MacFrazier.com

5 Comments

• #1 by Chuck Ebert on 2009.09.29 - 8:44am

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  Now you have us thinking – lets hear the breakdown on that. Since we have almost no stats on NC plants, how can we extrapolate from other denominations?

  What is the time frame for using the $10m?

• #2 by Mac on 2009.09.29 - 9:55am

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  Honestly, I am going with very rough back-of-the-napkin figures, here, but overestimating so as to play it safe.

  My rough estimate is that the startup cost for a new congregation, outside of the eventually growing contributions of its increasing member base, is around $500m over three years. This should pay for two staff, facility rentals, marketing costs and miscellaneous office expenses.

  And yes, this is benchmarking off of other denominations. Why? Two reasons: 1) We don’t have enough data from our own organization (YET!), and 2) I cannot see any theological reason why our church plants would behave in dramatically different ways, with regard to external costs, etc.

  I could be wrong, of course. But the only way we will ever actually find out is by trying it a bunch of times and then looking at the data.

  Check out, by the way, the mass of comments this same post has elicited over on my FaceBook page.

• #3 by Stephen Simons on 2009.09.30 - 6:35pm

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  $10 million is closer to 3 year support for at most 10 congregations, not 20. Denominations tend to under support start ups, so take their numbers and multiply by at least 2, maybe 3.

• #4 by Mac on 2009.10.05 - 9:45am

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  $500k is actually someting above the typical midline for outside support of a church plant in the first 3 years. During those 3 years, local donations will scale up, of course. The total operating cost during launch and early growth is higher, of course, but if the local church isn’t funding itself in 3 to 5 years, it will never break free from the addiction to outside support.

  But apart from benchmarking off of other denominational support programs, I’m basing this off of my own estimated budget for Austin.

  So 500k is what I am suggesting as a denominational investment over three years, with most of it frontloaded.

  This is still preliminary, though, and I am looking for additional advice on my particular budget for my first plant. So any additional resources on this you can point me to would be very appreciated.

• #5 by Stephen Simons on 2009.10.05 - 6:52pm

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  What’s your intended launch size?