Launching Courageous Church has been the most exciting, challenging, rewarding endeavor of my life. I am not an expert though. I regularly guess and experiment. Sometimes I guess correctly.
Here are my 10 favorite correct guesses :-)
I have made a gazillion mistakes since we launched though (I list 10 here).
In the spirit of keeping it real, I laid out some brutally honest facts about our church here.
Church planting has been way harder than I expected. A few months ago I wrote about 10 of those difficulties.
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All of that said, I think we’ve learned a few transferable strategies on how a church can have a big launch (or grand opening) in large cities. Understand this, everything that we’ve done is not transferable. You must find your own voice/expression/strengths in your own context. Too often, church planters, with a genuine heart to grow a church, end up wrongly mimicking every detail of something they saw at their favorite church -and were SHOCKED when it didn’t work for them.
God does not desire that you simply be a carbon copy of what He is doing all around the world! Some programs or principles may transfer, but I urge you to first listen to the voice of God and get His heart for the people you are serving before trying any of what I am about to share.
Here are 3 practical strategies we used to launch Courageous Church that helped us have over 700 people at our first service (and have helped us throughout our first 13 months). I will be posting more details about these 3 strategies on Wednesday after I teach both of my sessions @ #cp10.
1. Pray Hard – PUSH HARD.
Breaking through the SKEPTICISM and noise and clutter and bright lights of the city is not easy. I regularly worked 24 hour days leading up to launching Courageous Church and we pushed hard. I mean like our lives depended on it. Strategies that work in the suburbs can easily cause church planters in the city to fall flat on their face and ultimately wonder cause a great deal of self-doubt. People in the city, more than the suburbs, don’t simply accept that churches are needed and it is going to take hard work to secure your place in the city.
2. Do so much good that it makes the news…a lot.
Leading up to the grand opening of Courageous Church, our 500toys initiative was covered extensively by several local news stations, the radio, The Today Show, Wall-Street Journal, was picked up by the AP, and ultimately covered in dozens of newspapers in countries all around the world. This was HUGE for us. It branded us as the church that loved kids and showed it in tangible ways.
Since this, including yesterday and today, our church has been covered by the local news media for GOOD news for six different initiatives and we have been featured on the official Facebook blog, WIRED magazine, in many church publications, and much more.
3. Make real connections via Twitter & Facebook (including effective Facebook ad campaigns).
Over half of the people (80 % if you include 2nd generation) that attend Courageous Church learned about us on Facebook and Twitter. However, our Facebook and Twitter campaigns DO NOT STAND ALONE. They are CLOSELY CONNECTED to #1 & #2 above. More details soon!
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Shaun – i found your break out session at Velocity yesterday very helpful. Thanks for the bold challenge and for presenting with such humility. Grace & Peace – paul loyless, details direct
Hey, Shaun! Wife and I are excited about the small groups. Where will the sessions be held?
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