EssentialChurchPlanting.com

5 Reasons Why I Failed

Posted on 04. Jun, 2010 by Steve Swisher in Church Planter University, Leadership, Marketing, Personal Growth

I remember reading a statistic a while back somewhere that found that most successful church planters had been a part of at least one failed attempt at church planting.  I always wondered why that was until now. In 2005 I entered the world of church planting when I took over the reigns of a church plant that was struggling to survive.  In December 2008, we held our last service.  I’ll never forget my wife asking me the question, “Why did we fail?”. It’s taken me a year and a successful church planting experience to work on the answer to her question.  I thought you might benefit from the answer.

#1 – I wasn’t teachable. I had taken a class in seminary on church planting and had attended several church plants at different times over the previous 10 years. In short, I thought I knew what I was doing. Worse yet, I wanted everyone else to think I knew what I was doing. Because of this, I wasn’t willing to learn. I would attend meetings with other church planters and never ask anyone for help. When I attended training meetings, I’d quickly dismiss whatever the speaker was saying for any number of reasons. “It didn’t apply to my situation.” “They were too old and everything they shared was out-dated.” “How big is their church anyway?” And on and on the excuses went for why I didn’t need to listen to anyone else.

When I started Essential, I was fresh off my failure at New Hope.  I was humbled and teachable. I talked to every church planter I could. In my opinion, they were the expert and I was the student. I didn’t care what they thought of me. I just wanted to learn. I must have interviewed thirty church planters in the short time between my failure and my new start. One of the best questions I asked church planters was, “who else could I talk to that you’ve learned from?”. Almost every church planter I talked to had something to offer, EVEN CHURCH PLANTERS THAT DIDN’T HAVE A BIG CHURCH!!! One of the guys I learned the most from was a guy who after 5 years was running between 75-110.  Back when I wasn’t teachable, I never would have listened to anyone who wasn’t running over 500.  The problem with the “big names” in church planting and the church planters who are running over 500 is that it’s been so long since they planted that they typically aren’t much help to a new planter.

Over the past year I’ve talked with several guys who are wanting to plant a church. It takes about 3 seconds for me to figure out whether or not they’re teachable. Either they’re trying to convince me that they know what their doing and don’t need help, or their hungry for knowledge and ask questions. Essential has been up and running less than a year right now. We’re running in the mid 200′s to low 300′s and I’m still talking to church planters wanting to learn more.

#2 – I didn’t realize church planting was way different than leading an existing church. When I became the pastor of a church plant, I came in with 5 years of pastoral experience. I had successfully transitioned a primarily senior adult church that was in decline to a growing, vibrant church of young families. Because of my previous success in a different context, I thought I knew church planting.  But church planting is a completely different animal.

Being portable is more than just something that requires you to set up and tear down every week. It limits your exposure since you’re location is only visible on the weekends. So you have to find other ways of gaining exposure in the community. Further, most ministry functions at an established church involve the building. When you don’t have a building, you have to find other ways to build community as a church.  People who attend a church plant come into it asking the question, “Is this church going to make it?”.  They won’t ask you that question, but they’re thinking it.

Further, you can’t out-church the established church. What I mean by that is, if someone wanted to go to a typical church, they wouldn’t visit a church that meets at a school, movie theater, or warehouse.  In other words, most people who visit a church plant are looking for something different than what the established churches in the area have to offer. If they show up at your place and find you just doing church, chances are it’s not going to work. This is true for both churched and unchurched people who come to check you out.

#3 – I put the vision up for sale. In order to keep people from leaving the church, I’d do whatever I could to make them happy. When you’re at a church plant, you’re so desperate for people that the thought of someone bailing on you keeps you up at night. Especially when you know they tithe.

My first time around, I allowed people whose only concern was having their personal ministry needs met be the ones that determined what we did as a church. They ended up determining our discipleship structure (Sunday School over small groups) our service time (9:30 instead of 10:30 when more non-church people would come) and what outreach events we did (things like VBS which never resulted in any church growth).

What they were was disgruntled “church people” who came to a church plant because the previous church they attended wasn’t willing to meet their demands. Church planters need people who are more interested in reaching their community for Christ than having their personal demands met. Church plants attract disgruntled “church people” like a magnet. Then when they come to your church plant they think they are doing you a favor by attending this little start up church that’s a tenth of the size of their previous church. Soon they’ll let you know that if they aren’t valued, they’re gone. LET THEM GO!!!!

I danced like a monkey at their request for three years, and nothing I ever did was good enough.  By the time they left the church, they had run just about everyone else off.  People who are on a mission to reach their community won’t stick around if they see that the pastor is more interested in meeting churchy demands than reaching the lost. Because I waited so long to let them go, the church plant couldn’t recover from the damage they had done.

#4 – I didn’t have the guts to make bold moves. If you speak Christianese you might say, “I didn’t have the faith to make bold moves.” My second time around I found myself saying one phrase over and over again, “If it were easy, we wouldn’t need God.” There are times when you look at your situation, talk to experts about it, pray about it, and are convinced that a change needs to be made. It might be the service time, meeting location, staff member, or whatever, and you know that making such a move won’t be easy.

If you are not often faced with a decision that requires God’s help/intervention to come through for you, then chances are you’re on a slow path towards the demise of your church plant. One of the things I was unwilling to do at my failed plant was move locations. We had a good relationship with our school and it was close to where most of our core members lived. But the city had put another road in near our school which diverted 75% of the local traffic away from our location. I brought it up it a few times in leadership meetings, but was shot down due to their fears. Instead of making a bold move we opted for a slow death.

When I started Essential, the first thing on the agenda was to move.  Once again, all the naysayers were there with reasons not to move. I boldly proclaimed, we’re moving. Sure enough, they were right. There wasn’t any place to go that we could afford. I was shot down by every available place in town, but one. It was a school that had booted us out 3 years before. During my prayer to God before going over there is when I first said, “God, if this were easy, I wouldn’t need you.  But I really need you.”  God moved the heart of the same principal who booted us out to now welcome us back in. And this happened on the day before my deadline. The naysayers were also right about something else. When we moved locations, a few people quit coming. But, in the second month Essential started it was running double what New Hope averaged over the previous year.

When you allow fear rather than faith be the primary factor in making decisions, you are not following God’s leading. Keep in mind that I’m talking about decisions that you’ve thought about, prayed about, talked to experts about, ran it through Scripture, examined your motives, talked to people who know your church and situation and concluded that it’s a decision that needs to be made. At that point, if you are unwilling to make the decision due to fear of failure, fear that people will leave, or whatever – then you’re moving towards the slow death of your church. Be willing to trust that God can do things you never thought possible if you are willing to follow where he’s leading you.

#5 I didn’t care about our image. To me things like logos, website design, foyer layout, signage, and so on were too superficial to worry about. I didn’t want to be one of those churches where image is everything and where it was style over substance. The problem with this mentality is that if you’re trying to reach lost people…well…to them image is everything. They will judge a book by the cover. They will visit your website and decide whether or not they will come on Sunday.  Studies show that they will decide if they like your church within 7 minutes of pulling in the parking lot. That’s before they’ve heard you preach, listened to the praise band, or seen that really cool creative element you have planned at the end of the service.

Looking back on how I did things my first time around…we were doomed from the start.  Our website was a generic, sterile looking cookie cutter website from Lifeway.  Our logo was a broken oval tilted on an angle around our church name which was copied from another church from somewhere in Texas. Nothing looked good under it, over it, or next to it on anything we printed. The church name was common in our area. We were one of seven other New Hope’s and there were several other churches that had names similar like New Life or Renewed Hope.  Our parking lot was as uninviting as the cluttered and cramped foyer. Further, I dressed like a goober. I wasn’t wearing the coat and tie like I used to when I was at an established church, instead I wore khaki’s and a button down every week.I looked like one of those guys in a Dockers commercial from the 1990′s. I was a traditional church looking pastor in a non-traditional church setting trying to reached un-churched people.

My second time around, we chose a name that communicated who we were and what we would be about. It was also a name that didn’t have any baggage associated with it. Further, since it was a rare name, we could get a good domain name and good Google search rankings with it pretty easily.  (For instance, if you decide to name your church “Crossroads Community Church” the chances of you showing up on a Google search is zero since there are so many well established churches with that name already.) 

The first thing we spent money on was logo design. We used the colors similar to the Monster Energy drinks. They were bold and modern. The logo itself wasn’t a typical church logo.  We didn’t make the “t” in our church name into a cross. There wasn’t a dove, a sunrise, or Bible in the logo either. 

The second thing we spent money on was a website. Using WordPress we were able to do this for less than $250 (see this post to learn more or check out this website company). We put funny signs in the parking lot that communicated our church’s personality along with really classy looking feather flags. The foyer had clean tables with fitted black table cloths. There were signs directing people where to go that had a unified theme and look to them. And yes, I bought a new wardrobe. I started wearing designer jeans, fitted shirts, and a variety stylish shoes.

Call it all superficial if you want. Call me a “sell out” or a “poser” for changing the way I dressed. All I care about is that people actually showed up and stuck around long enough to hear the message I spent time preparing. Further, they came back week after week. Lost people love our church. I’d wear a clown suit every week if it meant that I could see people coming to know Christ like we have at Essential.

My hope is that you’ll be humble enough to learn from other planters and take the time to learn how church planting will be different than your previous church experiences. I also pray that you have the boldness to make hard choices and not sell out the vision God gave you in order to keep disgruntled “church people” happy. And finally, think about what people think about you and your church if you want them to hear the life changing message you have to share.

Related posts:

1. Lessons from a ‘Failed Church Plant’
2. First Year Lessons
3. Perry Noble Coaching Network
4. Ten Reasons to Partner in Planting Now
5. Networking with Rick Eschenburg

Tags: Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Personal Growth