Church Planting Wisdom - From Bob Franquiz

Bob Franquiz is planter and pastor of Calvary Fellowship in Miami, Florida. He is also author of Elements: Starting a Revolution in Your World.  He is in the process of organizing the Momentum Conference, which has a blog here (link). He brings to us some answers to common questions in church planting.

• What mistake did you make in your first year of church planting, and how would you do it over? Here’s what I think my biggest mistake was: I didn’t seize the power of Momentum at first.  Starting a church can create serious momentum in your community (stats show that new churches are more likely to reach unchurched people that older churches) and I didn’t harness that.  Mostly because I had no idea what I was doing.  I had never read a book on church planting.  I was taught that all that ’stuff’ was fleshly and that I should just teach the Bible and God’s Spirit will bring everyone in.  That’s nice and all, but it’s not the whole story. Strategy is something that God uses too.
  

• Did you have to gather a core group? If so, how did you go about it? I started a Bible study on Thursday nights and we had about 20 people at our peak.  Then we started Sunday morning about 3 months later.   It was a simple format, just worship and teaching.  Not much vision casting (I had no idea what that was back then) or fundraising.  People just started showing up and we decided to take a step of faith and start Sunday services.
  

• Was there any particular Scripture that you kept turning to in order to keep you going? There were a few.  Hebrews 11:8; Matthew 8:13; Acts 18:9-10 (this one was huge b/c I did deal with fear when we were getting started.  I was leaving my comfortable job at Calvary Fort Lauderdale and moving to a new city where I didn’t know anyone).

Thanks, Bob for the great insights! We’re going to take a break on Sunday for obvious reasons (to celebrate the King rising) and then we’re back on Monday with our fifth batter in the lineup: Gary Lamb, lead pastor of Ridge Stone Church.