Welcome back everyone to 101 questions at Church Planters Ask. I'm your host, Danny Parmelee. Today, we're answering the question, what should I do when no one shows up? The church planting context, I think we can imagine this question coming from different scenarios. Early on, this will, likely be interest meetings and launch team meetings.
Danny Parmelee:And then after you launch, this will be people not showing up on Sundays, or people not showing up at volunteer leadership meetings, membership meetings, you name it, type of thing. Or maybe it's even when you're doing outreaches and people from the community aren't showing up. So tons of different examples that we could list off here, but I I wanna start off by saying that leadership is lonely. Probably heard this before. This is nothing new.
Danny Parmelee:But especially in those early days of church planting, you can feel very alone, when people are not showing up to your stuff. And there's a couple of things I think that compound this issue. First of all, if you've put a lot of time and energy into some sort of event, or a sermon, or a presentation, so you you give it your all, you're spending hours on it, and then very few people show up. Or secondly, you have this high expectation, and maybe that high expectation comes just because you have put time, you think it's gonna be a good event, why would people not show up at this? Or just for whatever reason, you just have this really high expectation, and then people don't show up to it.
Danny Parmelee:And probably the hardest part is when you just have this assumption, maybe because you thought certain people were on board, or they've been coming to things in the past, or maybe even, specific people have communicated with you that they are gonna show up, and, all of a sudden they don't. So you kind of put some of those different things together, and that moment comes where you kind of scan the room and you realize, that your expectations haven't been met, or people who said that they're gonna come, they're not there, maybe even went the extra mile and you had a registration form, and they said, yes, I'm gonna be there. Now, if you're anything like me, your heart may and and mind may focus on the people that aren't there. So this was a struggle for me early on in the church plant, and if I'm honest, even something that would still be a battle for me today, whether it's an assessment center, or, you know, church planting one zero one, some sort of training event, just having that expectation. And here, I just what I wanted to do is just offer a couple of words of encouragement to you, so that if like me, you're discouraged with low numbers, or discouraged when maybe specific people didn't show up.
Danny Parmelee:So the most important thing that you can understand when thinking about this, is that you are never alone. Never. So I think most church planters have the great commission memorized, you know, Matthew twenty eight eighteen through 20, go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commanded. But oftentimes, we forget verse 20. And that's where Jesus says, and I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
Danny Parmelee:So I want you to pause and to think about that for a moment. That you would know and embrace and understand that the most important person on your launch team is Jesus. Now I know for some of you that sounds corny, or you think maybe that's just a little bit of a Jesus juke. But I wanted to burn into your hearts and your minds, right now, to everyone that's listening, that Jesus is the most important person on your launch team. And you need to know that he's at every launch team meeting, he's at every Sunday service, he's at every outreach, he's at every volunteer meeting, and if he's the only one that shows up, that's okay, because if you have him there, you have the most important person there.
Danny Parmelee:So I could read off a number of verses, but I don't think that you need to be convinced. There's plenty in the Old Testament and New Testament where God promises to be with us, and so starting off with that. The second thing that's really important was that when I planted the church, is that I I realized that I needed to focus on who was in the room instead of who wasn't in the room. And here's what I mean by that. When I would scan the room and I realized even specific people weren't there, I would start to get angry.
Danny Parmelee:I would even begin to play in my head like, why aren't they here? Oh, I bet you they abandoned me. Or I would demonize their choices. I can't believe that they would think of something else more important than being at this meeting, than being at this worship gathering. And and and maybe they're here, maybe they're there, maybe they're even at another church.
Danny Parmelee:I don't know. Just going through all these different scenarios in my head. And this would happen even as I was preaching or giving some sort of presentation, and my mind was totally distracted by who wasn't there. So here was the problem with that, is that there were people right there in front of me who did come, who were ready to serve, ready to listen, ready to learn, you name it. And because of my own insecurities and ego, I focused on who wasn't there, instead of who was.
Danny Parmelee:So I don't know when it happened, but I made this intentional shift to just be present, and to minister to those who were in the room at that time. In way I had to coach myself, and I would say, okay, preach what you planned, give the presentation that you prepared, serve those who are here now. Later on, you can go through in your mind and and go through the whys, but right now, what I want you to do is just focus on delivering what you had prepared. And that allowed me, to kind of give it my all, and to deliver what I prepared for whoever showed up. If that was two people that were in the room, 20 people, 200, it didn't matter.
Danny Parmelee:Just being faithful to delivering it to who was in the room or at the event. Now, my mentor was a church planter, and he planted a church in River Falls, Wisconsin in 1979. I actually texted him just to make sure that I had the story straight. And this is before the surge of church planting. There weren't networks, there wasn't training manuals.
Danny Parmelee:You kinda just did what you had, or whatever you thought in your mind. So his idea for church planting was that you just move to a community. So he moved to a community, and I believe it was the next weekend. So he printed off some flyers, handed them out to the neighborhood, and the next week was his launch Sunday service. And that he told me that he sat at the door for an hour and not a single person showed up for worship.
Danny Parmelee:Zero, zip, zilch. So I asked him, I said, what did you do? And I'll never forget his answer. He said, I still preached my message. Now I'm not sure I even agree with this on a practical or a theological level, but it communicated something that was very, very important to me, and that is be faithful no matter who shows up.
Danny Parmelee:So if you're like most preachers, you preach better to a bigger audience or to a packed room. Right? I mean, it's all just kind of one of our things, like, if there's a stadium, I mean, I would be on fire when there's only like 20 people that show up. I'm just not as good of a preacher. Now probably shouldn't really be this way, but this goes back back to points number one and two for us, to understand that we really do have an audience of one, and that's being our lord.
Danny Parmelee:So we should just really have that be that driving force, that motivating factor. Now I'm hoping that this is a great encouragement and motivation for you when you hit those times of unmet expectations of who isn't there, and, you know, you're kind of just discouraged by that. And I know that this episode deals more with kind of self leadership, and if we, you know, are able to tune out, you know, some of those, you know, kind of just negative thoughts, or the the negative characteristic sinful attitudes that we have, it will just help us in our own leadership. But I also wanted to give you some practical application with this as well, and that is this. What do we actually do when there are people that you expected to be there that are not?
Danny Parmelee:Especially if they did some sort of, you know, registration or, you know, you just had this expectation that they would be there. And while there's not an exact answer for this, I wanna push you towards considering following up with a pastoral edge. K. Let me give you a little example. So if if we had a launch team meeting and maybe even I did a registration, I asked people, you know, the week before, show of hands who's gonna be here next week.
Danny Parmelee:And some people said that they would be there and they wouldn't. I would follow-up with a phone call or a meme email, and I would say something along the lines of, hey, you said you'd be there and you weren't. You know, ever read your bible that says let your yes be yes, your no be no, or hey, if you're gonna be committed to this thing, you need to show up when you say that you will, or even, hey, you know, we took attendance partly because we needed a food count, so we spent money and we were expecting you to be there. Okay. So maybe I wasn't that much of a jerk, but the intent of my follow-up was to make them feel guilty or bad for not coming.
Danny Parmelee:And this is what you need to understand, guilt does motivate people. I promise you that those people I followed up with, they felt guilty, and more often than not it moded them to come to the launch, the next launch team meeting. But here's also what you need to know. Guilt has high results for short term motivation. After a while, people will not respond to guilt, and you basically will just drive them away.
Danny Parmelee:So you'll get the short term like, oh, they feel guilty. They'll come to the next meeting, maybe even the meeting after that. But pretty soon you begin to drive them away. So that's why I say I offer this alternative to pat to follow-up with the kind of this pastoral edge. So that may sound something like this.
Danny Parmelee:Hey, we had an awesome launch team meeting. We missed you. I understand things come up, so just checking in to make sure everything is okay. Or how about, totally missed you at this week's meeting. Your neighbor Jim showed up, and I was so pumped and thankful you invited him.
Danny Parmelee:So basically, you're leading more with a pastoral edge instead of this guilt edge. You're still letting them know that you recognize that they were gone, but it just feels completely different than trying to make them feel bad. And not that you have to follow-up with every single person for every single event. You'll have to weigh kind of when you're gonna do this, when it's appropriate, when it's not. But understand that, I'm not suggesting that you use this to avoid confrontation.
Danny Parmelee:There may be times where people have certain responsibilities, or they're habitually just absent, or dropping the ball. Yes, then sit down face to face. You can have those conversations. You know, we'll, have plenty of episodes where we talk through kind of conflict resolution, and confronting people when they're not, you know, holding up their end of the bargain type of thing. But I'm just talking as kind of a general thing, especially in that those early stages where you're just noticing people missing.
Danny Parmelee:Because it's it's often these small follow ups and pastoral ways, will communicate well with people. It'll communicate, I love you, I care for you, and I know when you're not there. And for a church plant that is building from the ground up, this is actually one of your strategic advantages. Your distinctive is that you're small enough to be this community where there is relationship and accountability, and you know when someone's there and when someone's not. So even when the church plant though is is up to a 50 people, you're still gonna be able to recognize attendance and engagement patterns of people, and you'll just kinda need to lean into that, and to find that kind of healthy, when you should be reaching out, when you send a little text, when you send an email, or a little Facebook note, or Instagram direct message, whatever is kind of gonna be some of your ways that you're communicating directly with people to do that.
Danny Parmelee:So I hope that you will avoid some of the mistakes that I made in the beginning, and that you'll be able to do that by just first of all basing it on the foundation to know that Jesus is with you every step of the way. That you're gonna pay attention more to who's in the room, than who's not in the room. And finally, that you'll follow-up with people with a pastoral edge, and avoid using guilt. Now, you can read really this entire thing on the blog at churchplantersask.com. And as we say every single week, if you have questions about church planting, you can submit them there, or send us a message, or send us a message in Facebook, or in Instagram.
Danny Parmelee:And until next time, keep asking those questions.