Oh the People You Meet

An article by Matt    2 Comments

The Resurgence Blog has a great post on the six people that you meet when planting a church.  If you are planting a church, you need to read it.  Todd Bumgarner breaks people into six groups:

• Family, the people that are all in.
• Fence, people who like what you are up to but uncertain about whether they will join with you.
• Fans, people who love watching you from a distance but don’t want to commit.
• Friends, people who are willing to support you but will not be joining you.
• Farm, those who are not with you and have communicated that (verbally or non-verbally).
• Foes.  This group should be self-explanatory.

It is amazing to me the people that you meet through the course of planting a church.  While planting in Baltimore I was constantly awed by the people that God placed within my sphere of influence.  We met people who were excited about our church, people who were opposed to our church, people who didn’t quite know what to make of us, and people who kept their distance and watched.  Were I to go back and do it again I would have a better plan in place to help fans move to family, help the fence crowd better determine whether they should be family or friends, and let the farm alone.

In my experience the people who will be the key to a church plant’s success are friends and family.  Friends are those that are going to help you get started.  These are the people that will pray for you, support you financially, send missions teams, and will come alongside and support you personally.  The friends of your church will help you gain momentum early on and will be a group that you look back upon fondly in the years to come.

The family is the group that is the easiest to neglect, but is the most important to be investing in.  There are a million reasons why you can justify chasing after the other groups, but the family is the group that has committed to being with you on this journey and they are the ones who have been entrusted to you to shepherd.  This is the group that you invest in and send forth to do the work of the gospel.

Who do you think is the most important group to be investing in?

How have you managed to invest well in that group?