Launching Large

I’ve been focusing on starting churches with little or no money. It can be done and it has been done since the beginning of church. Small, reproducible churches are relevant in any context.

However, I am by no means against starting large churches. Very few people have been able to successfully launch and sustain large churches in the Orlando metro. A few have done very well. If you want to launch larger (100+ people), let me encourage you to do the following things:

• Fast and pray, go on a spiritual retreat... cry out to God... beg and plead with Him to let you do something else
• Keep your day job as long as possible
• Kill your ego
• Listen to your wife
• Define church
• Read, attend seminars and interview respectable people who know church planting
• Do an internship under a successful church planter (6 mos. – 1 year)
• Get to know… really get to know… fall in love with … be willing to die for your community
• Build a team that compliments your weaknesses
• Focus on mission, not launch
• Don’t be driven by calendar – establish critical milestones instead
• Enlist as many partner churches as you can – at least 3, preferably 5 or more
• Start and multiply missional small groups before renting, building or buying a building
• Don’t launch publicly until you have 50-80 committed adults
• Raise 2x the money you think you will need, no 3x and don’t stop
• Commit to nothing less than regional transformation... develop a Biblical view of what a transformed region will look like... find your part in it and communicate it with passion

Let me know if you have anything to add to this list

Whispering Pines Community Church

Billy and Ellie Mitchell were forced out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina only to face another hurrican in SE Florida a month later. Now, they are planting a church in Port St. Lucie. Check out this video of Whispering Pines Community Church.