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.
Hey, what's up? Welcome back to a 101 Questions That Church Planters Ask. My name is Chris Ifill. I'm Danny Parmalee. And today we're gonna be answering the question, how do I connect in a new community?
Chris Highfill:Or even how do I connect in a community that I've already existed in as a church planter? I actually just taught this material at a conference, that we were at for church planting, and I think it's gonna be really relevant for you today as you take next steps of meeting people in your community. I followed this advice at a conference that I was at, and my first church planting coach was teaching a breakout on this. His name is Darren Chesky. And, Darren gave me this information, and I was in prelaunch.
Chris Highfill:I just moved to this new community, and I just followed every bit of this advice and it helped me in a gigantic way. And I know it's gonna help you as well. So let's just jump right into it. We have a lot to cover. Danny, anything any thoughts from you before we jump in?
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. Well, I just think that especially if you are moving, you're a pioneer planter, parachute planter, whatever term that you want to use, this is really important because you essentially are a missionary to this community. So that's what you need to kind of the the posture, the perspective, the lens that you need to have as you're going into this new community. But even if you have been to this community Chris, you talk about this all the time where sometimes you can you know, it maybe it's where you grew up or where you went to college, but still, you also become blind to how the community actually operates. And so, yeah, why don't you get us kicked off?
Danny Parmelee:We'll kind of go through these 5 different things and, be able to learn how we can best connect with the community.
Chris Highfill:Let's jump right into it. The first thing you can do is pray. I know that is very generic. Okay? But, like, I need you to understand something.
Chris Highfill:You can't buy a church plant. It's a move of God. You need to pray, and you need to be strategic about how you pray and who you pray with. You shouldn't pray just alone. You should pray with your launch team, and you should pray for people that are spiritually disconnected.
Chris Highfill:You should pray for people that are broken. You should pray for broken marriages, and you should pray for people that are addicted to things. You should pray for all kinds of things in your community, and don't do that alone. Do that with your launch team. Like, make sure you're finding ways, to get them praying with you.
Chris Highfill:Go pray over the community, do, like, strategic prayer walks. You know, for us, we launched around an elementary school. And so what we did is we prayed, for every neighborhood around that school. And so we prayed for every single road, and all of the houses that were on those roads and all the people that lived in those houses. And we were strategic about that.
Chris Highfill:How, Chris, tell
Danny Parmelee:us a little bit. How did you actually do that? Did you, map that out? What was it like for your team to be involved? Were some people scared?
Danny Parmelee:Many people have never done prayer walking before. And then how do you also do it so that's not, like, weird? Like, you've got, like, 30 people all, like, walking around the community and
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Danny Parmelee:Instead of connecting with the community, you're just, like, the weird cult walking around.
Chris Highfill:Sure. Well, this was 10 years ago, and so I think it's important that I this is gonna age me a bit. But what we did strategically is we actually just printed out maps off of MapQuest with highlighted roads and gave them out, and said, hey. The next time we meet, we're not gonna actually meet in in our home. We're gonna meet, at this park, and then, we're gonna pray together, and then we're gonna break up these maps, and we're gonna go pray over and I'm not gonna make it weird, you know, like, this is not maybe the time to be really super charismatic as you walk, but, like, we would walk and we would just literally just pray and just, like, you know, just have that prayer attitude as we walk through those communities.
Chris Highfill:And I think we had 30 or 40 adults walking in 1 night, and we were able to pray over a 3 mile radius around the church, where the church was gonna be at the elementary school.
Danny Parmelee:And and for your team, how how did they respond to that? Were some people really nervous to do it? I mean yeah. Talk a little bit about that because I know a lot of church planners would be maybe be nervous to, engage in such an endeavor.
Chris Highfill:Yeah. I mean, they were nervous. If you had said that we're gonna pray out loud, they were gonna be nervous, but, like, I was able to give them specific instructions. Like, I'm not asking you to pray out loud. Okay?
Danny Parmelee:Mhmm.
Chris Highfill:I'm just simply asking you to walk and in your in your own mind, in your own heart, as you walk, you don't have to walk with your eyes closed, like walk with your eyes open, obviously. Right? And pray. And I gave those specific things to pray for. You know, I said, you know, pray for marriages.
Chris Highfill:Pray for people with their jobs. Pray for the people that are spiritually broken, that are far from God. Like, pray for all of these things. Pray for everything that God puts on your mind, on your heart. And you're gonna you're gonna have some people on your launch team that are like, you know, they're good with praying, but you're gonna have we had some people on our team, that were barely Christians or weren't even Christians yet.
Chris Highfill:Right? So like, it was a struggle for them, but it also pushed them. And I just talked about, hey, it's at the edge of our comfort zone that God really works. And so I just really talked about that specifically to them. There that was a good question, Danny.
Chris Highfill:Some people were uncomfortable, but it was it was a really good night and one that, we we we practiced over again as we moved to other locations. And so we would
Speaker 3:always do a prayer night where we're walking and praying for the community. Another strategy that we did was something
Chris Highfill:that we called a 5 by 5. We still use this to this day, who are 5 people that you could be praying for over the next 5 weeks. And that's not just you as the lead church planter, or as a leader in the church. That is, for your whole launch team, and you're you're getting post it notes, and you're writing down 5 people over 5 weeks that you could pray for. And then, we would post them on a wall at my house.
Chris Highfill:And so when we come back for launch team meetings, hey, how's that going? And we pray for spiritual conversations. We're not necessarily praying that they cross the line of faith. Yes. Some people did that, but some people just were able to share their faith with a coworker or be able to tell a spiritual story to their coworker or just to be able to buy them Starbucks and say, God bless you.
Chris Highfill:Like, that's that's a spiritual conversation. Like, that you would bless somebody, in that kind of way, serve them that kind of way, really critical and really important. Do not skip the step of prayer. I just tell you it is so essential. A church plant is a move of God and a move of God is only ushered in, whenever whenever people are praying and spending time with him.
Chris Highfill:And so it's really important that you start with prayer. The second thing is you gotta enter as a learner. And so whether you've lived in the community for 3 weeks, 3 years, 30 years, doesn't matter. Enter as a learner and find a way to learn the new new community that you're in. You know, it's really important for us.
Chris Highfill:We parachuted into a new community and so, like, we joined the Chamber of Commerce, and that was the first time in my whole life that I ever paid for friendship. I had never done that, and so it was kind of a fun thing to be able to pay, $250 annually to have over 600 contacts, with small business and large business owners and community leaders, and it made it less weird. One of the things that Danny and I joke about is how awkward I can be sometimes. It made it less weird to sit down and have a cup of coffee with somebody. Like for example, if I if if I just met you at a coffee shop and said, hey, we should have coffee sometimes, you would sometime soon, you would think that I was hitting on you or something weird was happening.
Chris Highfill:I don't know. Like it wouldn't feel it feel uncomfortable. Right? Like Danny, I don't know. So what was great about the chamber, was it wasn't weird all of a sudden because I could say, hey, you sell insurance.
Chris Highfill:I wanna hear more, Danny, about the insurance agency that you own and operate. How you got into that and all that. Would you I'd love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with sometime. And then you set the appointment up and then you do it and you you're just learning about them. You're learning about how they started their business.
Chris Highfill:And if they're polite, they're gonna ask you in return to do the same thing. They're gonna ask you how you got into being a pastor. And don't start with your Bible college story. Start with your spiritual story, but make it really short. Don't make it some long drawn out 3rd Christians were the worst at telling long stories that no one cares about, and that's probably happening right now.
Chris Highfill:Anyways, all that to say, like, make it short, make it sweet. Right? And for me, my my short spiritual story is I didn't grow up going to church. I asked my mom one day, mom, why don't we go to church? And she said, Chris, we're not church people.
Chris Highfill:And I told that story in those networking meetings over and over and over again, and I would tell it briefly and then later on in the story I would tell them, but today I am a Christian and here's what God did and today my family, they're Christians and here's what God did in their lives. Right? And if God can do it in my life, he can do it in your life. And so all that to say, be a learner, and then meet with people, be strategic, and make it make a goal that you're gonna meet with 5 community leaders every single week leading up to the launch of the church. You're not so busy that you can't do that.
Chris Highfill:Designate a specific day that you're gonna do that on or 2 afternoons every week where you're gonna be a networker and and meet with people. And, you know, network and meet with, like, like, I got a list of people that you should meet with. So if you're taking notes, here's a list. Just a quick one. You should meet with your town mayor, your school superintendent, the fire chief, the police chief, meet with, aldermen, city council people, meet with, community leaders, in general, meet with small business and large business owners, meet with the Chamber of Commerce president, like find ways to meet with these community leaders and take a journal with you and ask some of the same questions.
Chris Highfill:Make it personal. So, like, the first question should be, how did you get into doing what you do today? Like, whatever it is they do, people love talking about themselves. So get them talking, and then let them know, hey. I'm trying to learn this community.
Chris Highfill:What's something in the community that people are really proud of? You're writing all this stuff down. You're not putting it in your phone because it when you do that, it looks like you're texting somebody and that you don't care.
Danny Parmelee:Yeah.
Chris Highfill:Like, when you have a journal, it looks like you're being intentional and you're writing this stuff out and, like, what's something the community is really proud of. Man, we're really proud of this literacy program or we're really proud of our parks. That was something that I learned in our community that people are really oddly proud of the parks. And it's amazing because now when I go to a park in our community with my kids or with my wife, I'm always kinda like shocked. I'm like, man, it's a beautiful park, and that's something people are really proud of around this area.
Chris Highfill:Right? But the next, the follow-up question to what they're proud of is what's something that people are ashamed of? You know? Is it something, to do with racism? Is that what they're ashamed of?
Chris Highfill:Or is it something, to do with transportation? Or, is it something to do with something that happened a 100 years ago that the community never really got over? Like, what is it that people aren't proud of? Is it that is it a drug problem or a homeless problem or a poverty problem or a fatherless problem? Like and then follow that question up with if you were starting a new church, what's something that church could do to help with that problem?
Chris Highfill:And you're not making any promises about the problem. Like, don't don't make a promise. Don't say, oh, man. Next week, we're we're gonna open up a food pantry. Like, don't.
Chris Highfill:Just listen to what they're saying. Write it down. And then the the next question that you can ask that I think is really important is who's somebody that you know that I can learn from? That's really important the way you say that. Because you're not saying who's somebody that you know that should join my launch team?
Chris Highfill:Or who's somebody that you know that could give me some money for this new church? No. Right. Who's
Danny Parmelee:somebody that you know?
Chris Highfill:I I think
Danny Parmelee:that's just really huge. That that's key because, oftentimes, church planters, they're always asking or trying to get somebody to do something. And to be honest, most people that are meeting with you are probably even in a defensive posture. They're ready Sure. For you to ask for money or for you to join or ask them why they aren't going to church and they should join your church.
Danny Parmelee:And don't do that. This is all about learning. It's all about Mhmm. You know, building that relationship over time. Even if you find out that they have all sorts of money or are looking for a church, just be very careful with that and to focus specifically on learning the community.
Chris Highfill:Yeah. That's good. So, man, enter as a learner. And then as you're learning the community, then you could help, like I we mentioned, meeting the needs of the community. So be a servant in the community.
Chris Highfill:Figure out, what's broken and what could your launch team I think sometimes launch teams can be all about us and all about in the preliminary. You have a lot of stuff to do. You got a lot of things to figure out. You know, people ask us all the time, what's something that our launch team should do together? I say one of the things in the rhythm of your month as a launch team is go serve.
Chris Highfill:Go be in the community. Go go hang out where people are hanging out and go meet needs where people are hanging out. Be a servant in the community. So hand out bottles of water or give away coffee somewhere. Set up a booth somewhere at a big event that's happening in the community and just go be a part of it and meet a need while you're there.
Chris Highfill:Be a servant in the community. I know, Danny, you guys did stuff like this in the church that you planted, and found ways to meet needs in the community, and you guys were amazing servants at Epicos. Right?
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. Well, I I think, part of that, which, by the way, is your number 3. You didn't say that, to to be to be a servant. And, no need to apologize, Chris. And and here's what I think is so great about finding those needs and being a servant is you don't have to come up with your own solution.
Danny Parmelee:So just like you said before, you don't need to start a food pantry. If you find out that the need is man, there's just, you know, there's hunger, blah blah blah. Find the other organizations that are already doing this, and that's another one of your connections and learning the community. Join with them so that you're not reinventing the wheel. I mean, you're a church planter.
Danny Parmelee:You've got plenty of things on your plate. You don't have enough people. You don't have enough resources. Don't try to start it yourself. Instead, find those things that are already existing and see how you can help them, to accomplish because they're looking for volunteers and stuff as well.
Chris Highfill:So Yeah. Just find ways of serving the community and don't feel like you gotta reinvent the wheel as Danny mentioned. Just, like, let's find a way to serve and actually do it. Let's model Jesus in this way. I think sometimes we want something from people but not something for them and that's really unattractive and comes across very desperate.
Chris Highfill:Yeah. But if you come into the community and say man this is a great community and we're here to make it even better. Right? Yeah. This is not come across different than saying, hey, we're here to change this place.
Chris Highfill:Like, you guys really suck and we're here to change it. Like, it's like that, you know, to people that are townies, that's like, hey, who are you dude? You know, like, what are you why are you here telling me how I should change? And yes, they should change. And yes, the gospel changes everything.
Chris Highfill:We're gonna get to that. But you gotta build that platform. And one of the greatest ways of doing that is, by being a servant leader.
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. I think in addition to that, we talked about before that on the launch team, the prayer walking, that might be very intimidating for launch team members, especially for non believers. Serving is the exact opposite. There are people on your team where they can't wait, and there's something about, you know, serving side by side, meeting new people that they love it. So it's a win all around.
Danny Parmelee:Learn the community. Yep. Find the needs and then begin to actually serve
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Danny Parmelee:Serve those needs.
Chris Highfill:People want an outlet. It's pretty amazing, you know. The Dead Sea is dead because it has no outlet. And I think that a lot of times you're looking to raise the spiritual temperature of your launch team or your church, create outlets for people where they go, wow, like, they could have never done that on their own. But with with doing it with the launch team, doing it with a small group, whatever it is, like, what a powerful thing, to be able to partner in that way together.
Chris Highfill:And it's amazing the people that you'll meet through serving in the community. The 4th thing is build friendships. So now you've you've prayed, you've learned, you've served, and so now here's where stuff starts to really begin to happen. You start building relationships and friendships with people. I had a mentor in my life, whenever I was in pre launch tell me this about relationships.
Chris Highfill:He said, you know, the power of a relationship and how relationships really work, is relationships are twofold. It's listening and talking and repeating that cycle over and over and over again. That is the simplicity of relationships. But here's the thing that we kind of stink at sometimes as pastors is that we love talking. We talk a lot and we don't do the listening component or the asking question component as often as we should.
Chris Highfill:I had a friend in the pre launch phase, his name was is Ken and I asked Ken, I hadn't seen his girlfriend in a while, it'd been like 6 months. I said, what happened to Stacy? And he goes, oh, we broke up 5 months ago. And I realized then, Ken is one of my best friends, like I should know. Here I am talking about the church and talking about all these crazy things and I'm not ever slowing down to go, hey, man, how are things going in your life?
Chris Highfill:If I would've have I mean, as simple as that. And so I think sometimes we get so busy that we're we're not actually building, the quality of friendships that we should. And building friendships is really all about talking and listening. It's amazing what God does when you just consistently start showing up to the same places. So I would say, obviously you need to live in the community that you're planting a church in.
Chris Highfill:I think that's a no brainer, but sometimes people are like, I'm living 45. No. Move there. Be there. Yeah.
Chris Highfill:You need to go to some of the same places. Go to the same grocery stores, same coffee shops, build friendships, build relationships, join a chamber of commerce or some kind of civic organization and build the friendships within that. And it's amazing what happens whenever you just consistently kind of keep hanging out in those same places over and over and over again. I was awkward Yeah. In the very beginning of the chamber.
Chris Highfill:I really was. Like it was weird for me. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know the questions to ask, but I just kinda consistently kept hanging out. It was amazing what God did as a result.
Danny Parmelee:Now, Chris, we've talked about this before, but for those that, you know, maybe don't know your story, you know, you you were kinda reluctant to even join the Chamber of Commerce. But tell us what happened over kind of over the years of, that intentionality that you that you had there.
Chris Highfill:Yeah. It's kinda crazy because as I mentioned, I was in a breakout where I was at a conference where I was told to join the chamber. I'm like a business college dropout. I have no business. In the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm not gonna do that.
Chris Highfill:There's no, like, there's no way they they will not take me seriously if I join them. I'm a pastor, business college dropout. I got a hundred reasons. I felt like I was Moses or something saying, well, I got speech impediment. There's no way I could do this.
Chris Highfill:I murdered somebody. By the way, I've never murdered anybody. But all that to say, like really important for me, I had lots of excuses of why I wouldn't do that, but I just followed, the advice of my coach, joined the chamber, started showing up to stuff, consistently helped out with some events and did some other things and then one day they asked me to be on the board of directors. I'd never served on the board of anything so they interviewed me for that position and they asked me what makes you think that you'll be a good fit here? And I was honest with them.
Chris Highfill:I just said, well, here's the thing. I I'm a business college dropout, but I love this community and I love this organization. I wanna do whatever I can to help make it even better than it already is. And, they called me back a week later and said, hey. You're in.
Chris Highfill:We'd love to have you on the board. And then, I was on the board for 1 year. They asked me to join the executive board. And then after I joined the executive board as the secretary of that group, I have terrible handwriting, but, I was the secretary. Like, this is safe.
Chris Highfill:This is easy. They asked me to be the vice president, and I was said, oh, sure. The the president's in good health. There's no reason why that would be I don't have to take notes anymore. That sounds good.
Chris Highfill:But what they didn't tell me is the very next year, the way it works in the chamber is you become the president, when you're the vice president. And I'm like, oh my gosh. You didn't prep me for that. And so Yeah. The year of COVID in 2020, I was the chamber president and also lead pastor of a growing church, and it was like a lot.
Chris Highfill:But I'm really grateful for the opportunity. And that all of that gave me great opportunity to build friendship and to really be more important than the the chairperson, president of the chamber, whatever. What was more important was I got to be the chaplain of that group. And I still to this day, when there's weddings, funerals, when they have parties, they invite me. And that's how you know that you're winning when it comes to building friendships in this new community that you're in or even in the old community that you're in is are you building friendships with people that don't know Jesus?
Chris Highfill:And that's really important because if you start your launch team and start your church with only Christians, here's the danger of that. I'm a Christian, and if you're, like, watching this podcast, you're also a Christian. If we're not careful, we'll only know other Christians. And so you have to be strategic and you have to be, you know, really intentional about I'm gonna be out there meeting people and meeting with people and developing friendships with people that don't know Christ yet. And maybe God would use you, to be able to help them take just a a small step, towards Jesus.
Chris Highfill:And so
Danny Parmelee:And and you have ton you have tons of examples of, you know, of people that basically through relationships that have happened at the chamber either got involved in the church, came to Christ, yeah, share share just just a little bit about that.
Chris Highfill:It's been kinda wild, man, because I mean, people ask, like, how many people have joined your church from the chamber? I haven't kept track. It's a lot and more importantly than just join the church, there's been a lot that we baptized, that that are from the chamber. There are there are a lot of people that are leaders in our church today that I met through the chamber, and it's it's been a really great thing for me. And I'm not I'm not advocating that you should join your chamber.
Chris Highfill:I'm just saying I am advocating that you go do something and go join a group where it's easy to break into. I was coaching a planter in Michigan and he was telling me, that he tried to join the chamber and and tried to go, but it was just really hard to break into because it felt like a good old boys club. Yeah. In that case, go find something else. Go find, a place where people will will accept you and dance with the ones that wanna dance with you is what I would say.
Chris Highfill:And so, that's not always the chamber. Just go do something, and go be a part of something where it's not weird for you to show up consistently, and you get to be the unofficial chaplain of that group.
Danny Parmelee:Oh, that's great stuff, Chris. Before we go to number 5, this is our opportunity to give a shout out to outreach.com, our sponsor, who sponsors this podcast. So thankful for their partnership, and the benefit is not only for us, but for you as the listeners, you can just punch in churchplantersask.com backslash free stuff. Got tons of, over $1,000 worth of free marketing material. So thank you so much, for, outreach.com and their sponsorship and support of the podcast.
Chris Highfill:Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, outreach.com. Love that, man. Thank you guys for your sponsorship.
Chris Highfill:Take advantage of that. Do not miss out that miss out on that opportunity. What a great gift. The 5th thing, and you've done the first four, which are really essential. Okay?
Chris Highfill:You've you started with prayer. You entered as a learner. You you decided I'm gonna be a servant in the community, I'm gonna build friendships. The 5th and last thing is you get to be a storyteller. And this is where we oftentimes as church planters, as pastors, we oftentimes skip to this last step and we just wanna tell the story about Jesus.
Chris Highfill:And here's the thing, you first of all have to build credibility in the community before you're gonna be heard and be able to actually tell the story and be able to tell it and you'll actually be able to be heard. So we can be storytellers with megaphones or whatever. Right? But, like, if you really want to be heard and you want the people, that are living in your community that are far from God to hear and receive and take next steps, you have to do the hard work of those first four steps. And then you get to tell the greatest story ever told.
Chris Highfill:The story that God bankrupted heaven so that you and I could be with him. Like, that's an amazing story, guys. And that's a story that that we're gonna tell for the rest of our lives. And it just matters in this big way. Will you just be a storyteller to your congregation, to your small group, to your launch team, or will you be a storyteller to your whole community?
Danny Parmelee:Well, thank you everybody for watching and listening. And, if you have a question, you can head over to the website churchplantersask.com and drop us a a comment there or something that you wanna work on. And until next time, keep asking those questions.