Reaching Critical Mass Quickly

September 1, 2009

Posted 9/1/2009 in Church Planting | 2 Comments - Add Comment

Comments:

     Awesome. Good stuff. But how do you reach that point quickly. And if you don't what steps do you need to take to get there. How long should you keep going with 150 or so? What's the next steps?

     Jason, The 200 marker is not really a magical number. The tipping point is really somewhere between 150 and 250. Read Malcolm Gladwell's book "Tipping Point" There are several ways to beat 200. 1) Do several big day events and make sure your follow- is flawless. 2) Think in terms of restart. There a several ways to do this. A) Soft restart - simply reorganize and set a date on the calendar for a grand reopening. Do everything you did to launch in the first place. (Or maybe not:) B) Medium restart - Close the facility down for a month or so, redo the entire place, set new groups in order and then relaunch. C) Hard restart - just like it sounds. Close down your present meeting place, Tarting a new area and invite everyone to join you in this new adventure. Change the name, and start over in a new location. Typically church plants start with only a handful of people. A healthy start needs at least 60 to 70 adults in the core group prior to launch. 3) Change attitudes. This may seem simplistic, but one of the greatest barriers of growth is the attitude of those who attend. Have your people settled into an attitude of comfort and ease? Their, or your, comfort with they way things are generates a lid of growth. 4) Create a Holy discomfort. Change things intentionally. Change brings about discomfort and discomfort is often a way to open the door for growth. 5) Be willing to pay the price. Growth is expensive. Too often planters stop doing what they did the launch because they run out of resources. You have to find a way to invest heavily in continued outreach and marketing. 6) Set good long-range, realistic goals of growth and then push everyone to reach them. Celebrate when you do. You become what you celebrate. 7) Be patient. Once a church has a sociological set of patterns, it is hard to break them. Barrier can be broken, but usually not without conflict, intentional change, and a re-igniting of evangelistic fervor. Hope that helps.