Converge church planting leaders Lee Stephenson and Danny Parmelee discuss Converge’s five-year church planting goal and how your church can participate in Church Planting Weekend.

0:18 Lee talks about Converge’s goal of planting 312 churches in five years.

1:20 Lee discusses how Converge came up with the number 312.

2:21 Danny asks Lee if they considered changing the goal because of the pandemic.

3:12 Lee says there are more people in the church planting pipeline than any other time in his history with Converge.

3:55 Lee talks about the concept behind Church Planting Weekend.

4:35 "If we could get a third of our churches playing the game and getting involved at some level, praying, raising up people from within to go out and plant a church, we easily reach our number [of 312 new churches]."

5:20 We want every Converge church across our movement to set aside time on the first Sunday of June, or sometime between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, to have this conversation.

6:07 Lee says, "I believe that a lot of our churches, they have at least one person in their church that maybe God has called and even anointed to plant a church."

6:50 Lee talks about the resources Converge is providing churches for Church Planting Weekend.

7:59 Lee says, "The goal is to make it as easy as possible for anybody to have this conversation."

8:04 Lee gives some ideas of what churches can do for Church Planting Weekend.

9:22 Lee says, "If the majority of our churches engage in this conversation, I think it could be overwhelming of what we would see God do."

Lee Stephenson: Welcome, everyone to the Unfiltered podcast. My name is Lee Stephenson, executive director of Church Planting with Converge.

Danny Parmelee: I’m Danny Parmelee. And I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica and southeast.

Lee Stephenson: And we are for our Converge family churches. We’re in the middle of, not even middle, we’re still on the front end of a five-year kind of campaign, a push of planting as many churches as we possibly can. We actually came up with a number 312. We believe across the United States that an accurate number of totally doable is that we can plant 312 churches in a five-year span. And so we’re doing everything we possibly can to kind of move that forward conversations, podcast, everything and so for our Converge churches, if you’re unaware of that, we’d love for you to join in that process of helping us get towards that goal and even go beyond that. If you’re not a Converge church, join us in helping plant more churches in and around the United States as a whole.

Lee Stephenson: Great question, Danny. It really was something that our 10 districts worked over a year of kind of looking at their current trends, looking at honest conversations that they’ve had, and coming up with an accurate number of going, I think, based on what our history is, based on the momentum that we see right now that we should be able to plant this amount of churches over a five-year span. And then we interacted over that. And so it gave me the ability kind of go, Well, you planted two churches in last 10 years, I don’t think you’re gonna plant 500 in the next five years. But let’s revisit that number. And so through that process, through prayer, through conversation, all of our districts came together. And when you add all those numbers together is 312. Because it does sound a little bit, right. It’s not this nice round number; we’re gonna do 300. It’s 312. And that’s why it is distinct in that, which honestly, I like better, right? Because I do think it’s a little bit more accurate from that perspective.

Danny Parmelee: That’s great. Now, is it true that you and I both get fired if we do not hit the 312 number or my personal district goals?

Lee Stephenson: I think that some more on the district level other than the national level.

Danny Parmelee: OK, oh, yeah. Only me. Now, part of the 312 is we’re working towards kind of doing this Church Planting Weekend this summer. Where did that kind of concept/idea, what will that practically look like for our churches?

Danny Parmelee: Give if you can just even a practical example of how a church plant could participate in this weekend. And then also how a church maybe that has never been a church planting. It isn’t in their DNA at all. But also they’re like, Oh, yeah, that actually sounds good. How could they participate?

Lee Stephenson: Wonderful question. We’ve got a whole platform of resources. So if you go to the Converge website, just converge.org or go to church planting, on there is kind of a resources page that also talks about Church Planting Weekend, just click on that button. And you’ll see all the resources that we’ve made available. So we’ve got prayer guides, we’ve got sermon talking points, we’ve got how to incorporate into an announcement, we’ve got multiple videos that you can pick and choose from, we have ones that are heartfelt, that just show like the impact that a church plant has within the life of a community, or we have ones that are on the more number awareness side. And like this is why just based on the research, why we need more churches to be started across the United States. And so we even have basic like, hey, if you want to give the entire Sunday to this, here’s how a sermon could look from song choice to where you put in a video to here’s sermon talking points. We even have some couple complete sermons that pastors could download and kind of work into their context and their situation and their stories. The goal is we want to make it as easy as possible for anybody to have part of this conversation. And so we’re asking, would you at least introduce the idea, talk about why you’re excited to be a part of the Converged church planting movement. Show one of the videos, maybe take some time, pray, they could bring a church planter on the stage, pray over that church planter, if they want to take an offering that goes towards district church planting efforts, fantastic. You know, if you’re a young church plant, just talk about, Hey, this is the family that helped us get started and highlight like, we want to continue the process. We want to continue what other people have done for us to build into other churches. And so we’re going to continue to talk about this, we’re going to continue to look and pray. And then giving the invite to like, for some of you that are in the room, maybe God’s calling you to be that guy that starts a new church and talk to me after service, you know, and then they call Danny to kind of close the deal.

Danny Parmelee: $5 referral card, $5 Starbucks referral card.

Lee Stephenson: But my biggest thing is, I want to see our churches join the process, join the effort, let’s do the heavy lifting together. You know, multiple hands make light lifting. So let’s, what could God do if the majority of our churches engage this conversation and prayed. I think it could be overwhelming of what we would see God do. So that’s why I’m excited about. Join us. If you need more information, contact us through the Converge website as well. They could register if they’re interested in that and be able to download any of those resources. Thanks, friends. It’s been the Unfiltered podcast. Until next time, keep it real.