Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
First it's important to understand the difference between a core team and a launch team. In this episode I will discuss how your approach to launch team members in general will help you to figure out WHO should be on your team and why this perspective might challenge what you've heard else where. Even going so far as to say that the strength of your launch team may not be as tied to the equality of individual commitment.
God's given you a vision to plant a church. You're gifted and maybe have the team ready to go. However, there are thousands of details and hundreds of questions that you have. In this podcast we will answer some of the common questions and answer listener submitted questions to help you fulfill the call the Lord's given you.
Welcome back everyone to 101 questions at church planners ask. I'm your host, Danny Parmelee. And today, we're answering the question, should I have non Christians on my launch team? Now, I know we haven't discussed this much yet, but it's probably important to start off by defining what a launch team is. I actually wanna spend a good amount of time kinda setting up the question by explaining something because for many years, church planters used the phrase core team.
Danny Parmelee:Now when using the term core team, it usually referred to this group of totally committed people that help start the church. Now over time, planters realized that even the name inadvertently created some problems. Basically, that sub there was a subconscious feeling that, if you were on the core team that started it, you were on the core team for life. Almost like this badge of honor that since you started it, you had this lifelong seat at the decision making table. So it also created a bit of a us versus them mentality.
Danny Parmelee:In other words, that as the church grew, there was the core team that consisted of the spiritual righteous people that started everything, and then there was everybody else who came after that. And you do not want this bifurcation. So realizing this kind of over time is where Planter started using the term launch team instead. It it helped to communicate that this team had a very specific task, launch the church. And then when that task was done, the team was essentially something of the past.
Danny Parmelee:Now I know that's it's subtle, but it's it's helpful and it's more than just kind of changing the words, it's really giving it a different approach. And this is especially important if you're doing a parachute or a pioneer model, where you're going into a new area and you're meeting people and putting together really a team of strangers and people that you don't know and probably don't know, each other that well either. And so what you wanna do is you wanna create a leadership, environment or scenario where as you get to know people, you can shuffle them around based on character and competency and chemistry and not have people locked into this one very specific title and group such as the core team. And trust me, when someone is on the core team, it's harder to move them away from that mentality. Say instead of a launch team, where everyone is essentially removed from it as the church launches and establishes itself.
Danny Parmelee:The other keyword that I wanna focus in on to kind of help set this up is the word commitment. The term core team really like assumes that there is this die hard commitment. And I I probably should do an entire episode on this, but put your seat belts on for this one. I think that planters lose momentum in Kingdom Impact by over asking for high commitment or over expecting high commitment from launch team members. A phrase that I hear all the time and it makes me cringe every time I hear it from church planters.
Danny Parmelee:They they say, I'd rather have 10 committed launch team members than 50 people from varying levels of commitment. Then they usually, like, say something about the disciples. So sometimes I wonder, have you read the gospels before? Have you seen how committed those disciples actually were? I mean, Judah stole money.
Danny Parmelee:Peter denied Jesus three times. They often made excuses as Jesus was giving them assignments, and best of all, they hid after Jesus was crucified. You wanna talk about a lackluster core team, disciples prime example. So why is this so important? It's important because I myself made this mistake of expecting this 10% commitment from everyone that I considered to be on this launch team, and it's just not realistic.
Danny Parmelee:So you're just gonna get frustrated with yourself. You're gonna get frustrated at people as they don't meet your expectations. And likely what will happen is you're just gonna drive people away because they know and they can feel that they aren't meeting your expectations. So if you've ever had that before where it's like you aren't meeting someone ex someone's expectations, they haven't said it to you, but you can just sense it, you can feel it. It's just it's a super discouraging and defeating, kind of position to be in.
Danny Parmelee:And so instead, I offer that you see as many people as possible as part of your launch team. And they're gonna be involved at varying degrees. They're gonna be committed at varying degrees. So each family will contribute at at different or individuals contributing at different levels. So even the person that says, hey, I'm not really interested right now, but let me know as soon as services start.
Danny Parmelee:You can think in your mind, great, this person is part of the launch team. They may play a specific role by just showing up at launch Sunday or some sort of event. And who knows, maybe at that one event that they come to, they're gonna bring someone who doesn't know Jesus, and then that person becomes, you know, just one of your greatest evangelists or leaders or, you know, future staff members, maybe even. And then on the other hand, you're gonna have some people that say, I'm all in. I'll be at every single meeting, and I have this really, really great job, and I make so much money, I can give you more than 10% of the income towards the church.
Danny Parmelee:And also my job is so great and flexible, I can volunteer and do whatever it is, that is needed. Great. They're on the launch team too. Now, of course, they're gonna have more responsibility, probably more influence, probably more input, but they're just they're on the launch team. Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying.
Danny Parmelee:I'm not saying that commitment isn't important. As you disciple and shepherd people, your whole job in discipling and shepherding is to move people towards a greater commitment towards Christ. And as you lead and pastor people, your whole job is to move every person towards a greater commitment towards the church. But this is very different than intentionally or unintentionally just making two different groups. The committed, the core team, the launch team, and the uncommitted.
Danny Parmelee:Alright. So all of that, just to get us back to our main question. Should I have non believers? Should I have non Christians on my launch team? Well, I wanna answer that in three different ways.
Danny Parmelee:Yes, yes, and yes. Now, thinking back to everything we just discussed, you have an amazing opportunity to lead people to Christ before the church is ever officially launched or started. See, evangelism and discipleship doesn't start once you launch a service. It starts the moment really that you personally even say yes to Jesus yourself, and hopefully, as soon as you've even started the process of planting the church, it's happening full force from day one. Now, you you'll be shocked as you make relationships with people, that, you know, and and relationships from those from your launch team as they make relationships with people that non believers are curious and sometimes want to be part of the launch team.
Danny Parmelee:And if you tell them, wait until we launch a service, then you can come. You have wasted one of the greatest opportunities for them to experience genuine genuine Christian community, and what the gospel is all about. So what you want to do is you want to have that, you know, kind of include them, to be part of the launch team members. Now one of the reasons, why they, are so important, to even be, on the launch team, is that they're going to bring a perspective that as believers, we have often lost touch with. So after being Christians and being immersed really in the in the church bubble, if you will, we forget what nonbelievers are thinking and, you know, the different, things that we do and how they're perceived by those that are outside the church.
Danny Parmelee:I remember during our launch team phase, I had come up with this brilliant, just awesome outreach idea. I don't even remember now what the outreach idea was. I just remember that it was really, really awesome. And I brought it up to the launch team during one of our brainstorm sessions, and all of the other Christians in the room were nodding their heads in agreement with me about this fantastic idea. And the look on the nonbeliever's face that then eventually piped up and said, this is the cheesiest corny thing I have ever heard of, and I would never come to that or I would never participate in that.
Danny Parmelee:So I kicked him off the team. No. Of course. I'm I'm just kidding. Actually, this was one of the discussions that just opened my eyes to the fact that the nonbelievers were so valuable to the discussion and to our launch team.
Danny Parmelee:What what ended up hack happening is that I leaned on them for a lot of future things. So even when we did marketing campaigns or I'd come up with like a poster or postcard, I'd kind of run it by them and, ask them and especially just watching their body language or their facial expressions, and I just learned so much. So some of these non believers actually became believers during our launch team phase. Not all of them, but some of them did. And we actually had a baptism service before we ever had a launch service.
Danny Parmelee:And to me, it's one of those things that was just really exciting. So instead of just announcing, hey, we had this many people at our, you know, our launch Sunday, one of the things that, you know, is is that I just praise God for is that we saw evangelism and discipleship happen before there was ever even a service. Now having nonbelievers on the launch team also set the culture from the very beginning that we were okay with being around people who were still asking questions and whose life was still a mess. K. So this is a very biblical concept.
Danny Parmelee:Jesus was hanging out with the disciples, and at the same time, he was hanging out with the tax collectors and the sinners. Was this easy? Absolutely not. It's very strange sometimes talking about outreach and and evangelism in front of in front of nonbelievers, but with enough conversations, you kind of push through that awkwardness. You include them on the conversation.
Danny Parmelee:You can even joke and laugh about, man, this is just kind of weird. But I actually think that the authenticity in pushing through the awkwardness is what demonstrated the gospel and grace and and true Christian community to them. Now the biggest challenge, of course, is that there is a limit to their participation and leadership. And this is where it gets messy. And this mess does not stop at the launch team phase.
Danny Parmelee:So for example, if you have a non believer that comes to launch team meetings, are you okay with them bringing cookies each week? Granted, these are going to be non christian cookies made with non christian chocolate chips. Okay. But what if the non believer wants to play drums once you launch the church or maybe even just have a worship night? Are they allowed to be on stage and and and play with the worship team?
Danny Parmelee:Alright. Take it a step further. What if they want to sing on the worship team? They're not the worship leader, but they just wanna sing the songs. They love the songs.
Danny Parmelee:They sound really good. They might even agree with a good majority of the words or they don't disagree with them. So they just love to sing and they love being part of the team. Are you going to allow that? Or what if they want to serve in kids ministry and they have a teaching element to it?
Danny Parmelee:So you can see the list goes on and on here. And you can make all the lists that you want, like, they can do this and they can't do that. Trust me, I have tried, but it will be incomplete and just understand that ministry is messy. No matter what list, you think you'll have it all figured out and you're gonna get new scenarios each time and it's like, well, wait, how come they can sing but they can't play guitar? Or they can greet people in the parking lot but they can't do this?
Danny Parmelee:So just understand the gospel's messy and you're gonna have to navigate these situations. You're gonna have to press into them. Yes, you can avoid all of this, simply by excluding everyone from the launch team, and excluding everyone from Experience Experience and Church, unless they have said yes to Jesus, and they're a fully committed, fully devoted follower of Christ. But I think if you do that, you are going to miss the main point. You're gonna miss the opportunity to do evangelism and discipleship right from the get go.
Danny Parmelee:So my answer is yes. Invite them onto the launch team, figure out ways that they can be involved, demonstrate the gospel to them, share explicitly the gospel, and allow them to kind of respond over time. And you will be absolutely amazed about how much God will use them on your team. Now, thanks so much for listening to this one. If you have questions about church planting, you can head over to the blog churchplantersask.com.
Danny Parmelee:You can fill out a little form. We would love to hear your questions, then we can answer your questions, maybe even have you on the podcast, something like that. So until next time, keep asking those questions.