If you have a vision as a pastor to make church multiplication a priority, it’s best to begin budgeting from the start of your church plant. Whether that’s to launch another church or become multi-campus, it’s a challenge to budget for it. Even though setting aside money in the budget to multiply can be difficult, it can be done. Danny Parmelee asks Lee Stephenson how he has done it and what advice he has for pastors looking to do the same.

0:19 Danny introduces the episode’s topic, which is including church multiplication into the church’s budget.

0:53 Danny asks Lee how he practically budgeted for church multiplication.

1:09 Lee admits intentionally budgeting for multiplication is difficult. With one church he planted, they started right away with 2% of the budget going to multiplication. The second time he planted, he increased the percentage.

2:22 Danny asks Lee the specifics of how the budgeted money was tracked.

3:10 Lee explains what budgeting that amount looked like and what his next budgeting goal is for a multiplication initiative.

3:58 Danny inquires how Lee’s church determines who qualifies for financial help in ministry.

4:29 Lee shares what they do if someone outside their church is asking for church planting financial help versus someone from within the church doing the work of multiplication.

5:13 Lee shares that his church launched another congregation in October.

5:52 Danny asks Lee if he lets the congregation know part of the budget goes towards multiplication.

6:17 Lee addresses how he speaks about multiplication, whether it’s through meetings, one-on-one conversations, or commissionings.

7:46 Danny wonders if the people in Lee’s church can give directly to the multiplication fund or if it’s all 100% through general giving. 

8:15 Danny asks Lee to give church planters advice when it comes to budgeting for multiplication.

8:41 Lee compares waiting to start a multiplication budget to waiting to start a family until you can afford it. If you wait until you can afford it, it’s never going to happen.

9:07 Lee speaks to the importance of sharing a vision of multiplication with key leaders and staff.

9:35 Danny shares that it can be easy for a church planter to lose the vision of multiplication as they get into the day-to-day of leading a church.

10:10 Lee emphasizes that pastors need to be intentional in budgeting for this important vision.

11:05 Danny says it seems counterintuitive that churches that give away money and resources grow at a faster rate than those who do not.

11:17 Lee encourages church planters and pastors to be intentional to make a difference with more healthy churches.

Lee Stephenson: Hey, audience! Welcome to the Unfiltered podcast. Lee Stephenson here. I get to oversee Church Planting with Converge and a local church planter in Orlando, Florida.

Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. And I oversee Church Planting for Converge MidAmerica. And today we're going to be talking about budgeting for multiplication. In other words, how are you kind of thinking ahead? And I know as church planters, oftentimes it's like, hey, we're budgeting to survive to make it to the next week.

Lee Stephenson: I just hope I have a budget, right?

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, yeah. Is there a budget type of thing? And I would even say that I struggled quite a bit, you know, maybe with putting some very practical things. And so that's where I get to kind of ask a lot of the questions here today. Lee, to you - I would love to know just a little bit of your story of practically kind of how you did that. Maybe some larger framework for planters to think about. Starting from the very beginning. How do you intentionally budget for multiplication?

Lee Stephenson: I think it's hard. I mean, I'll just start there. Nobody's gonna force you to do it. And if multiplication really is part of your desire and game plan, you just got to force yourself to almost just put money away and not touch it unless it is truly for launching new congregations. Whether or not that's a church plant, or even a multi-site experience. Just knowing like, it's going to cost. In Arizona, we put about… we started from day one, with 2% of the budget just got set aside for multiplication purposes. That wasn't enough, if I'm honest. You know, we were able to help in the multiplication process. But really, the impact began to take place when we you know, were a sizable church where 2% of budget was actually a significant amount. This time around, we started more with about a 5%. Just setting aside for church planting purposes. And I can tell you that has actually helped us significantly more. To be able to have income, to be able to throw towards any type of multiplication initiative.

Danny Parmelee: Can I ask a practical question? So, when you say, set it aside? What do you mean? Would you put it in? Is it just a budget category that, you know, on paper, you'd see it kind of set aside? Or did you put it in? Okay, it's at the same bank, but it's in its own separate account. Or literally, like, hey, no, this is in something that's difficult to touch. So, I think of like the Dave Ramsey, where it's like, "Okay, put your credit cards in a freezer." No, actually he would say cut them up. But some people would say, "Okay, another option would be, you know, put them in water, put them in the freezer." So, it's like, you could still use it if you really, really, really had to, but it's gonna be a mess, and you're gonna feel really weird, you know, chopping up that, you know.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, for us, it was just an accounting thing, where, you know, it was, it was all still part of the same pot. You know, where the savings and missions and all that kind of stuff were set aside. But we knew this percentage is, you know, from an accounting bookkeeping standpoint, this is set aside for multiplication purposes. So, this is the money that we're going to use to help launch new churches. My goal is to actually grow that to 10%. But we just knew, like, we've got to get healthy. We've got to get to a place where we're managing, and we're moving forward, and we've got finances to be able to just manage this before we can launch out at that level. And so we started with 5%. My guess is, by year five, we'll probably be close to the 10% mark going towards church planting. We're at three, three years old at this point.

Danny Parmelee: And how do you determine what qualifies for that? And how is it separate than your missions giving? So, in other words, if you're setting aside money for both of those, and then all sudden, there's a church planter that happens to be in the area and like, "Hey, I need a little bit of support." I mean, is that coming out of your multiplication budget? Is it coming out of your missions budget? Who determines that? Or if it's like, well, also in your five or six years in you got $100,000 sitting in the bank for this multiplication, but you haven't? Yeah, so speak to that a little bit.

Danny Parmelee: That's great. And actually, you teed me up for the perfect question. I was gonna ask before you even said it. But how much does the congregation know? Like, "Hey, when you give, it's beyond just the lights, we also give to missions. And we also have this type of, you know, we're setting aside money for, you know, we're setting aside money for multiplication."

Lee Stephenson: I remind them big time, like, super clear every year. And then I drop it into conversations throughout the year. And so I do a state of the church address every January. And I just kind of go through, hey, this is all they accomplished last year. From a mission standpoint. You know, from an outreach standpoint, we talked about even the finances. I talk about how many people were bought into the mission because of their giving. Not just those serving with time. And we celebrate it. And then I just talk about, okay, these are the initiatives that we were able to accomplish. Here's where we were expecting to be able to do this year. Your giving making that kind of happen. Even like, a couple weeks ago, we did a commission service for the team that's going to be launching this next congregation. So, we brought up I don't know, 30-35 people on the stage. And we prayed over them as a church and kind of saying, "Hey, this is their last Sunday with us. They're going now and they're going to begin to practice and put all the pieces for this grand opening. It's going to happen in a couple of weeks." But even there, I said, "Guys, we're not taking a special offering in this moment. Because your ongoing giving, we set a portion of that aside in order to be able to support this. So, thank you for just being regular in your giving. And in supporting this because you're making a difference in ways you have no idea."

Danny Parmelee: This is nitty gritty now. But can people give directly to that fund?

Lee Stephenson: Yes.

Danny Parmelee: In other words... Okay, so it can be accounted for in that way. If there was someone who all the sudden was like, "Man, you've talked about this multiplication fund. We want to give directly." Which again, I don't know if we've ever done one on designated giving and the pros and cons to that. But for that, for that one, you do.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah. And we actually name it the congregation. So that way, it has a personal touch to it. But that's where the money is going. It's going into that multiplication fund.

Danny Parmelee: That's great. What advice do you have for church planters starting out then? And especially they might even have advisory team members. They might have board members that are like, "We can't afford this right now. Like, we don't have a worship leader. We don't have a children's ministry director and you're wanting to sock money away for something that doesn't even exist now."

Lee Stephenson: I would liken it to when you get married and decide you're gonna have kids. You know, if you wait till you can afford to have kids, you'll never have kids. I think the same thing is true with church planting and multiplication. It's like, if you wait to the point that you can afford it, you'll never actually do it. And so you need to be intentional from day one. And it's got to be beyond you. Like you've got to... As you're raising up key leaders and staff people and elders, like you've got to educate them why this is important. Why we're involved in doing this. So that way, like if you drop dead of a heart attack, the mission continues. Like they're gonna continue to multiply versus all the sudden, it's like, we're not gonna give the church planting. That was his thing. You know, to me, that shows a lack of overall leadership, if that becomes the framework if you're not there.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah. And I don't know what the current statistics are of church plants that actually reproduce by year five or six or seven. But what I've recognized is that almost every church planter starts out with that vision. And then it slowly wanes. And so, if you don't start it, even on paper, and put some budget, put some money towards it, it just makes it that much easier to kind of forget about it. And all the sudden, you know, you don't care about multiply to other churches. You're so focused on just, you know, growing yours or keeping yours alive.

Lee Stephenson: Exactly. And so, you've just got to budget it. You got to make it very... be very intentional. And again, like, we're not going to change the status quo in our country. We're not even going to keep up with the status quo in our country, if we don't learn how to even reproduce from within. So, we've got to learn to raise up leaders and send them out the door. How can we raise them up if we sit there and go, "Well, you know, we gave you an opportunity to preach, but we're not going to support you financially." Like it's got to be all or nothing. And so, I just want to challenge our church planters. Like don't just plant one church, plant multiple churches. And just see what God could do in that. But I do know, statistically churches that do multiply, seem to have a greater impact in their own local context faster than they would if they didn't.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah. Which again, it's, you know, seems counterintuitive. You're giving away money. You're giving away people. And yet your church is growing at a faster pace than those that are tightly fisted with the people's money.

Lee Stephenson: Exactly, exactly. Fun conversation. Be intentional church planters, pastors. And let's help make a difference. And let's plant more churches and more congregations that are healthy and are going to impact their community. Thanks for tuning in everyone. This has been the Unfiltered podcast. Till next time, keep it real.