Ideas for recruiting for a church plant:
or as my friend Frank Abt phrased it —“How do you go about recruiting for a church plant?” For an intro to this post see yesterday’s post.
1. If you are going to try to start a church by gathering Christians to help you:
- Pray that God will draw the workers you need to you and to your vision.
- Talk about the vision God has given for the new church to everyone you can, everywhere you can.
- Call people to come and help you change the world.
- Call people from an ethnic diversity that will help you reflect the target community.
- Don’t apologize for what you don’t have (a place, stuff, etc.) or can’t do (pay).
- Consider calling people from other parts of the country to come and help you. Do it personally, not by letter.
- Go big with your challenges. Don’t be afraid to ask people to get new jobs, sell homes, move, etc. Give the challenge; ask them to pray; and let God take care of the results. They may not come but their vision of the missio dei will grow.
- Advertise in the community for un-connected Christians. Screen them well. You don’t need malcontents. But if they just haven’t found a church yet, gather them in and nurture them for the glory of Christ and the missio dei. Try message boards at coffee shops and anywhere you can find them.
- Don’t take anyone from any church, “brick” or “organic” without talking to the pastoral leadership of the church they are leaving.
- Talk to a mother church and ask for a hunting license to gather from the congregation the workers you want. Ask the mother church to release one its elders.
- Ask to teach an elective Sunday school class at the mother church. Call it something like “How to grow a church from scratch.” As content, teach from the book of Acts and use it to explain your philosophy of ministry and approach to disciple making. It will give you a chance to surface some people in whom God is doing a work, answer the questions of those in the mother church who are wondering why the church is planting another church, and find some prayer warriors for the work.
- For more ideas, find a mentor; every planter needs a mentor.
- If you live in DE, IL, WI, IN, MD, OH, PA, NJ, SC or TN, contact me (Chosen-Rebel@hotmail.com) for one of my mentor groups.
2. If you are planting a church with a more missional focus whether “organic” or “brick:”
- Pray for boldness to proclaim the gospel not just make friends.
- Spend 60% of your ministry day in building relationships, serving the community and proclaiming the gospel.
- Train everyone, (in English, the word “everyone” means “EVERYONE”) to proclaim the gospel.
- Read and digest Bill Fay’s Share Jesus Without Fear. [I will write about Bill Fay’s five questions on Thursday.]
- Use Bill Fay’s five questions to train everyone to move normal conversations toward the gospel verities comfortably and clearly.
- Adopt an Intensely Local philosophy of ministry.
- Train all new believers to tell their network of relationships of their conversion. (see third bullet point above).
- Train them (the new believers) to share their testimony. (You will be amazed at how effective they are.)
- As the church grows, (whether brick or organic) protect at least 20% of your time to continue your relational building and personal proclamation opportunities in the community.
- Set up a time to meet with your mentor to pray for your boldness in proclaiming the gospel.
- If you don’t have a mentor, contact me (Chosen-Rebel@hotmail.com) and I will try to find you one in your area through my network of contacts.
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