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People in the church will hurt you. I know.

As someone who has spent many years in church ministry I’ve had opportunities to see the best in people – and the worse in people.

At one church I served as pastor I was totally blind-sided one Sunday by the church “leaders” and immediately let go because of my preaching style. The church was growing in numbers and health, which turns out to have been part of the problem because that threatened the powers that be. Just six months earlier… our family had sold most of our possessions to help pay for the move, endured all of the emotions of seeing our kids break off their friendships, and moved half-way across the country to a small rural town. The betrayal of those leaders

devastated me, my dear wife, and my family. It took well over a year to heal enough to once again move forward. As you maybe can tell I am still a little PO’ed (Pretty Offended) about the whole matter. You bet I am!  Mess with me all you want. Mess with my family and you take it to a whole nother’ level!

As hard as that experience was I did learn many lessons during that time, including that there is a big difference between those that defend the church – and those that defend people in the church.

Defending the church is much different from defending people in the church. Most of the time when we defend people we are defending their actions. When we defend the church correctly, our focus is not on defending people’s actions but defending God’s Word. Defending God’s church must include standing up for what is right according to the instructions he has given in his Word which means godly men and women must dig together deeply into his Word to determine what is the right thing to do. To be sure, upholding God’s Word is not the easy way out, it’s often the hard unpopular road – even in church. Because it’s hard many church leaders cave and end up defending people instead of the Word. The results? Let me sum it up with a popular 4-letter word: Mess!

In 2 Samuel 23:8-39 David gives an account of his defenders. These were the people who put their very lives on the line for their king and friend. What made them great is that they lived by a standard. A stand·ard : is something considered to be an authority. David’s fighting men upheld something far greater than another person’s opinion. They stood for what was right.

After my experience with that church, I determined to never again serve with nonspiritual leaders who are willing to place defending a person over defending God’s Word.  Perry Noble got to the root of it when he said “the fight to keep people happy is not a [church] leaders job…and if it is then Jesus really stunk at that… no matter what you do someone is always going to be upset…so please HIM, not them!”

Whether you are leading and defending a church, business, or family, true victory is found when we always come back to the standard of God’s Word.

Michael Lukaszewski, lead pastor of Oak Leaf Church and initiator of  Launch And Lead has been helping church planters for some time. Michael helps churches by sharing information. He puts out in other words. He puts out the knowledge he has gained so that others can learn from him and his team. He has been one of my long distance coaches for a long time.

Recently I asked him via a comment posted on Launch And Lead: “How can a church plant get the word out about their church when 1) advertising dollars are very tight and we can’t do postcard mailings, 2) when the community you live in has sign laws that prevent you from using yard signs.”

I thought others might be interested in Michael’s 7 Steps (below).

1. Make road signs and have people put them in their own yards.

2. Print simple flyers (you can get nice full-color ones online for cheap) and get a group of your people to put them on doors personally. The most expensive part of postcards is the postage.

3. Print up some t-shirts and ask your people to them around town on a certain day or give your people bumper stickers for their cars. Or have them write with shoe polish on their windows.

4. Print business card size invites to a series (less than $50) and teach your people how to use them. Personal invitations are the absolute best way to invite people to church. About 75% of our first time guests come because they are personally invited.

5. Go through your budget and cut some internal stuff and use it on getting people there. My guess is that you could cut somewhere. You may need to sacrifice something you think is necessary to free up some money to get people to church.

6. Hire The Change Group to help you generate more operational revenue.

7. Make sure your church service is amazing. Somehow, people show up at what is good.

QUESTION: How do you get the word out about your church?