As church planters prepare in the last few weeks before launch, what should the church’s grand opening day look like? Lee Stephenson and Danny Parmelee share their thoughts of what worked and what didn’t work during their experiences.

0:22 This topic is an extension of a previous Unfiltered podcast titled “30 days to launch.” 

0:59 Danny discusses the importance of a church planter being in a healthy frame of mind, getting enough sleep and eating well in the stressful days leading up to launch.

2:19 Lee asks Danny to walk us through what his grand opening day was like, with details.

2:46 Danny talks about launching on a Saturday night and what it looked like to be renting space from an existing church.

3:54 Danny shares how his excitement of launch day caused him to do some unnecessary tasks.

4:12 A warning from Danny to church planters to make the grand opening fun and exciting for their launch team and advice on how to handle it when something goes wrong.

6:01 Danny asks Lee to share about launching two different churches and the difference between their grand openings.

6:13 Launching a church in a movie theater and the fun things Lee incorporated into that grand opening.

6:55 Lee discusses the success of having all volunteers wearing matching t-shirts.

7:25 How helpful a visual can be for visitors to see that there’s a group of people committed to the church can be a powerful thing.

8:06 Lee’s last minute call to have two services for his church’s grand opening.

8:49 Lee advocates that it’s okay to finish a grand opening service early.

9:24 Invite people to join the journey of a growing a new church together.

9:39 Lee reveals a great giveaway his church did that helped with marketing.

10:30 The one thing that Lee’s church did that was unnecessary for the grand opening.

10:46 Lee shares what he did differently and what he did again for his second church planting launch.

11:56 Danny stresses the importance of capturing the grand opening through video and photos.

12:42 The importance of having something to create a “pause” after the service, to keep attendees around instead of leaving immediately.

12:51 The essential training needed for the launch team to engage with attendees after the service.

13:28 Preparing your volunteers and leaders how to handle and respond to sticky situations when things go wrong.

14:28 Lee reminisces about what they did when the air conditioning went out in Orlando in September.

15:02 A reminder from Lee that trouble will occur when you’re trying to bring Jesus to a dark world.

15:25 What happened to all those fans?

15:28 The rental building has a reoccurring problem!

15:55 Lee hopes there have been some helpful tips discussed for church planters that are in preparation mode for their grand opening.

Lee Stephenson: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Unfiltered podcast. This is Lee. And I have the joy of serving as the executive director of Church Planting for Converge.

Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. And I oversee church planning for Converg MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: And we're gonna take a little bit of time in this podcast to kind of follow up to a previous podcast, where we were talking about kind of that last month lead up to the grand opening. And specifically, we're gonna take some time and just talk about how to maximize that moment. Like, how do you maximize that grand opening experience to really gain as much momentum as you possibly can? And, at the same time know, kind of like, this is what we have to work with. Now, let's begin to build the plane. I mean, rewind, tell us just a little bit about your grand opening experience, Danny, at Epikos.

Danny Parmelee: Yes. So we launched on a Saturday night, which I do not recommend. As I said we were winging it, we made lots of mistakes along the way, but that we were renting from another church. They couldn't do Sunday mornings, they actually had someone using the building Sunday night. So we originally started with Saturday nights, and we thought hey, this would be actually great. Our launch actually did go fairly well. I mean, we had at that time, our launch team was about the traditional 40 people. And I think we had maybe about 150 that showed up. You know, it was 180 to 200 seat, old Presbyterian Church. So it had a good feel, and a good vibe, nothing huge. But for us, I just remember specifically, when all sudden they started taking out folding chairs to accommodate some of the guests. So this old Presbyterian Church that hadn't seen a lot of life before, you know, in the last 10 years. And all sudden there's folding chairs coming out. That was kind of what the Lord... Image that the Lord had kind of burned into my mind. I can't remember what time but I know, I was so excited. I was probably there Saturday morning, you know, doing unnecessary tasks like pushing things around and you know, polishing, I don't know old dusty books in the back library that no one would go to whatever. I mean, I was just there was so much excitement. Here's what I think, though, maybe I missed out on is making it an exciting moment for the rest of the launch team. And so sometimes as church planters, we can be so task driven and such a perfectionist that it's like we want everything set up in the right place, you know everything to go perfectly. And there will be things that go wrong and how you respond to that will help to set the culture. So if you make a mistake, if a volunteer makes a mistake. Or if it's just, you know, whatever the sound system literally breaks and it's some manufacturer in some other country that you can't... To blow up to get angry to get disgruntled is like the worst thing that you can do. And I've had those moments many times. And it's like, uh, you know, shoot. You know, like, it just didn't help at all. So in your own mind to think about how you can make this fun. So part of that is bringing the food. You had mentioned food before. So it's like, okay, if you're doing an early morning thing, figure out like, you know, without creating too much extra distraction, like you're bringing doughnuts. You're maybe bringing in Chick-fil-A, or I don't know something that kind of just makes it kind of special and celebratory. Especially if they're going to be there for an extra two hours in the morning for setup. And I don't know, just different things that for the team, you can make it fun in as much prep as you can do so that you can go around and pull some people aside and say, "I just want to say thank you so much. This is so great to have you be part of that." And we've talked about that before. Sometimes as church planters, we forget to say thank you to these volunteers. They don't need to be doing it. They're not getting paid. So really lean into that event to be something that's going to be memorable for them as well, too.

Lee Stephenson: I love that. I love that. I think that's a great idea.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, tell us a little bit of yours. You have, you know, two different launches. And maybe if there was some things that you learned from the first one, that you said, "You know what, now I'm going to do this a little bit different."

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, it... So the first church we launched, we were in a movie theater. And which was fantastic from the standpoint we had ample lobby space. Parking was not an issue. And so we worked hard, even on the outside on the sidewalk as people are walking towards the movie theater to create an ambience with the banner signs and tents and things of that sort. And then when they came in, we actually had popcorn. I mean it fits the theme and we had sodas. So everybody was able to pick up popcorn and sodas as they walked into the service. And that was just fun. We went ahead, and I think it was a good call. We went ahead, that first Sunday - had all of our volunteers wearing the same shirt. And that just helped right off the bat to kind of let people know like, we're operating with a level of professionalism and it help people realize really quick, "Oh, there are people here that are committed. And I can probably ask questions to one of them if I have questions about the church." I'm a big believer that first...  Yeah, go ahead.

Danny Parmelee: No, I was gonna say that is so huge. And so I just want to restate that. Because I know that for church planters, you can be pinching pennies, and it's like, oh, well, we'll just do a lanyard instead of a t-shirt. Just being able to have where someone can easily see and even from afar, where you see that you know, speckled throughout oh, everybody who's in an orange shirt or a blue shirt or whatever the you know, that the colors are that you've chosen for that. It really helps to demonstrate, like you said, there's a group of people here. It's not just a single pastor, cult leader, you know, there's other people here who are committed to this, and it's really easy to be able to find them.

Lee Stephenson: And our launch team was roughly 70-75 adults, as we were heading into our grand opening. And so we pushed them all like everybody, I'm challenging to have X amount of invites. We ended up at our grand opening, we did two services. Which again, I wouldn't always recommend that. But it was just one of those like two weeks before God kind of pressure, you know, pressed upon me like, "Hey, I think we should try two services." So we rushed to get the mailers and all the information kind of adjusted as such. And I'm glad we did because we ended up having 356 people show up at our grand opening.

Danny Parmelee: Phenomenal.

Lee Stephenson: I'm also really... I was really adamant like that first service, it's okay to finish early. Don't take everybody's time. Don't feel like you got to fill up everything. Have fun, keep the music high energy. Celebrate what God is doing and what he's done, to even allow you to get to that moment. And then share about 25 minutes of just articulating the vision. Share a little bit of your story, why you chose to plant a new church in this location or within this city. And what your prayer is. And then invite people and say, "We're just getting started" and invite people to join the journey with you. Don't tell them what they should do. Don't you know, it's just as I'm committing to this, I would like to invite you to come join us in this process. And then at the end of it, we scraped the money together. And I'm so glad we did. Everybody as they exited, we gave them a t-shirt of our church. And so we got a specifically really nice branded t-shirt. High quality t-shirts, so we knew people would like it and they would actually wear it. And we just kind of chalked that up to marketing budget. We said if these people are wearing this shirt it's just going to help us. And I mean, people loved it. I mean, it was amazing what people will do to get a t-shirt. And so people loved it and people... It help keep people around because they lined up to get their t-shirts. And anytime you can get that kind of energy, even after the service in the lobby is just going to become contagious. So that was one thing we learned about. We also did swag bags. That was unnecessary. That was an expense that looking back on it going, we just wasted money. And we gave too much. And it we didn't get any return on the investment of those things. The t-shirts? Absolutely worked really, really well. So the second time around, followed a little bit of some of the same patterns. We ended up doing two services. We marketed from a personal invite in social media. We did a small mailer, just a couple of the local housing communities right around our facility. But we didn't do a mass mailer. And but we did the t-shirt thing at the end of the service. But we also contracted with one of our local businesses here that does Italian ice, and they're kind of well known in the Orlando area. They have a great reputation. And they came and we just gave away Italian ice at the end of the service on top of the t-shirts. And that was a big win. People sat around for an hour just eating their Italian ice and talking and gave us the opportunity to walk around as a team and connect relationally with all those people that were here for the first time. And we were similar. We're about 75 adults going into the grand opening. And we actually on our grand opening had 450 that showed up at our Orlando launch.

Danny Parmelee: That's great. A couple things. And I had alluded to this in the last one. Hire someone, if you don't have someone on your volunteer staff to do one person doing photography, another person doing video. And just capture, capture, capture. I mean as many pictures as you can. And again, this is something that you will want to invest money in, because that is collateral that you will be able to use for other things. You can also tell you know, even within the service, I think it's great to tell people, "Hey, snap some pictures." You know, post on social media. So you get that initial bump, just from from a practical standpoint. Lee, you had mentioned something that I think is also very important, is create something that creates some sort of pause after the service. So whether that's handing out ice cream, handing out t-shirts. Whatever it is that you're almost giving this excuse are forcing the slowdown of people hopping in their cars and driving away. And then you have to train your team members what to do with this strategic opportunity. So that's... How do you go up, engage someone? Just say, "Hey, it's just how did you hear about it?" I mean, you can't ask how long you've been coming here? Because it's today!

Lee Stephenson: Everybody's the same.

Danny Parmelee: Everyone's the same. So and then how, you know, whatever you're trying to get the next step to be for them. Hey, did you fill out a card? Did you get a t-shirt, you know, whatever. Without being pushy, and, you know, weird type of thing. Train people not to be weird, I think is just really important. So create that hangout time, but then you have to train your volunteers for that. The other thing for your kind of volunteer and leader training is to know what to do if something goes wrong. So who do they talk to? So do they talk to you? But if it's, you know, you're preaching, then who's the next person? Or you have it kind of lined out like, hey, if there's any problem in the children's area, this is who you talk to. Yes, you should call the police in this situation. No, you shouldn't. And just to kind of go through at least a couple scenarios. So your team knows how to respond when, you know, a homeless person shows up and is totally drunk and is walking down the front of the aisle. You know, or there's a fight that breaks out. I mean, all sorts of crazy stuff happens at churches and that doesn't exclusively happen on...

Lee Stephenson: Specifically at grand openings.

Danny Parmelee:...launch Sunday. You know someone who's mad. You know, some political activist or religious activist. So just, you know, you can't prepare for everything, but just in general to say, hey, if this happens, this is how we kind of want to respond.

Lee Stephenson: Well, like here in Orlando. I mean, we weren't expecting it. On our grand opening the AC units went out.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: Here it is, it's September in Orlando, and we had no air conditioning at all. And we ended up having like, it was last minute. I sent a couple volunteers to the local Walmart and to Home Depot and said, "Buy every single fan that you can buy." And we just set it up. And it was what it was. It was like we can't do anything about it. And you know, we knew at some time, this will probably make a podcast and we'd laugh about it and go, yeah, we made it. So yeah, you just know that trouble is brewing. It will happen because you're doing something or you're bringing light into darkness. And the dark is gonna try to push back. So it shows up in very, very unique ways. So don't think, "Oh, it can't happen to us." It probably will.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah. So what did you do with the leftover fans? Did you put those in swag bags for the next year? Like, hey, guess what! You have a coffee mug and a, you know, 24 inch fan in your swag!

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, a box fan to be able to put in your window. We put them in a local closet. And I'm glad we did because it's happened to us a couple other times. I think two more times since our grand opening we've shown up on a Sunday morning, and the AC was out in the building. And it's I mean, we don't own the building. So we're renting our facilities. Like, it is what it is. Pull the fans back out. And so I'm glad we kept them at this point.

Danny Parmelee: That's great.

Lee Stephenson: Well, thanks, guys. Danny, you've been fun in conversation just talking about that grand opening experience. And hopefully, for our listeners out there that are in that preparation mode towards the grand opening that you found at least one or two things to be able to take back that will help you in that process as well. I wanna thank everybody for tuning into our Unfiltered podcast and until next time, keep it real.