Welcome to Missional Journey

...thoughts on Missional churches, missional people and how a church planting movement might be fostered in the Texas District, LCMS.

Some have been gleaned from others who are writing, speaking and living with church planting everyday. Some are my own thoughts from my own experience with church planters and missional churches. Your comments and reactions are welcomed.


God's Blessings as you continue on your own missional journey.
Paul Krentz
Mission and Ministry Facilitator
Texas District, LCMS

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Facilitating Church Planting Movements #4 - Factors for Higher Attendance in new church plants

Stetzer has done significant research into factors that contribute to higher attendance in new church plants. Here is what he found

Factors for Higher Attendance

Meet in a school for first year
• Meet in a school or theater in subsequent years
• Conduct special children's' events (e.g. fall festival)
• Mailing invitations to services, programs, events
• Conducting regular new member classes
• Use a membership covenant signed by new members
• Plant at least 1 daughter churches within 3 years of initial church plant
• Having a proactive stewardship development plan enabling the church to become financially self-sufficient
• Having multiple staff members (can be volunteer or part-time) rather than a single staff member at beginning of church plant
• Financial compensation for planter (from a variety of sources)
• Planter receiving health insurance, whereby majority of premiums were paid by church plant, sponsoring church, and/or denomination
• Conducting block-party as outreach event (in neighborhoods)
• Working full time over part-time or half-time as church planter
• being assessed prior to planting the church as the church planter
• Having the church planter's expectation realized

What Stetzer says does not work: You do not get a church planting movement by creating non-reproducible models. i.e. - you can't reproduce a plant in which you invest $500,000. The denomination can't do it and the planted church can't do it. Planters and churches reproduce in the way that they were produced! If the investment is too high – expectations for next plant are so high that reality can never match (Ed Stetzer has planted 5 churches and never received more than $20,000 from the denomination)

Probably no church plant has all of the factors that Stetzer has found contribute to higher attendance. Some of them are out of the control of the planter or planting congregation. But, many can be done no matter what kind of plant is being pursued.

In the Texas District, LCMS we have been saying that the right person, the right place and the right plan need to be in place in order to receive funds from the Board of Mission Administration. Stetzer's list affirms those three criteria.

3 comments:

pastorp said...

As I read the "higher attendance" insights, I was genuinely amazed at how perfectly they lined up with our own personal experiences at Water's Edge (mission plant in Frisco). Paul, you're right, this dude knows what he's talking about!

Paul Krentz said...

I'm glad Ed Stetzer has been researching and writing. People like you know intuitively what needs to be done. Stetzer's research affirms it. The good news is that his work also helps those who don't have that intuition to benefit from his work and not have to reinvent the wheel every time a new mission starts

Anonymous said...

Paul, thanks for posting this excerpt from Stetzer. It helps me, especially the point about the budget: churches can't reproduce differently than the mother church was produced.

I've experienced that myself in a context where the vision for church planting a daughter church took second seat to the need to build a building, and then the subsequent debt that the church struggled to address.

By God's grace, He uses all kinds of approaches to church planting. But for my part, I want to be a part of the kind of missional movement that Stetzer describes here.

Thanks again.