Gathering Your First 50 People

It has been said that the most difficult thing in church planting is gathering your first 50 people. Of course, the second most difficult thing is gathering your second 50 people. It is also vitally important WHO those first 100 people are because they will shape the culture of your new church. Keep that in mind!

The question is, "How do you gather new people?" This requires a lot of intentionality for most planters. A few have a unique gift for drawing people to themself, but most of us have to work at it. We have to think through who we're trying to reach and start attracting people like this. Usually like attracts like, so if you can start gathering the people you are attempting to reach you will be more likely to be successful in reaching your mission focus group. (I have a firm grasp of the obvious!)

Recruiting a group from an existing church can be helpful (given that the existing church is OK with you recruiting people from them). However, be very careful. This is often times counter-productive because the people from the existing church are usually not missional, not evangelistic, and are typcially looking for a new church that is more convienent or more suitable for themselves. You must only recruit MISSIONARIES from existing churches. If you recruit "consumers" they will usually suck the life out of you, and eventually leave because you're not "meeting their needs."

I don't mean to sound harsh or critical, it's just that church planting is hard and requires a lot of sacrifice from a core of believers. Western Christians are not accustomed to a sacrificial lifestyle (which in itself is sad.) While every church planter needs a few "missionary" believers to help them, I encourage planters to look to the harvest to build your initial critical mass. Seek to build relationships with non-churched, non-believers whom you can encourage and disciple, and hopefully assimilate into your new church plant. I hope to talk more in the days ahead about some specifics regarding how to do this. Just remember for now that the first 100 people will shape the culture of your new church. Make it a missional, new life culture! If you already have your first 50 people, ask yourself what kind of culture they are creating!