Just got back from three fairly intense days of learning about church planting (it was, in fact, called a church planter “boot camp”) and I came away with a little better idea of how to answer questions that many people ask when they learn that I’m going to try to start a new church.

    The first question is almost always, where?  As in, where specifically will you worship?  It’s an understandable question.  We’re used to a specific church being in a specific building at a specific address.  The idea of a church without walls is a new concept for many and when I answer by saying, I really don’t know, I can tell that that’s not a terribly satisfying response.  We won’t know where we’ll start worshiping for a while and what also may seem confusing is that we won’t start worshiping until next spring at the earliest, maybe even the fall of 2010, which seems like a long way away.  One of the key learnings from this boot camp, though, was the need to have a “critical mass” of people before publicly launching worship.  That critical mass could be 75 people, it could be 150, it could be 200.  It all depends on the context and we won’t really know when we have that critical mass until we get down there and start going to work.  If you want to launch a church that has a good number of people, it’s better to launch big.

    The second question--and the asker usually doesn’t know how to ask it--is, how?  As in, how does one actually start a church?  More specifically, how do you get all these people, this critical mass?  That seems to have changed over the years.  Sometimes it’s been all about advertising and mass mailing.  Other times, telemarketing has been key.  Today, though, it seems like nothing replaces old-fashioned networking, getting out there in the community and setting up meetings with anyone who will give you a half-hour or so.  Jim Griffith, who led this boot camp and who co-authored “Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts,” encourages planters to make connections, have coffee, etc. with 25 people a week (50 percent of a planter’s time should be spent networking).  One reason for all those contacts is that a small percentage of those people will actually want to be a part of the church.  One danger in this (for me anyway) will be that I may view all these individuals as commodities rather than people who need to know God’s love.  This will be one of my prayers--to care and pray for all the people I meet with, not just those who are interested in being a part of the church.  I’m excited about it now, but it will be interesting to see how I handle the many times I’ll probably hear, “No, thanks.”