Fundraising for your church plant

Brotherhood multiplication restoration we are synthetic we're a family planting churches together join us as we hear from leaders of this movement from across North America and discover what it really takes to plant churches everywhere for everyone I am here with Matt Lawson live on location at the sin that we're gathering in the West here in Phoenix Arizona Matt Lawson is lead pastor of City City Church story city story city said I knew it I was closed you closed a lot of city jails now but man we I mean just go back we're just talking about just like being in Atlanta and in this connecting are you from Atlanta we claim Atlanta we claim Hannah's home but we were there for nine years North Atlanta love it miss it great culture we just love it so how long have you been in LA so we moved to LA January 2015 so we just passed five years that we've been on site there and planning a church in the city and in five years no five years and did you have a team to go out there was it just you you your wife I mean how did that all like yeah you know it's funny we had probably 15 16 people that had committed from Atlanta to go with us every one of them got picked off from finances hell family stuff going on so we moved as well as a couple that's still on our staff with us so there were two couples that moved out to Atlanta together moved in the same day yeah so you started off with 15 strong and it got down to about yeah well there were 15 in Atlanta we we we moved to LA with four with two couples yeah and our kids so three kids they had one kid you know there were nine of us yeah and that's how we started we didn't know anybody in LA when we moved there okay I didn't know a single person we'd only been in LA three days in her life before we moved to LA all right well I mean in that like a lot of times you know guys are going in I mean in place especially a place like a Los Angeles yeah the money runs out the patience all those different things but I've heard you're the Guru when it comes to raising money hmm so that's what I want to talk how do you raise money what is like like foundationally like what is the thought about like raising money yeah I don't know if I like the title but yeah I love talking about money do you know I think oftentimes when I talk to church planners I think fundraising is the part of the process that seems to come that seems to be the most unnatural I think church planners struggle with raising funds I don't think it's I don't think it's a natural ability for most guys I think it's an acquired skill it's an acquired taste if you will and so it's it's it's a part of the process though that's essential yeah money can't guarantee your church is gonna do well money can't replace the supernatural call of God on your life money can't solve all of your church's issues but money can fund the vision yeah when it can fund the mission of your church and so fundraising is important and of all the things that I see a lot of guys struggling with one of the things that's most prominent is the issue of money and finances and having the ability to fund ministry in the fund mission what do you call it you say you don't like the title earlier what are you cause because I usually call a ministry department no no I was talking about the title you gave me fundraising guru fundraising good I love the way you started you know just more about kind of the passion right it doesn't replace your car doesn't it doesn't guarantee success all of those names but it can't fund the vision right right you know and I think that's I think that's a great distinction you know I know a lot of guys come to you and ask you hey Matt teach me about how to raise money and they want the house give me the practical but you're talking about like what are things that they need to kind of first establish before getting into some of the practical things yeah I think there's some elemental things about fundraising that I think probably need to be foundational to establish the house before you just try to jump in and and understand the practicals and the how to's and the best practices of fundraising and I think and when it comes to fundraising I think our ability to raise fund is typically dependent on two legs and the two legs are our credibility mm-hmm and I'll define credibility as the known observable history of leading multiplyin ministry with a voice that can confirm it that's how I define credibility and then the second leg is vision i define vision in terms of church planning and specifically fundraising as the ability to assess the missionary context and then being able to put clear actionable steps to reaching that context and so that's how I define those two and so I believe those are the two fundamental legs of raising funds in the church planning context credibility often times when you're in front of a donor and they're asking questions the questions they typically ask when it relates to credibility have you led multiplying ministry before they may not ask it exactly like that but they're wondering that have you have you cast vision in such a way where people have got behind it and supported it and so credibility is an essential piece to it and the vision piece is also essential but there's a part of this process where mm-maybe guys are starting out and interest play maybe it's their first ministry maybe they've not done you know I was in youth ministry for 14 years years ago youth ministry was sort of the platform that launched the to church planning today I think we're seeing in seminaries most of the guys are going directly to church planting so a lot of guys is the first ministry cause they've never raised funds before and so they don't have credibility they don't have a a past history of multiplying ministry and so I do hear from guys often and say hey man this is my first it's my first run no you know so what do I do about credibility and oftentimes I'll say well well I believe in fundraising we can we can borrow credibility we can't borrow vision vision is to be specific to our context but we can borrow credibility and oftentimes when we borrow credibility what that means is there's a gatekeeper gatekeepers are people that that speak and people listen and we can borrow their credible we don't have a past history of multiplying ministry basically people are putting their yes down not on our past but they're putting their yes down on our potential and often times when we don't have credibility the gatekeeper is the one who will open the door to fundraising opportunities when it comes to credibility so what does that look like you know that this guy you didn't mention a seminary guy you know God that has felt the call to go to a city to start a church he's what does it look like to borrow that credibility in in a way that is you know is it getting them to come down and cast vision is it just kind of name dropping what does the borrowed credibility in the play yeah I think it can look like several different things I think ultimately you want to get to a place where you're not only borrowing their recommendation if you will and that can come in the form of a lot of different things hey I've got a guy who's raising funds you should talk to him hey they write a letter on your behalf you know they they write a recommendation letter on your behalf but ultimately you want to get to the place where those people who do have credibility are raising funds for you yeah and and and what I mean by that is oftentimes when people see the potential and they understand the vision they understand the possibility oftentimes in fundraising you'll find that those gatekeepers are actually also raising funds for you and and ultimately that's the place where you really want to get to but when it's written in terms of borrowing credibility you know for us it just came in the form of a pastor our pastors from Atlanta hey pastor can you write a letter we're sending letters out to 500 churches we just you know we know a lot of these guys but a lot we don't but we know they know you could you help us open the door to a conversation yeah that was important to us so what do you do with the the either the indigenous guy or the guy like me right that's coming in just planting a church now is being introduced in SBC or even you know sin Network and it's like I don't know anybody I don't know anybody in this area in in this network how would you kind of use Baro credibility in that say yeah in that that is a challenge I think that I think the dynamic and the environment for for fundraising and church planning has changed even it's changed in five years since we started I think there's a lot of reasons I think it's changed one of the reasons I think it's because the sin network has done such a phenomenal job of mobilizing church to give a high interest plans but for guys that we have a guy that's coming to our city this spring he has LED multiplying ministry in the past he's a campus pastor for a great church in Vegas originally from Los Angeles but he's not indigenous to our network he doesn't know a lot of guys he's not buried but he's been within the organization a very large organization in Vegas for years and has done phenomenal ministry but he just has no other pastors and so for us we see this guy has been a guy who we believe in we trust in we want to Double Down and I was just having a conversation even today where we said you know what we know some other churches that we believe will get behind a guy like this so we're gonna vouch for him he's not he's not pitching on his credibility he's pitching on our credibility to bring these guys to the table because we believe once they get in the room with a guy like that they'll see what we've already seen and so for guys like that I think the beauty of the network that we have the family that we have is that we can raise funds for each other in these scenarios in these situations the kingdom of God is bigger than my little small piece yeah that's huge that's huge okay so that's the credibility side let's talk more about this and let's drill down a little bit there when you you said that vision is not something you can borrow vision is something that has to come from within so talking a little bit about that yeah I you know vision has to be specific to our context and I think donors know when you've done the work or the missionary yeah it's good they know when you've done the work of a missionary they know when you understand your context and I think our ability to cast a vision oftentimes is limited by our ability to see what God wants to happen in our city okay and so when we are acquiring vision there's so you know you understand there's several elements to vision and that's acquiring the vision and the casting the vision but acquiring the vision is is doing the work for missionary its understanding the city like a like a spiritual anthropologist I heard a friend a mentor you and I both know him out of Kansas City he was describing the work for a missionary like this he said you know you can see the city through a lot of different eyes he said you can see the city through the eyes of a taxi driver the taxi driver will see the problems you can see the eyes you can see the city through the eyes of a longtime resident they'll see the problems in the city they want to know the solutions you can see the eyes you can see the city through the eyes of a tourist who has no clue with the problems of the city are or you can see the city through the eyes for cartographer this was his words cartographers the one that draws the lines they know where the they know they know where the neighborhoods are they know what's happening I'm so glad you explained all that what is the choreographer Kotaro he draws the map in smaller words and so in acquiring a vision doing the work for missionary I think our ability to acquire that vision is only limited by our ability to see the city as God sees the city and that work doesn't come easy and the reason why I say you can't borrow somebody else's vision and church planning it's easy to grab a prospectus from Kansas City you know you got a guy a buddy that's killing it in Miami hey man can I grab your prospectus and we just cut and paste vision and we begin to cast vision but vision is really specific to your context my context is the entertainment industry 80% of my people are struggling with the idol of significance struggling with the idol of control I need to know my context how I can speak the gospel to my context and so as I cast vision donors know if you have done the work of a missionary and so that's an important piece to it yeah oftentimes I hear people are church planters going into a city and a lot of times they don't have vision they have more ants my vision right they have it's more of a what we're not gonna be in what's wrong with the city already and what's you know how important is that when it comes to raising funds that people are not leaving I wouldn't necessarily add to our vision but with vision or do you differentiate this yeah I know I understand I think I think I understand for sure I do I do see that I do see guys speak about their city in terms of what's wrong and the problems and the issues and and of course the gospel is the solution to all of those things but I think vision is most compelling not from the negative it's always compelling from the positive what God is going to do what God can do what God is already doing and and so you know in terms of speaking of the positive a lot of times in fundraising I don't know if mistake is the right word but oftentimes we approach to fundraising moment by saying hey my city's got a hundred thousand ninety eight percent of lost you know all the statistics and and and those aren't the compelling things that a donor wants to hear the donor wants to hear the stories I mean Nehemiah had a story before he went to the king he had a passion before he went to the king and as we describe the context of our city in my opinion I had a preaching professor years ago that said you can preach it from the positive or you can preach it from the negative and and preaching from the positive is always more compelling and so I think it's the same as true in fundraising yeah that's really good so let's get to some practical things right sure I got the credibility on borrowing yours because I didn't borrow yours right I got the credibility I got the vision now now what what do I need to go do what are some practical steps that you can that you tell a person to go out yeah in do I think most guys start here most guys say okay I'm going to the biggest Church the largest church the church the schmuck the most well-known obviously they're large they've got a lot of influence so they must have a lot of money I hear guys all the time say hey I'm gonna mail a letter to I'm gonna contact XYZ Church and they look up the top you know Tom Raiders top 500 churches you know they're sending letters to the top 10 and putting all other chips in that the reality is those churches operate on a different scale they operate relationally they're going to fund guys they already are in a relationship with and so I'll tell guys all the time don't start with the large churches you're not gonna find a whole lot of low-hanging fruit but in those environments start with building a list we started literally with a spreadsheet and we put I think it was over 600 churches we wrote down names of the past or address of the pastor we probably didn't know a significant percentage of those that's why the credibility piece was important borrowing from somebody and and so you got to start with who's my who's within my spirit of influence and that spirit of influence grows as you begin to borrow credibility and so as you begin to make that list and you have to decide how am I going to how am I going to contact these people for us we wrote three letters and one from us one from our pastor had a list of references and literally mailed it out hand addressed every single him to 600 and something churches and got a response back from I don't even know I don't know a lot this is say you got a response back about those like 200 of this excited yeah not even close to that yeah but what's the goal from that like are you trying to get a face-to-face yes phone call so in the letter in the letter I said I know your time is valuable I'm confident you're getting these every week and so I don't want to waste your time if you could just give me ten minutes of your time I'd love to talk to you about what I believe God's gonna do in Los Angeles and so I would follow up I knew everybody that we had nailed and I had an email list as well so I followed up by email about ten days later with every single Church do we mail to and said the same thing hey I know your time is valuable I sent you a letter I hope you got it I would just love ten minutes of your time on the phone and I felt like if I could get on the phone with a potential partner I believe we had a great chance of raising funds and so you know I hear of a lot of guy you know there's a million different ways to raise funds but I hear a lot of guys that are flying everywhere around the country to raise funds we raised funds literally I mean from mailing letters all but maybe one or two partners we actually visited and I think we ended up with like 58 church partners the funded and and bought into what God wanted to do there's a million different ways to do it that was just how we did it yeah so so you basically mean is it zoom call a face-to-face or just literally a phone call and that's how you did most year it was a 10-15 minute phone call phone call yeah and let me tell you why that was why why that could have happened it wasn't my credibility you can borrow credibility and I think our ability to raise funds is limited probably by the lower of the two if my credibility is is is nine because I've got a Johnny hunt that's recommending me but my vision is a four I'm not gonna raise level nine capacity of funds I'm gonna be somewhere in between but credibility can raise it and so I felt like the doors open we call it a gatekeeper the doors open because someone else vouched for us and so they already had this this inherent this implicit belief that something is happening here that's why a credibility piece is so important and I think that that that's critical a final question like if there is this one thing that you would just tell people like hey I'm a church planter coming into a city I need to raise money what will be that one thing that you would just make sure you do this yeah well I would probably gravitate towards doing the work for missionary first so be the real thing that's wrong the work of a missionary because people can tell that's what they're doing uh and I'll give you a great example the honey IIM seed the Los Angeles assessment I do that every year last fall I met a guy named Jacob church planter out of Fresno never met him in my life wouldn't know him probably would never cross paths ever and as I listened to Jacob tell his story Jacobs a guy came out of drugs crime poverty situation Jacob knew who he was mmm Jacob knew who he was reaching and Jacob was extremely passionate about him and I'd never met Jacob in my life but I saw him for three minutes on a stage explaining his passion know who he was reaching and I said I don't need to know anything else I'm gonna support this guy and our church is gonna support it yeah and so you know I do the work for missionary no no your context love your context love your city and and I think it really begins there well always say that I believe that authenticity is the apologetic of our day mmm and then this people need to know are you really body and are you genuine are you sincere about what what gospel deposit in you and you that he can do the fruit thanks for taking some time on into the interview awesome enjoy you have been listening to we are sin Network a resource of the North America mission map for more information about today's podcast and other relevant resources visit sand network.com [Music] you [Applause]

Channel: North American Mission Board

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Id: UuUZJjcnBTY

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 29 2020