’t work. The next morning he could still only speak in whispers.
After arriving at the site, Stetzer asked, “God, what are you doing? I don’t understand.”
Then, five minutes before the start time, as he was ready to tell other members to go on without him, God healed Stetzer. Not only was he able to preach, but ultimately more than 230 showed up for the service.
Afterwards, people went outside, where the core group had set up a tent with refreshments. As they milled around, a TV reporter approached to ask, “What do you think about the first day of your new church, reverend?”
When Stetzer went to answer, his voice was gone. Today, it trembles when he shares what God did that day.
Stetzer thinks that God wanted to remind him that you can do everything right and plant a church that’s a monument to self, or trust God and let Him do far more than you think is possible.
“I thought I knew that going in, but I learned that God wanted to humble me and remind me it’s not by might and not by power, but the Spirit of God that the church needs to be planted,” Stetzer said.
By Ken Walker, © 2009 ChurchCentral.com
