Lee Stephenson: Hey, welcome to the Unfiltered podcast. My name is Lee Stephenson, church planter in Orlando and executive director of Church Planting for Converge.
Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica.
Lee Stephenson: And today in our podcast, we're going to talk about kind of that last push when it comes to getting ready for your grand opening. You know, it's kind of like the dream is upon us. It's like, we're actually this thing is going to become a reality kind of moment, Danny. I know it's been a long time. But can you think back to those pre-launch days a little bit? And what was it like leading up to your grand opening? Kind of that final month of push.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah, that was a long time ago. But I will say that I do remember that very clearly. I have some very vivid memories, even of launch day itself. Those are one of those things where they just seem to get cemented into your mind. A lot of anticipation. I think a lot of fear mixed in there as well, too. I just know that for me, there was a lot of personal invitation and encouraging the team to do personal invitation. And I understand that there's probably a good amount of listeners, maybe where there's a move away from kind of the launch large kind of idea. However, I still just think it is really important, as much as you can to do a ton of invitation. And the reason I say that is because on your launch Sunday, you get an opportunity to cast some vision to the people that are there. But you also are going to cast vision to people who aren't there in the sense that on that launch Sunday, you have a photographer there, those are the pictures that you know, you'll be able to use on social media, put on your web. You're basically casting vision, saying, "This is what we believe God might have for us." So it's okay to invite family and friends and business owners and Christians and non-Christians and everybody you can to kind of celebrate it. And I think that I think that God wants us to celebrate that. So it's not just a matter of, you know, stacking the deck or padding the numbers or trying to make us look like something that we're actually not, but to celebrate the launch in the life of a brand new church. So how about you, I'm sure you can remember, and you've got two experiences, and maybe some differences. And maybe after you went through one what you may be changed and did differently the second time around?
Lee Stephenson: Well, I'm gonna key on what you just said, I think that last month, you're exactly right. Like, you've got to push hard and just get the word out. People tend to be more willing to come to a grand opening experience than any other experience. Especially if you know, like, hey, maybe there's some swag or you know that, you know, there's food or something like that involved. It's amazing, who shows up that you would never think, you know, would come but because some reason because it's a grand opening the newness, people feel like there's a level of safe because everybody is new. And I remember like, I was inviting everybody. I mean, the manager, the cashier at the grocery store. I mean, you know, going in and finding the waiters, you know, the waiting staff at the local restaurants. I mean, it was just like, if you would give me five seconds, I'm gonna invite you to come to our church, that last month. And then encouraging your team to do the same. At the same time, I can remember both times, there were these moments where we've done all the work. Like children's ministry squared away. We know what worship songs have been picked out. I pretty much finalized my sermon up at that point where it's kind of like, you're kind of twiddling your thumbs wondering man, I hope somebody shows up on our grand opening. And that feeling didn't leave that entire month leading up and then even within the minutes before the service started, standing out on the sidewalk. You know, kind of going, "God, I hope somebody shows up besides my family, when it comes to our grand opening."
Danny Parmelee: Okay, without going on too much of a rabbit trail here... So you'd stand out on the sidewalk greeting people coming in, in comparison to, "Oh my goodness, I'm going to go in the back room, in the green room and just put on my final touches on my sermon." Importance of being out front not only for launch, but I don't know. For however long the life of the church. Any thoughts on that? I certainly have some strong opinions on it. But...
Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I think you got to be out there. People need to know that you like people. You know, yeah...
Danny Parmelee: That's why I got out of this business.
Lee Stephenson: I think the second thing is early on in the life of your church, you truly are the cultural architect of everything that is important to the vision actually becoming a reality. And so some of it is like that first impression is so important. I encourage pastors like you need to observe how your team is doing. So you can quickly make adjustments, if necessary. And if you're hiding away, there's no ability for that to actually take place. And so own that and you've got to shake hands. And if you don't like people, fake it. Like, stand on the sidewalk, be in the lobby, be somewhere where you're visible we can see. And I think it's...there comes a switch as your church grows in age and in size. But I honestly think like, your church goes from zero to 200. Somewhat, again, this is contextual, but somewhat based on a pastor's relational ability.
Danny Parmelee: Yes, yes.
Lee Stephenson: It's not your preaching.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah. Yeah. Because you can get better preaching other places. I will...I almost always say that first 200, 250 people are coming because of the direct relationship or perceived relationship that they have with you. Which is kind of scary, to be honest. And it's great when it does move beyond that, but I 100% agree. So...
Lee Stephenson: Well, it's really scary if you don't like people like Danny.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah, so which, by the way, Lee does coaching and consulting and strategic planning. I do coaching and consulting on how to "fake-like" people, right? Yeah. So my fees are more expensive than his. But no, I...
Lee Stephenson: Well, that's a harder skill set. I would agree.
Danny Parmelee: But I think as long as you can, as a pastor to be out there, meeting people, getting to know people. And again, like Lee said, observing your team. I have seen pastors that, "Nope, I really, you know, the sermon is the most important part, so I just need to get in the green room. And I'm just going to pray ." Which I think that is great. Pray. Love the idea of the emphasis of the sermon, but you missed tons. I've seen pastors where it's like, they're, whether it's their greeting team, or parking team is just doing stuff that's absolutely crazy. And they don't know because they just come out of, you know, the room, to jump up on stage and to deliver the sermon. And so they're missing the other parts of kind of, you know, as greeting people as they're coming. And so anyways, that's a little bit of a rabbit trail, but maybe that is part of it. Preparing yourself for the amount of emotional and relational connection that you're going to need to make in that month, preceding both as you're inviting people. But then once they come, how will you do that? You know, how will you continue to, you know, invite people in?
Lee Stephenson: And I want to piggyback on an important word, you talked about preparation like this. I'm going to say it and it may even tick some people off. Like if you are showing up in the early days of your church plant and you're hiding away in an office space somewhere and going over your sermon, you haven't prepared well enough, during the week. Get up an extra hour early on Sunday morning, or something of that sort, so that you can have your run throughs and all that and feel comfortable. And then you've got to be seen. Like you've got to, you've got to smile, you got to shake hands, you got to meet people. Now there comes a place where you do have to adjust. You know, when we were, for instance, in our first church plant, when we got up to four services on a Sunday, the crowd is bigger. And the energy output is much more extensive.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah.
Lee Stephenson: And so that the challenge of preaching four times and then interacting between every single service with a large crowd of people. The energy output is just extreme. And so I found I had to, I had to monitor my energy so that, you know, the first two services didn't just get a phenomenal sermon, but the last two, got just the same quality of sermon experience. And the only way to do that was adjust how much time I could spend with people. I still like doing it. And so I, I would go, "Hey, this service, I'm going to spend a little bit more time in the lobby. And then the next two services I'm not. And then I'll come out at the end of this service," you know, that that kind of thing. But I also had to have a really trained security team to get people off of me when you know... Because you have certain people that just they will manipulate your time and they'll take all the time of in between services. You've got to figure out ways to be able to navigate that tension as well.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah. While we have really diverted. I think we need to make a whole episode on this, which is good. Another thing I think leading up to that month, which does deal with preparation is your own preparation of expectation. Because you had mentioned, like, hey, we did this. And you know, we got the children's ministry. We have, you know, all these different things in place. We've invited people. I think one of the most important things that you can do is sit yourself down first, your team second, and to say, hey, we've done everything. Now we're going to enjoy this time. And let's work through our own heart and be okay with who God brings. Because you could, you could go in different directions. You could just be thoroughly disappointed. You know, you expected more people to come. Or it could go to pride in the other direction, where you just think you're so awesome, because you got all these people. So really centering yourself, making it about Christ. And you know, making sure they're saying, "Hey, we did everything we can. We've been faithful. But now we're just going to enjoy this moment and allow God to do what he's gonna do through the life of the church and the people that have chose to show up to this launch and grand opening." And, you know, the following weeks after.
Lee Stephenson: Yeah, and I, I would, I would even go as far like, just plan something fun. Plan a get together. Kind of a prayer party, where, hey, we're going to spend a few minutes praying for the grand opening. But we're just going to hang out. We're going to eat some good barbecue and just play some games and just hang out. Like, try to help release not only your tension, and anxiety, but other people's as well. And I would even say another thing to plan for in that last month is plan to do at least one if not two, full run throughs. So it's like set up and tear down. Set up the entire children's space. Make sure that, you know, if you have an information kind of welcome table, like set that up. Put everything out. Make sure you understand where it needs to go. And you may set it up and say in a lobby of a school and go, "Yeah, no, it doesn't look right there, we thought it did. So let's find a better spot to put that." But it's good for your setup and teardown team just to practice pulling everything out, and putting it all back in. Rolling it back onto a trailer. And so you can almost get down to the minute, hey, it should take us this amount of time in order to do this. Or we were planning for an hour to set up everything. And the reality is it took us an hour and 15 minutes. So if we did that on our grand opening, our service time will actually get started late. So we need to recruit two more people to actually come and serve on that team in order for us to hit our time constraints.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah, totally. Going back to expectation. I may have shared this before. But one of my favorite exercise to do with church planters and then encourage them to do with their team is before the event to actually write out your quantitative expectations. So we'll and you can do this for a number of different things. But what's your realistic number? So asking the church planter, "What do you really...how many people do you really think are going to show up?" So they might say, "200." And then I say now give me your this number is a "Oh my goodness, God just blew these expectations out of the water!" What's that number?
Lee Stephenson: 201
Danny Parmelee: Yeah. 400. And then, and then the, what's the "Oh my goodness, life sucks, I can't believe it numbers" like, you know, 50. And so you do it yourself first. And then the best thing to do is to do it as a team, but no one shares their numbers aloud while they're kind of doing this exercise. And then you go around the room. And that will be fascinating for you. Because I just remember that people were all over the board and just for you, as a leader to now know that, oh, that person's expecting, you know, 50. That person is expecting 1000 people to show up. So they may be disappointed if only 200 show up. But then you kind of work through that. And so you're doing that. But then you're also training them as future leaders how to set expectations and a small exercise as they have, you know, you know, the small groups team or the greeting team and as they do different things. So I don't know, it's just kind of a fun one. And then it's fun after the fact to go through and to kind of share whether it's at one of these prayer parties or celebrations. You know, kind of how are your expectations met or not met and for you, because I think we kind of trick ourselves. We adjust our numbers afterwards. But sometimes we're kind of, you know, I don't know, just trying to be self protective, I guess in our own unmet expectations. So I just I like to write them down, put the numbers down, and then share them with people.
Lee Stephenson: That's why church planters have to learn the art of counting pregnant people as two.
Danny Parmelee: Yes, absolutely.
Lee Stephenson: Help cushion those numbers up a little bit. No, I think that's a great exercise, Danny. And I've never actually heard of that kind of idea going with your launch team. But I think there's a lot of wisdom to just getting people's expectations out there besides the church planner. Because I know I've had my expectations and may have shared that with my, my inner circle. But I think it would be a great exercise to get the entire team at that point kind of sharing and talking and, and then pray together and then celebrate whatever God does.
Danny Parmelee: One of our...I just remember one of our campus launches. One of our staff members put down for their realistic expectation 50 people. And I said, "We have 50 volunteers that are needed." So. So you're essentially... I mean, and again, this just was in line with this person's personality and everything, but it was just kind of good to know. And of course, it created tons of laughs by the other people as they were ranging from, you know, 500 to 1000. You know, a couple people had, you know, lower 200s type of thing, but then, but, you know, for someone to put down 50. You think 50 people are going to show up? Wow, where's your faith? So. So, we chastised him in front of everybody.
Lee Stephenson: Good, good. I think that's appropriate now. Well, I...this is fun conversation. And the reality is that last month will probably move a little slower than you realize it will move. But just make it about team building. Get them focused. Spend time in prayer. And write out that first sermon, which it is a vision type of moment that it's a critical moment really in the ongoing life of your church. How do you coach church planters, Danny? About like, what do you say on your first Sunday?
Danny Parmelee: Yeah, well, I mean, and we do this just even in the exercise with Assessment Center. But of just knowing your audience. Who's showing up? And just expect that you're gonna have nonbelievers there. So it there has to be and I, you know, I encourage gospel invitation weekly, if you can type of thing. But it has got to be so palatable for the new person that's coming in. And I think the biggest vision casting that you can do is not vision casting of how big the church is going to be, but vision casting for a changed life. Okay, so that new person that's coming in, they don't care if you were like, "Hey, someday we're going to be a church of, you know, 2000 people and do X, Y, and Z and have a big build." They don't care about that. Give them cast vision for what it looks like when an individual's changed. And then their families changed. And then a neighborhood has changed in a community. So I say cast vision really, on that personal level and not not so much on the organizational level.
Lee Stephenson: Good, good and and share it. Yeah, share about your family. Give them the ability to connect with you as a person besides just your organization. And that will lead...that will help create that early momentum that you need in the life of your church. Well, great conversation and just talking about that last month before your grand opening. Thanks, everybody for tuning in. Until next time, keep it real.