Why so many church planters quit too soon

People love a winner. They want the best of the best. And they don't have time to go sorting through choices to find it anymore... so they go with word-of-mouth, a trusted recommendation.

The first church in a community to reach a high level of excellence and relevance quickly becomes the "default church" for the churched and the unchurched alike. After all, people love a winner. And they avoid losers.

Without realizing it, this landmark church creates a long-tail distribution, where they get first pickings by an incredible margin, and every other church and church plant gets the long tail... the left-overs. They simply don't have the resources, manpower or momentum to be a viable choice for the community. Over time, many of these churches either die or stall-out.

Churches have fallen into the same market forces that push winners far ahead of the pack and ignore the runners-up. Because people love winners, a community puts up barriers to prevent other churches from making it. In some sense, they don't want your church plant to succeed.

It is, unfortunately, at this moment that many church planters decide to call it quits. They think it's useless to keep pushing into a community that doesn't want them there. But by quitting, they create more scarcity of churches. And scarcity creates more value for the winners.

Coming up... Every church plant faces "a dip" of nearly insurmountable proportions they have to get through in order to thrive in a local community and get out of the long tail. But it is possible... and, in fact, highly valuable to go through it.

*This series of posts is based on Seth Godin's new book The Dip

Comments

[Jay Hardwick]

VERY true and very well said, Ben.

[Thad Paris]

Interesting thoughts...Maybe the runners-up have to work on developing the hidden assets of the ones that aren't "hand picked" for the "winning" church of the community?
Maybe the runners up need to focus on quality not quantity?

[Ben]

Thad, it's like you've read the book... =)

[Thad Paris]

Actually, i haven't read it...yet. Yet again, somebody steals one of "my" great ideas and writes a book about it!

[Matt Singley]

Good thoughts, Ben. I just read The Dip this weekend on my way to a church conference of all things. :) I plan on writing a series of post about churches in The Dip as well. I'm looking forward to following your thoughts. I'm a new subscriber!

[Michael Buckingham]

At first when I listened to The Dip I didn't think it applied to me. But as I thought about it more, talked with people about church more...I realized it has everything to do with me.

Our goal is to change the way the church does church, to help the church become dynamic communicators...get through the dip.

Often times when I talk with pastors or church leaders they almost apologize for wanting to be #1. Excellence just isn't in the vocabulary, and maybe it's not because of a fear of change but rather a fear that we just can't make it through...

I'm driving down to hear from and talk with Seth tomorrow, hopefully we can touch on The Dip and Church then.

[Dave Treat]

Ben... found out about your posts through Seth Godin's blog. Great adaptation of his ideas to the ministry world! Several of us on Willow Creek staff went to see Seth a couple of days ago... great experience. Blogged about it (and referenced yours) at wcagl.typepad.com. Keep up the great work... love your blog.

[Stan Smith]

Seth Godin advises us to be the best in the world. If a church plant tries to provide all the resources the church of 5000 provides, it's sure to lag behind. But if the church plant can find a "world" in which to be the best, it can rise to the top quickly. A church plant probably will not be the best church in town in its first year -- but it can be the church with the most missionaries per capita, with the strongest outreach to artists, or with the richest sense of God's manifest presence.