Embrace the difficulty of church planting, part 3

The dip is your friend. That brutal wall of resistance to your church plant after the first few years... is your friend. Why? Because the dip is what keeps the riff-raff out of your community, the snake handlers and tamberine shakers. Sure, this makes it harder for your church to make it, but once you do... it will add so much value to your church.

The dip is the time to become the best in the world at what you do. If you settle for mediocrity and coast through the dip, you'll be in the dip forever. You might as well quit. But if you push into the dip... if you learn and refine the church through this time... it'll have huge payoffs.

The dip is your friend because there are no rules to what you can and cannot do in this season. Nobody's paying enough attention to your church to care. You've got nothing to lose. And it's better to go through this learning season in obscurity than to conduct your trial-and-error in the public spotlight.

In the dip, you must employ - what Seth Godin calls - strategic quitting. This is the only way to become the best at what you do and emerge on the other side. Don't quit the church plant. But do quit all the things that keep your church plant from being great. At RCC, during our dip, we decided to quit elementary age children's ministry... for now. We quit doing bulletins. We quit serving refreshments.

And all of these strategic quits are making us the best in our world [our world is reston, va] at what we do: 1. pre-k children's ministry, 2. welcoming environments and 3. Sunday morning programming.

We can't be the best in our world at deep Bible teaching [another local church owns that]. We can't be the best at singles ministry [largest one in the country is down the street]. We can't have the best elementary program [someone here's already got the corner on that market].

It takes guts to embrace the dip... to quit doing things you think are vital... and focus only on those things that will make your church great. But you'll fail at trying to be good at everthing.

Coming Next... Deciding what factors must be in place before a crisis causes you to want to quit the whole thing. *This series is based on Seth Godin's new book "The Dip."

Comments

[Donnie Miller]

Wow, that's exactly what we're experiencing as the 3rd church plant in town.
We're halfway through our second year and we've had a serious loss of momentum and I'm not sure what to do about it. I was talking with my leadership council last night about how God has been breaking me of my pride (the thought that we need to be the biggest thing around) and teaching me what it means to serve the community.

I think if we're going to redefine ourselves in this 'dip' then it's to be the church that goes out (rather than waiting for everyone to come it) and serves.

[Johnny]

So you better watch your dip when the chips are down! :-)

Sorry, man, I couldn't resist...This is great stuff, Ben. Thanks for sharing!

[Shaula]

If only you had read this book and shared last year. :) Our "dip" gave us a chance to think about what we do best and what makes us unique. We had to take a few risks, but we are a better church now. Our vision never changed, but it helped us to refine it and be more bold.

[Philip Canarsky]

Ben,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this great series of posts. I am going to have to get that book. What you are writing is really ministering to me. I think we are coming out of our dip - for the first time in several years we are experiencing momentum. This series is very timely and VERY inspiring.

Keep writing buddy.

Phil

[Tom S.]

I'm all for strategic quitting--for the right reason. Our church quit singles ministry--not because someone else was doing it better but because it didn't fit our vision.

If we are trying to attract Christ-followers other churches are our competition. If we are trying to attract the lost other churches are not our competition--we're on the same team. Our competition is youth sports, the lake, etc. So we should not rule something out just because another church is already doing it. Every point on the "long tail" has its own short head and long tail--in its niche. We need to find our God-called niche and pursue excellence in it regardless of what other churches are doing.