From High Brow Pirate to Hometown Pastor

So, I was reading an article written by a friend today regarding church planting and he quoted stats from a report I sent him.  The report is a Church Plant Survivability Study and is actually quite interesting.  It is written by the North American Mission Board and can be found at http://www.namb.net/atf/cf/%7BCDA250E8-8866-4236-9A0C-C646DE153446%7D/RESEARCH_REPORT_SURVIVABILITY_HEALTH.PDF .

Anyway, I need to find someone who is a statistician that can see what our odds are as we defy them.  Here are some things I find interesting.

In year one the average attendance is 40…so far we are at an average of 25, but I am not about numbers.

In year one there are ten baptism…so far I got zero.  Too cold.

7% of churches start in community centers like I am using.

4% start on what we could loosely call a emergent model-which is closest to what I am though I do not do labels.

45% rely almost entirely on word of mouth.  That would be us.

61% have a parent church…that would be us.

80% of those sponsored churches get funds from the parent church, we are in the other 20%.

37% of those sponsored churches get lay people from the other church to help, we are in the other 63%.

28% get the parent pastor to speak…not yet, but we are only 3 weeks in.

61% of the pastors have an undergrad degree.  Check!

56% of the pastors have a masters.  Nope!

Average funding from a parent church or denom is 35k the first year.  Ours is zero.

Average tithe from congregation the first year is 40k a year.  It remains to be seen what ours is, but I suspect we will have 25-33 percent of that. 

10% of the pastors do not get paid…that’s me.  

30% are self sufficient the first year.  Um…that is us.

Discipleship training increases odds of survival by 250%-we are working on that.

Planter team meetings at least once a month-135%-we got that.

Stewardship planning-178%-well, we got a budget and try to give a bunch of it away (most of it) so yeah.

So…are we against the odds or not?  I dunno.  Stats and numbers are all crap according to Penn and Teller.