Home > Blog > Digital Church and Technology Helps

March 17, 2021

Digital Church and Technology Helps

By New Churches Team

Brady Shearer was in his third year of school working toward a degree in youth ministry when he was hired by a church as an intern to work in their media department on videography, social media, branding, and communications. This wasn’t anything he had been trained for, and he learned on the job. He looked at his classmates and realized that he had learned those skills and they would need them also, so he began to teach them. In 2013, he started Pro Church Tools. Now he has a team of 15 people that creates software products and teaches churches how to navigate communication shifts.

Tracking Disciple-Making Metrics

In 2010, a conversation on church attendance started when the rise in digital platforms for churches began. That conversation has been fast tracked the last 12 months. Some questions we need to be asking are: What does discipleship-making look like in your church? How can you expand metrics so that you are tracking those that demonstrate what a person who is becoming more like Christ looks like? Church attendance alone can’t answer the question of if people are becoming more Christlike.

Consider what the fulfillment of mission looks like at your church. What are the next steps? Serving, giving, leading a group, volunteering, attending a church service, attending a church event, and submitting a prayer request are all things you can use digital tools to track and can give you an accurate picture of discipleship in your church.

Digital Church in a COVID World

In the last year, every church has had to figure out how to reach their people on digital platforms. Digital giving began for many churches. Churches have had to increase their social media platforms. And churches have learned the best ways to host online church.

Digital fatigue is real and is increasing. “When you are creating content, one of the best things to keep in mind is that you want to stop the scroll,” Shearer explains. To do this, you need visual versatility. You need to change your background and other creative elements so that the viewer sees something new and is drawn in.

Also, consider how completely pre-recorded services provide less tech problems overall. You have more tech work up front, but the day of you just upload and run the service. You can still have live interaction with live moderators responding to questions in real time.

To read the remainder of the article, and to watch the full video, click here.

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Home > Blog > How Do You Measure Church Plant Success?

How Do You Measure Church Plant Success?

By New Churches Team

Timing for how to measure church plant success can be tricky. There are two big phases: (1) core and launch team development and (2) going public. Core and launch team development take 3–9 months. This is built on the idea of going public at some point, which is usually done in the fall or spring. Think in terms of 3–6-months prep work then going public. If the question is how to measure success at 6 months, it depends on where you are in the launch cycle.

4 to 6 Months

At 4–6 months you may have started public worship. But putting a number on how many people you should have at this point is tricky. It all depends on your location and the community. In some unchurched locations, 50 people coming on a regular basis is a big church plant. If you are in a growing community that is more churched, that might be different. For church plants outside the U.S., you cannot compare to U.S. church plant numbers.

Typically at 4-6 months, you should be in public worship or near public worship, have a handful of small groups meeting and multiplying, and be mentoring and raising up leaders. Also, you would want to have a size of a core group or launch team that is appropriate for church plants in your community.

Socioeconomic Considerations

It’s not just the city and state where you are planting. You also must consider your location and the socioeconomics of those you are reaching. Depending on where you plant in a city, socioeconomics will look different. Then you have to consider how success looks different in that light.

One hundred people in a low-socioeconomic context may not allow you to be sustainable as a full-time staff member. But 100 people in a high-socioeconomic area may allow for two people to be full-time. As you show forward movement and as you are reaching people with the gospel, there tends to be more flexibility around funding from those who are supporting you financially.

Avoid Comparisons

Do not spend time comparing yourself to church planters who speak at conferences. You go to the conference and you get an unrealistic depiction of an experience you are never going to have that distracts you from the real and amazingly glorious thing. If you want to know what a successful church plant looks like in your community, find churches and church planters in your community. Learn what went well and what didn’t in your community. Set goals based on those discoveries.

Adapted from the New Churches Q&A Podcast Episode 517: Measuring Church Plant Success. Click here to listen to more to church planting, multisite, and multiplication tips.

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Home > Blog > Challenges in Urban Church Planting

September 18, 2019

Challenges in Urban Church Planting

By New Churches Team

Urban Church Planting

When it comes to planting a church in an urban setting, there are a few unique challenges.

1. The cost of doing ministry in an urban setting is higher and the income is lower. You cannot have the expectation that the church will be self-supporting from tithes and offerings within a few years.
2. You have to use different metrics when measuring missional progress. Less people are looking for a church, so the results aren’t the same. You cannot compare yourself to a suburban church.
3. Every island in a city has developed it’s own culture. Suburbs are like a standard mall – they all look the same once you are inside them. Urban neighborhoods are more like local shops that all have their own unique flavor.
4. The prework that needs to be done is much longer than in a suburban setting. You need to take time to exegete the culture and then let your church planting model by guided by the neighborhood.
5. By nature, the city is a transient environment. People come into the city to work or play, and then head back to the suburbs. And those who are living in the city typically only stay 2-3 years. It is more like a campus ministry where the turnover rate is high.
6. Cities are more diverse in many ways, including ethnicity and economics. You have to think about how you serve different kinds of people and help them follow Jesus together just like they live life together.

Reimagining Discipleship

In most church contexts, discipleship begins after someone has become a Christ-follower. We offer classes and encourage them to make more disciples who make disciples. But in the city, if you try to make disciples that way it won’t work.

To read the remainder of the article, and to watch the full video, click here.

This video is part of Plus Membership. To get full access to it, and much more, I encourage you to become a Plus Member. Click here to see all the benefits of becoming a Plus Member.