MauriceStargell.com

It’s amazing to see what God has done in less than 2 months here at Hope Church. In January of this year, we were a “core team” of about 35-40 people, preparing to launch Hope Church. Now, less than 8 weeks later, there are about 200 people who are regular attenders or members of Hope Church.

Every single day I have friends, pastors, and people who follow our journey ask me how we’re doing as a new church plant. So I wanted to post a blog with a real & honest update which hopefully will not only encourage you by our journey, but will also show some of the challenges we’ve faced thus far.

Let me start by saying there are a number of things that we didn’t do well…I could list many things, but here’s the one thing that quickly comes to mind:

• As a core team preparing to launch, we didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked at engaging our culture missionally. We discussed it, we even had whiteboard planning sessions where we strategized about how we would connect with, engage, and serve our culture missionally; and although we did some things in this area well, I still feel that we just didn’t get out and engage our culture as much as we could have.

Here’s what we did do…We spent much of our time in the months leading up to our public launch focusing on a few simple things:

1. Leadership & staff development – for us, that started with Elder’s Candidate Training, developing a biblical model of church government and eldership for the care and shepherding of the flock, and also for developing a strong, broad base within our pastoral leadership. This has proven to be one of the main ingredients in the strength and health of our brand new church.
2. Growth Track & Systems – developing our process for discipleship, and developing our model for authentic biblical community (Grace Groups). Grace Groups will likely launch in May.
3. Sound Theology & Gospel Centralty – for us, that simply meant teaching and preaching the Gospel, exegetically, to our core, and shaping our community theologically around the historic tenants of the Christian faith. It also means practicing repentance and exercising church discipline when necessary.
4. Environments - casting the vision for what our adult worship, children’s, parking lot, and connections environments would look like.

I know that may not sound very deep or fancy, but that’s a big part of what we did. And on January 31, 2001, Hope Church launched at the Clayton County Schools Performing Arts Center with 253 people in attendance. Click HERE to see a video snippet of our launch service. The following 2 weeks after our launch, our Sunday attendance averaged around 165 people, and new people have continued to come every week since our launch.

One of the major keys that has contributed to the health of our new church is that we were very intentional about thinking and planning beyond the event of the launch. A mistake that I’ve seen many church planters make is that during the pre-launch phase, they spend almost all of their time planning for “Launch Sunday” and they end up giving very little thought to what happens “after” launch Sunday. For us, being intentional about thinking beyond the launch meant asking and answering tough questions like:

• How do we prepare to not only draw a large crowd at our launch, but more importantly, how will we retain and shepherd the people God brings us. For us, being “attractional” was important, but being “missional and incarnational” was just as important if not more important. This balanced emphasis has served the health and growth of our new church very well.
• How will we assimilate these new people into the life of our new church?
• What ”series of teachings” would I preach that would carry us deep into the Gospel weeks beyond launch Sunday?
• What series of teachings will follow our launch series (2-3 months beyond our launch)?
• How will we capture important information from our attenders?
• How will we follow-up on attenders?
• What will be our model for church membership?
• How will we exercise healthy, biblical church discipline?
• How can we be intentional about developing a congregation that’s cross-cultural and cross-generational while remaining gospel-focused?

Answering those questions served us well in not only fleshing out the feel & DNA for the type of church we would be, but also in preparing us to be a healthy, growing community of believers far beyond launch Sunday.

Here’s a few more random thoughts for you church planters…

1. Saturate yourself in the study of God’s word and in prayer, and give a clear, strong presentation of the Gospel each and every week. You’ll get pressure from a lot of people to be a lot of things (political voice of reason, fighter of world tyranny, community activist, international crusader against global injustice, etc.) And from time to time you’ll need to be those things as a pastor. But remember, your primary calling from Jesus is to feed His sheep. So don’t apologize for spending great time in God’s word, because when you don’t, the people will know it.
2. Develop a rhythm as soon as possible that as to how you will map out your work week. The fact is, once the new church is launched, the lead planter turns into the lead pastor, and his schedule goes from”very busy” to “borderline chaotic” and all of a sudden, not only are all your days filled must-do’s, but now there’s something going on every evening that could require all of your time — at the expense of your family.
3. Learn to delegate. Learn to say no. Develop a culture within your new church that says the lead pastor does not have to be present at every meeting, event, or gathering. The sooner you do this, the better it will be on your family.
4. Pick a day that will be your day off — and stick to it. On that day, rest, relax, and enjoy your family.
5. Don’t frustrate yourself by trying to do everything that you see every other church do. Just be who God called you to be within the cultural context that He planted you. What worked for me or some other guy in another city might not work the same way for you. So grapple to get God’s heart for your city and for the people He has entrusted to you.
6. Enjoy the journey.

After almost 2 months into our new church plant, I can honestly say that I’m so humbled and honored to be the lead pastor of this beautiful community of Christ worshipers called Hope Church. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.

To God Alone be the Glory…

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