Adam Magana and his wife Stacy moved to a city where they knew next to no one and were able to create a strong launch team of 91 people before they’d even opened the word of God in a public setting! On the Sunday they launched Active Church in San Luis Obispo, they saw a turnout of 417 people – that’s four times the size of the launch team!
Adam shared 3 church planting tips with us. Here they are:
1. Get Cultured
More than understanding great systems, it is important to understand great church culture. Before planting a church, it is a good idea to learn what a this looks like and to really immerse yourself in a healthy, flourishing and thriving church.
Adam and Stacy learned a healthy culture through ARC – a church planting association, which gives guidance and resources to help launch and grow life-giving churches. Through the ARC training, they were also able to get connected to Pastor Randy Bezet, who offered them the “first official church-planting internship” at Bayside Church. Not only did Adam get to spend enough time with Randy to be able to perfectly impersonate his Southern Cajun accent (which you can hear if you head on over to our podcast) – but he and Stacy also learned a lot about church growth and culture. This really equipped them to step out and start their own church.
2. Get Connected
You may know cool pastors and name drop people in the Christian world but that doesn’t mean anything if you’re not connecting with the people who are living and breathing in the very community you are trying to reach.
After moving to San Luis Obispo, Adam and Stacy took nine months to really get connected into the community before launching Active Church in September 2017. They did this simply by getting to know people – chatting to them at coffee shops, meeting them for dinner and letting them know who they were and what they were doing with the church plant. This time was about building awareness and building relationship and was crucial in the success of their launch.
Adam says that a pastor should never come into a new town and think they dress better, act cooler or know more than the people who live there. Instead, you need to focus on investing into your team, no matter who they are. They may have gone to high school here, be the Employee of the Month at the supermarket or be a prominent leader in the local area. Each person in your team will have connections in the community and can play a key role in helping advance the cause of Christ within it.
3. Get Out There
Adam says “You don’t need a rainbow and a sign from God in the sky to do it”. You’re already called by God so you just need to go, to grind and he will be in it.
If he had not done training with ARC, Adam says his approach to church planting would have been would have been far more methodical and detailed. ARC taught him that sometimes, you just need to go for it – get an idea, do the research and just pull the trigger. “God doesn’t need perfection, he needs willing obedient people who will step out in faith”, he said. Many influential leaders have all been in the same boat – they didn’t know what they were doing at first but they went for it and went hard. Adam has seen unbelievable growth at Active Church because he chose to start small, believe big, and step out.