Church Planting with $1.58

When we first felt God wanted us to plant a church in Las Vegas Autumn and I just kinda excepted it the way you except any crazy thing God tells you to do. He could have told us to part Lake Mead and it would've seemed just as possible as planting a church with no people, experience, or money. Yet, here we are four years later holding preview services and about to launch an honest to goodness church plant.

I might talk about how God overcame our other shortcomings sometime in the future, but right now I'm in awe of how God has provided and continues to provide for the money problem. Early on we took the same stance with money that we took with all of our needs, either it was going to show up or it wasn't and then we'd worry about it. Don't get me wrong, we did some budgeting and planning but at the end of the day it came down to the fact that you can only do so much before you are forced just to trust that if God wants this thing done He's going to have to do the financial backing.

Start up costs are enough to make anyone shy away from the idea of church planting real fast, but we referred back to the "it will either show up or not" principle and we are starting to see the amazing happen. The things we planned to do to raise money haven't raised anything but people I have never met are sending me checks for large amounts of money because they believe in what we are doing. Some of our biggest money items have been donated to us and our preview services are taking in enough to cover most of our needs. Right now our start up costs are about 75% covered and we have about eight weeks to go before our launch. I am now confident that God is going to have us more than covered before Easter.

If you are like me though, you want practical advice and not just the "Trust God" answer. So here it is, keep in mind I'm not out of the woods yet but these are the things we are doing:

Have the core team start tithing as soon as they commit to the vision - If we made one mistake in the area of money it is that many on the core team still tithed to there former churches while we were in the planning phases of The Venue. See if your mother church will take your tithes and keep them in a separate account until you launch. If you don't have a mother church have someone on the team you all trust open up a savings account and keep track of the giving until you receive your nonprofit status.

No one on staff takes a salary until a few months after the launch - This goes against everything I've been taught and seen modeled, but it's common sense unless you are planting with a group of 150+. I have three or four people I would like to have paid on staff but we all decided that we'd wait until six months after the launch before we'd talk about salaries. I just talked with a church planter friend last week who hired someone on as his assistant pastor when they started and now that the church hasn't grown as fast as they thought and the money dried up guess who split. The fact is you don't know how fast or slow you're going to grow in the first few months. You don't know who will stay or leave and you probably don't know where your people are going to fit best in on your team.

Some people might say, "But I need to support my family and pastoring a church is demanding." No kidding it's demanding, that's why it's not for the weak! Go get a job, its only for a few months and you might actually meet people in the community you're trying to reach. If you can't handle a juggling a job, family, and a church for a few months while the church is small how are you going to handle the church and family when it's large? If pastoring is the only thing you know how to do then you might need to learn something new or wait until you have a large following before you start.

Don't let the lack of money stop you - If you know God has called you to do this then do it and push anything out way that tries to hinder you. Your church doesn't need stuff, but people need Jesus. I've seen church happen with next to nothing as far as equipment goes and God will always provide what you need as well as some stuff you don't. Do what you can with what you're given where you are.