Lee Stephenson: Hey, audience! Welcome to the Unfiltered podcast. Lee Stephenson here. I get to oversee Church Planting with Converge and a local church planter in Orlando, Florida.
Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. And I oversee Church Planting for Converge MidAmerica. And today we're going to be talking about budgeting for multiplication. In other words, how are you kind of thinking ahead? And I know as church planters, oftentimes it's like, hey, we're budgeting to survive to make it to the next week.
Lee Stephenson: I just hope I have a budget, right?
Danny Parmelee: Yeah, yeah. Is there a budget type of thing? And I would even say that I struggled quite a bit, you know, maybe with putting some very practical things. And so that's where I get to kind of ask a lot of the questions here today. Lee, to you - I would love to know just a little bit of your story of practically kind of how you did that. Maybe some larger framework for planters to think about. Starting from the very beginning. How do you intentionally budget for multiplication?
Lee Stephenson: I think it's hard. I mean, I'll just start there. Nobody's gonna force you to do it. And if multiplication really is part of your desire and game plan, you just got to force yourself to almost just put money away and not touch it unless it is truly for launching new congregations. Whether or not that's a church plant, or even a multi-site experience. Just knowing like, it's going to cost. In Arizona, we put about… we started from day one, with 2% of the budget just got set aside for multiplication purposes. That wasn't enough, if I'm honest. You know, we were able to help in the multiplication process. But really, the impact began to take place when we you know, were a sizable church where 2% of budget was actually a significant amount. This time around, we started more with about a 5%. Just setting aside for church planting purposes. And I can tell you that has actually helped us significantly more. To be able to have income, to be able to throw towards any type of multiplication initiative.
Danny Parmelee: Can I ask a practical question? So, when you say, set it aside? What do you mean? Would you put it in? Is it just a budget category that, you know, on paper, you'd see it kind of set aside? Or did you put it in? Okay, it's at the same bank, but it's in its own separate account. Or literally, like, hey, no, this is in something that's difficult to touch. So, I think of like the Dave Ramsey, where it's like, "Okay, put your credit cards in a freezer." No, actually he would say cut them up. But some people would say, "Okay, another option would be, you know, put them in water, put them in the freezer." So, it's like, you could still use it if you really, really, really had to, but it's gonna be a mess, and you're gonna feel really weird, you know, chopping up that, you know.
Lee Stephenson: Yeah, for us, it was just an accounting thing, where, you know, it was, it was all still part of the same pot. You know, where the savings and missions and all that kind of stuff were set aside. But we knew this percentage is, you know, from an accounting bookkeeping standpoint, this is set aside for multiplication purposes. So, this is the money that we're going to use to help launch new churches. My goal is to actually grow that to 10%. But we just knew, like, we've got to get healthy. We've got to get to a place where we're managing, and we're moving forward, and we've got finances to be able to just manage this before we can launch out at that level. And so we started with 5%. My guess is, by year five, we'll probably be close to the 10% mark going towards church planting. We're at three, three years old at this point.
Danny Parmelee: And how do you determine what qualifies for that? And how is it separate than your missions giving? So, in other words, if you're setting aside money for both of those, and then all sudden, there's a church planter that happens to be in the area and like, "Hey, I need a little bit of support." I mean, is that coming out of your multiplication budget? Is it coming out of your missions budget? Who determines that? Or if it's like, well, also in your five or six years in you got $100,000 sitting in the bank for this multiplication, but you haven't? Yeah, so speak to that a little bit.
Lee Stephenson: Yeah, well, we haven't gotten to that point where we have 100,000 sitting in the bank. So that'd be fantastic. Some of it is... Let's say a church planter that's not specifically connected to my church. So it's not somebody we recruited or somebody we raised up from within and we feel like hey, this is something that we should get behind and support. You know, that money will come out of our missions. Kind of our global missions, local missions opportunities. But if it's somebody that's internal, or somebody like we recruited, or they went through our residency program. That's where the multiplication budget gets utilized to kind of help move that forward. So, for instance, like, October 24, I don't know when this will air. It'll probably be later. But October 24 of 2021, we're launching our next congregation. We had significant money that we saved and were able to put towards that. I also then went to the congregation and said, "Hey, would you be willing to give above and beyond towards this initiative as well?" And so in total, we're probably putting about 40 to $45,000 into that launch, right off the bat. And that's from our, you know, that's from our church giving, let alone whatever he was able to raise.
Danny Parmelee: That's great. And actually, you teed me up for the perfect question. I was gonna ask before you even said it. But how much does the congregation know? Like, "Hey, when you give, it's beyond just the lights, we also give to missions. And we also have this type of, you know, we're setting aside money for, you know, we're setting aside money for multiplication."
Lee Stephenson: I remind them big time, like, super clear every year. And then I drop it into conversations throughout the year. And so I do a state of the church address every January. And I just kind of go through, hey, this is all they accomplished last year. From a mission standpoint. You know, from an outreach standpoint, we talked about even the finances. I talk about how many people were bought into the mission because of their giving. Not just those serving with time. And we celebrate it. And then I just talk about, okay, these are the initiatives that we were able to accomplish. Here's where we were expecting to be able to do this year. Your giving making that kind of happen. Even like, a couple weeks ago, we did a commission service for the team that's going to be launching this next congregation. So, we brought up I don't know, 30-35 people on the stage. And we prayed over them as a church and kind of saying, "Hey, this is their last Sunday with us. They're going now and they're going to begin to practice and put all the pieces for this grand opening. It's going to happen in a couple of weeks." But even there, I said, "Guys, we're not taking a special offering in this moment. Because your ongoing giving, we set a portion of that aside in order to be able to support this. So, thank you for just being regular in your giving. And in supporting this because you're making a difference in ways you have no idea."
Danny Parmelee: This is nitty gritty now. But can people give directly to that fund?
Lee Stephenson: Yes.
Danny Parmelee: In other words... Okay, so it can be accounted for in that way. If there was someone who all the sudden was like, "Man, you've talked about this multiplication fund. We want to give directly." Which again, I don't know if we've ever done one on designated giving and the pros and cons to that. But for that, for that one, you do.
Lee Stephenson: Yeah. And we actually name it the congregation. So that way, it has a personal touch to it. But that's where the money is going. It's going into that multiplication fund.
Danny Parmelee: That's great. What advice do you have for church planters starting out then? And especially they might even have advisory team members. They might have board members that are like, "We can't afford this right now. Like, we don't have a worship leader. We don't have a children's ministry director and you're wanting to sock money away for something that doesn't even exist now."
Lee Stephenson: I would liken it to when you get married and decide you're gonna have kids. You know, if you wait till you can afford to have kids, you'll never have kids. I think the same thing is true with church planting and multiplication. It's like, if you wait to the point that you can afford it, you'll never actually do it. And so you need to be intentional from day one. And it's got to be beyond you. Like you've got to... As you're raising up key leaders and staff people and elders, like you've got to educate them why this is important. Why we're involved in doing this. So that way, like if you drop dead of a heart attack, the mission continues. Like they're gonna continue to multiply versus all the sudden, it's like, we're not gonna give the church planting. That was his thing. You know, to me, that shows a lack of overall leadership, if that becomes the framework if you're not there.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah. And I don't know what the current statistics are of church plants that actually reproduce by year five or six or seven. But what I've recognized is that almost every church planter starts out with that vision. And then it slowly wanes. And so, if you don't start it, even on paper, and put some budget, put some money towards it, it just makes it that much easier to kind of forget about it. And all the sudden, you know, you don't care about multiply to other churches. You're so focused on just, you know, growing yours or keeping yours alive.
Lee Stephenson: Exactly. And so, you've just got to budget it. You got to make it very... be very intentional. And again, like, we're not going to change the status quo in our country. We're not even going to keep up with the status quo in our country, if we don't learn how to even reproduce from within. So, we've got to learn to raise up leaders and send them out the door. How can we raise them up if we sit there and go, "Well, you know, we gave you an opportunity to preach, but we're not going to support you financially." Like it's got to be all or nothing. And so, I just want to challenge our church planters. Like don't just plant one church, plant multiple churches. And just see what God could do in that. But I do know, statistically churches that do multiply, seem to have a greater impact in their own local context faster than they would if they didn't.
Danny Parmelee: Yeah. Which again, it's, you know, seems counterintuitive. You're giving away money. You're giving away people. And yet your church is growing at a faster pace than those that are tightly fisted with the people's money.
Lee Stephenson: Exactly, exactly. Fun conversation. Be intentional church planters, pastors. And let's help make a difference. And let's plant more churches and more congregations that are healthy and are going to impact their community. Thanks for tuning in everyone. This has been the Unfiltered podcast. Till next time, keep it real.