We can’t talk about planting multiethnic churches without talking about money. Because, while funding any church plant is challenging, funding a multiethnic church plant is even harder.
The mainstream church planting model was largely built around well-resourced suburban planters who had access to personal networks of affluent people. In contrast, multiethnic church planters, often starting churches in urban and under-resourced communities, must be prayerful, innovative, and shrewd in discerning the new wineskins and new financial models to sustain their plant.
Traditional Church Plant Fundraising
The conventional model of funding a church plant is that the planter raises the funds to support themselves through a combination of:
- The planter’s own savings and earnings
- Support raised from family, friends, and launch team members
- Gifts from a sending church
- Funds from a church planting denomination or network
The expectation is that over time (typically 3-5 years), as the initial funding sources dwindle, congregational giving grows sufficiently to cover the costs of the church plant.
Of course, the concept of being a self-supporting missionary or tent-maker goes all the way back to the Apostle Paul in Acts 18:1-4. For many multiethnic planters, particularly those in majority-minority contexts, being bi-vocational or even tri-vocational has been the norm. But the access to money is far less in all four traditional streams listed above. So this article summarizes multiple streams of income for both the planter and the plant.
Co-vocational Work
When I started my second church, I intentionally chose to be bi-vocational, serving as the Director of Fuller Seminary’s Church Planting Initiative alongside planting a church in Pasadena, California. Early on, I learned the term “co-vocational” from Brad Brisco. This word captured the idea that my two roles were expressions of one calling to help multiply churches. So for the past eight years, I’ve worked at Fuller in the mornings and dedicated my afternoons, evenings, and Sundays to the church, with Saturdays being my sabbath. Each role informs and enriches the other.
The ideal co-vocational role meets at least two of these three criteria:
- Missionally aligned – it furthers your personal sense of mission and/or the missional calling of the church plant.
- Evangelistically fruitful – the role puts you in contact with unbelievers you can share the gospel with and meet persons of peace
- Well paying – the role pays enough so that your hours are reasonable and don’t take away from the church plant
Prophets & Profits
Starting businesses is another viable form of co-vocational work, but it holds the unique potential to further your mission and tell your story – as well as generate revenue.
I recently heard John Onwuchekwa’s story about the founding of Portrait Coffee at a fabulous online gathering called the Black Missional Convening, hosted by my friend Lori Ruffin.
After learning that coffee beans were first discovered in Ethiopia, John became passionate around re-telling and re-claiming the story of coffee. So the name Portrait Coffee comes from a desire to change the picture that comes to mind when people think of specialty coffee.
John says, “I love the fact that it’s more than a product, but a platform to do good. I spend my time ideating about creative ways that coffee can be a force for good, and the partnerships that might be able to extract all of that goodness.”
When a business thrives, it not only provides income, it creates jobs, creates career advancement opportunities for employees, and becomes a vehicle for discipling people and lifting up the neighborhood economically. What needs in your community could your business meet?
Applying for Grants
Oftentimes a church plant’s missional outreach to the community align with the goals of local non-profits or national foundations, making them strong candidates for grant funding.
Troy Evans, the founder of the Nitrogen network, decided that his church plant’s first hire would be a fund developer/grant writer. Prioritizing fundraising enabled his church to secure 70% of the church plant’s funding from external sources.
He recognized that fund development and grant writing was its own specific skillset. He also learned that having financial systems and reporting structures to share the outcomes of the grants they received was critical to retaining those grants and even getting new ones. Sometimes starting a nonprofit separate from the church can help you qualify for grants or government funding in a way that churches cannot.
Repurposing Content You Create
In today’s digital age, content you create can now be distributed online at virtually no cost. The spiritual materials you are already creating as a planter/pastor (sermons, small group study guides, leadership training workshops, etc.) can be repurposed and monetized online.
Dwight Riddick says that we should not just simply present our content once on a Sunday morning but package our content so that it is creating value in an ongoing, long-term way. Your content can become e-books, workbooks, and online courses.
He advocates marketing that content to corporations, campuses, and classrooms. These connections can lead to speaking engagements. He suggests offering a free introductory resource that serves as a lead generator.
Church Facilities as Economic Engines
For years in the church planting world, owning a physical facility seemed like a waste of startup resources and a financial millstone around planters’ necks. But planting teams are finding creative ways to use facilities to enhance their reach in a community while generating income. Maybe you’re re-planting in an existing church facility (and Eileen Linder estimates that as many as 100,000 church facilities will be sold or repurposed by 2030), or you’re renting or even buying an existing facility. Either way those facilities can be used for:
- Leasing space: A church planter named Chase in Michigan bought a facility and leases the whole upper floor to multiple non-profits that have a shared sense of mission with the church
- Building affordable housing: In the face of severe housing shortages, some cities are changing zoning laws to permit high-density affordable housing on church properties. The book “Gone for Good” highlights numerous examples of this model.
- Co-working spaces: Renting out co-working space helps build community among the growing number of people who work from home. Renting out church facilities for other events also generates income.
Minority-Led Church Planting Networks
One of our hopes as the Multiethnic Collaborative is to encourage the founding of many more minority-led church planting networks as well as to encourage existing church planting denominations and networks to start up specific ministries to assist multiethnic planters. These new networks can assist multiethnic planters generate and attract more income by:
- Assessing planters not only for their church planting competencies but also to identify their gifts and strengths in launching businesses and nonprofits
- Inspiring major financial gifts to support multiethnic church planting
- Providing coaching that supports not only the church plant but the other entrepreneurial venture(s) of the planter
Conclusion
Creatively funding a multiethnic church plant requires a shift in mindset. While the traditional church planting model relied heavily on affluent donors and networks, multiethnic planters need to discover diverse funding streams. Whether through co-vocational work, for-profit businesses, grants, repurposed content, or facility usage, there are multiple pathways to financial sustainability. By embracing these creative funding strategies, we can support and sustain the vital work of planting multiethnic churches that reflect the Kingdom of God in all its diversity.
