Where are you spending your time? Most church planters begin by taking on a tremendous amount of the workload and developing a worker mentality. This is often a necessity in the early days but after a church reaches a certain level of growth, that growth will stifle if the leader doesn’t make some changes.

The leader must shift their leadership from leading by example and functioning as a technician to a role that that empowers people to do the work of the church. This will change where they spend their time, who they meet with, and what they think about. They must value the things that require time and effort with no immediate gratification (or results). Here are a few of the first things we did early at Elevation to develop staff.

1. Read books together - As a staff we go through at least 1 book every 2 months. The books range from personal growth books to corporate leadership books. We typically devote the first hour of our weekly all staff meetings to developing staff. This is led by Pastor Furtick and typically when we review the key concepts of the current book and how the concepts apply to the church.
2. Get away together - We just came back from our staff advance (we don’t ever retreat) and sure it was 3 days away from family and our job duties. We still have to prepare for the weekend and everyone is a little behind in their work. But nothing has been more valuable for this church than getting away together and going through a well planned few days of prayer, leader training, goal setting, strategic thinking, and vision casting (notice we left out the trust falls). Our staff has a synergy that is fueled by valuing the time to get together and allow God to lead in planning the next phase of the church.
3. Do routine staff evaluations - Don’t just go through the motions of evaluating performance. Set the precedent for a meeting that nothing is off limits. Word the written portions of the actual eval forms to get at the heart of the deeper issues. We have done these evaluations every 6 months but find them to be so effective at developing staff that we are shifting them to quarterly.

These are just a few of the shifts a leader must take in the progression of going from a “church planter� to “the leader of the church�.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

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One of the hardest things to get right when planting a church is the “church budget”. It all begins with a basic understanding of fund accounting bookkeeping. Here are a few tips for the church planters that I learned the hard way when putting together Elevation Church’s budget.

1. Have a condensed Chart of Accounts
Early on I wanted to know how much we were spending on everything so I just created accounts for everything- bad move. What I created was a continually growing chart of accounts. The concept of a condensed chart of accounts is basic for fund accounting but I know that church plants don’t have a plethora of CPA’s on staff. Having fewer accounts simplifies things as you grow and you can always run detailed reports within the accounts to further analyze data. Having a condensed chart of accounts is foundational in managing an accurate budget.

2. Be Consistent
Whoever is doing the books for the church must be consistent with which account they records expenses in to have an accurate financial picture. For instance, even though an expense may fit several accounts, it must be clear what account it goes in. If the item is purchased again, you have to commit to that expense account or your reports won’t be accurate. And in the end, your budgets will be wrong.

3. Have Staff Members submit their budgets
This seems simple but I meet church finance guys who are starting out and feel overwhelmed with figuring out how much everyone should spend in their areas of ministry. Who knows more about what the children’s ministry needs to spend than the Children’s Pastor. This is true in all areas of ministry. And if the staff person (paid or volunteer) doesn’t think budgeting is part of their job, change that perception quickly. Train them, get them around people who can help, get them a calculator, teach them Excel, because they need to learn the responsibility of managing God’s money. It’s not just the finance guy’s responsibility.

4. If they Can’t manage their own Money, Don’t let them manage God’s
This is another simple one. When deciding who is going to oversee the church budget, I’d recommend not going with the guy who can’t manage his own finances. That’s like going to an obese personal trainer for exercise tips.

These are just a few budgeting and basic bookkeeping tips for the churches getting started. Remember that budgeting is a fundamental concept of stewardship and not just a good idea. God blesses churches that plan. Getting this right early on is a must for all church plants.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

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Pastor Furtick continually has the staff reading leadership books that we discuss and apply during our staff meetings. At the stage when we were around 1,000 in attendance we read “E-Myth Revisited”. It is a great book dealing with structure and systems. The book made us aware of deficiencies in our systems; many of them were based upon personalities, not systems. Let me give you an example, we had great greeting because we had certain greeters on that particular day. We relied upon personalities giving us great greeting, not the training and systems we had put in place.
One of the keys that helped us successfully transition through the 1,000 barrier was looking at our follow-up and systematizing the process. As the volume of FTG’s increased each week, it became unmanageable for one person to handle the follow-up. When looking at the volume of the follow-up, the best thing to evaluate is actually not the attendance, but how many FTG’s are showing up any given Sunday. One person is able to effectively manage around 50 FTG’s each Sunday. As our numbers rapidly and consistently rose above that the system needed to change as well.
The following represents our current follow-up strategy. It has evolved considerably and has been developed to fit our particular model of ministry. We are currently averaging 2,000 in attendance and 110 FTG’s per Sunday.

1) Communication Card – We drive all FTG’s on Sunday to complete a communication card, the life line of the follow-up process. It’s a perforated tear out card that’s part of our worship guide where people give us their contact information. During every worship experience we have a FTG welcome and drive people to the communication card. On Sunday mornings we have gone out of our way to create an obvious area for FTG’s. We’ve placed a large blue canopy outside the main entrance with a “First time Guest Information��? banner flanking one side. We give away an oversized FTG packet as well as a free t-shirt to anyone who gives us a completed communication card.
2) Data Entry – Organizing the information for follow-up is essential. We have a team of volunteers arrive Monday morning to begin entering the communication card information into our database. Our goal is for all the info to be in by 2:00pm when we begin pulling all the reports necessary for follow up to begin.
3) FTG Letter – A small team of FTG volunteers show up at 2:00pm and prepare the FTG reports. Each FTG will receive a letter from Pastor Furtick thanking them for joining us. The letter changes with the sermon series to keep it current and reflect what they heard on that particular Sunday morning. The addresses on the envelopes are hand written to give a more personal touch.
4) FTG Phone Calls – A second team of FTG volunteers arrive at 6:30pm and prepare to call all the FTG’s from the day before. The intent of the phone call is four fold, “Thanks for worshiping with us”, “do you have any questions about the church?”, “is there anything we can do for you or your family?” and “our next newcomers lunch is on …”. Our goal is to keep the calls to 2 minutes or less but let the person we called dictate the pace and direction of the calls. The results of each call are recorded in a “call log” with conversations that need additional follow-up highlighted.
5) Newcomers Lunch Postcard – Every 6-8 weeks we have a 45 minute newcomers lunch immediately following our 3rd worship experience. This is where people can learn more about the church, meet Pastor Furtick and sign up to volunteer. Every FTG is sent a postcard reminder for the next newcomers’ lunch the week before it occurs.
6) Individual Follow-Up – As Assimilation Pastor I am driving the follow-up processes with volunteers implementing the system we have developed. My follow-up role becomes much more strategic; I’ll go through the FTG call log and contact those that need additional information. It might be someone wanting additional info about a particular area, learn more about the history of the church or a theological question the FTG team refers.

Follow-up should always be based upon stage of development and focused on where you are driving people. Figure our where you want them to go (for us we focus on participation rather than membership), develop your systems and drive them. Constantly evaluate how well it’s translating. Are people getting plugged in and are your systems achieving what you intended. Successful assimilation is helping people become part of your church through taking as few a steps as possible.

Larry Brey, Assimilation Pastor

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Have you ever been on a treadmill when the speed is set a little faster
than you are used to? Now think about increasing the speed and adding a
little incline. You start out at a jog, move to a run and are looking ahead
at a dead sprint. That’s what Elevation Church feels like many weeks. God
is doing so many amazing things and it feels like we are moving at the speed
of light most weeks.

Because of the pace at which things happen as well as the size with which
they happen, we have had to be extremely deliberate with our assimilation
systems. When I say systems, I’m referencing the steps that a First Time
Guest (FTG) takes to become to a vital part of the church. The system is
the thing a person does to become a part of the church

Part 2 of this 3 part blog will describe the major principles of
assimilation that were implemented in our first 8 months as a church.
During this time we had grown to average 700 people in attendance with a
volunteer force of approximately 210 people and 40 FTG’s each Sunday. Here
are several of the practical things that were essential during this time

1) Reverse engineer - Start with the end in mind, what does a “member”
of your church do? You’ll notice I did not write “know”, “believe”, or
“profess”. We chose “do” because that’s the tangible things you can
actually measure. For Elevation, it started with 3G’s (Groups, Giving and
Gifts). You can’t measure someone’s prayer life, but you can measure
volunteering.
2) Steps - Now that you have the end in mind, what you want them to do,
what are the steps a FTG takes to become involved? For us, we directed
people to a once a month newcomers lunch. It was 45 minutes long and began
with 20 minutes of vision casting, 10 minutes talking about our 3G’s and the
remainder of the time to sign up on the spot for a small group or as a
volunteer. It was the primary means for people to become part of the
church.

3) One step at a time- In the early days (350 people or less) my goal
was to know every person walking in the building and if I didn’t know them
there were probably a FTG. I was outside functioning as a greeter welcoming
everyone as they came in. My goal with every contact was to move each
person one step forward in the assimilation process. The contact may only
be 15-20 seconds, but I maximized the time. This part of the process is
extremely organic and relies upon you being bold and knowing who you are
talking with. If you are the assimilation pastor or connections pastor, you
need to feel personally responsible for moving people along even when a
person doesn’t know they need to be moved along. Here are snippets of
conversations that helped move people along in the assimilation process:

a. “It looks like you guys are enjoying Elevation, have you guys
considered jumping on board?”

b. “You seem to be enjoying your experience; do you have any questions
about the church?”

c. “I think you’d be a great greeter. Here’s Gary, he’s one of our
greeter leaders, he will help you start volunteering in that area.”

4) Follow-up - In our worship experiences we drive all FTG’s to complete
a communication card. It’s a perforated card in the worship guide they fill
out giving us their contact information. Monday morning I began the process
of following-up. Everyone received a FTG letter from Pastor Furtick as well
as a phone call from me. Since I was greeting, I was able to meet most of
the FTG’s as they walked in, so when I got the communication cards to make
the phone calls it was my second contact with that family. I pushed to have
a face-to-face with the FTG’s if possible. There were many weeks with 10+
such interaction all of which were vital to rapidly bringing people into the
system.

5) Opportunity, not need - We have never, nor will we ever, tell people
we need them to volunteer. We always talk about opportunity. Even when we
were small and had profound volunteer needs, we always operated like we
didn’t need anyone. Are you guilting people into volunteering because of a
need, or are you motivating people to action with an opportunity to become
part of the life transformation process?

The key to keep in mind is, what do you want people to do and have you made
how to accomplish the goal easy and obvious? Every step in the process
should reinforce the goal and it should be simple to explain to everyone
involved.

If you haven’t flushed out these components, that’s where you need to begin.
If you need, gain a fresh perspective from someone outside your organization
to seek another opinion about your processes. The more streamlined and
simple the process, the more people you are inviting to join you in
ministry.

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