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You only launch once!
Andy Moyle explains why it's well worth putting in the time and effort to launch well.
Most church plants double in size leading up to, during and just after the time that they start a public Sunday gathering – launching.
When to launch
In most settings, church planters aim to launch when they can be confident of 50 on a Sunday. Fifty means the meeting won’t rattle – there will be enough people to do a Church meeting well and visitors will think I can stay.
Don’t launch too early or too late! Early would be before you can sustain a Sunday meeting with worship, preaching and kids work. Conversely if you wait too long the plant looses momentum and the people loose enthusiasm.
Church attendance has natural peaks and troughs. August is usually a low time if you have young families with school age kids– although in recent plants we have found September to be the low month as empty nesters and families with pre-school age children go on holiday when it is cheaper but still warm abroad! Church attendance usually peaks between October and Christmas and from February to May. It is therefore best to launch in October or February to make the most of the peaks in attendance.
Launching a church is like launching a space rocket – incredible amounts of energy are required to get off the ground and then life can settle into a more long-term sustainable energy expenditure. Teach your pioneers to expect it to be exhausting for the first few months and encourage people not to go away for weekends for the first 6 months to get the Church off the ground.
Preparing to launch
The general consensus is a nine month lead into the launch Sunday.
Get your core together to brainstorm ideas to publicise the launch – this will create ownership as people will own their ideas. Once the board is full of ideas, work through them together to pick out the high-impact – low resource ideas. The ideas that will make the maximum impact, be seen, heard or reacted to by the most people and that cost the least in terms of money and people resource.
For instance a banner in the town centre hanging on the wires used for Christmas lights will cost around £50 for the banner (Ebay is brilliant for 9ft by 30” PVC printed banners!) and will require someone getting permission from the landlords of the two shops the wires run between and permission from the council. (That will take a few months to do, believe me!). But for £50, 3 letters and half an hour to put it up, thousands will see your church in the high street.
Leafleting every home in your target area is a fairly high people intensive task – for middle class semi-detached areas you can deliver 150 leaflets an hour. Terraced houses hundreds more!
We gave out 500 printed balloons to children on a Saturday morning, which gave us the opportunity for a brief conversation with the parents and to hand over a leaflet.
Other ideas are Christmas present wrapping stalls, coffee and hot cross buns and DVD’s about your plant
Creativity in coming up with newsworthy events is well worth the time and fun – newspapers want intriguing stories and photo opportunities.
Budget big for the launch.
One month before
Have some practice Sundays, to make sure the PA is right, the song projection works, the kids team get to practice and the refreshments are just right. Tony Thompson tells the story of the church plant launch where the overhead projector didn’t work and the PA was awful with the mayor there!
Read the visitor friendly page and make sure your setup and people are the most welcoming they can be.
It is worth starting with a sermon series that means you can say “Come again next week when we will…”
Visit every visitor as quickly as you can. According to Joel Comiskey’s Cell research if you visit within 36 hrs and 85% return, within 72 hrs 60%, within a week and 15%. I have found the same to be true of Sundays. In those first few months I sent far more time visiting new people and sharing the vision than preparing sermons.
Remember you only launch once, until you launch again for a venue change, first full timer…
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