Building a church startup ecosystem in your city

04 Oct 2014

I work in a very creative and entrepreneurial city. Boulder Colorado is a magnet for entrepreneurs and business startups. Little wonder Inc. Magazine recently named Boulder as “America’s startup capital.” Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek named Boulder “the best town for startups.” Even The New York Times fawned over Boulder as a great startup community. And why not? Every 72 hours a new company is started in Boulder. Richard Florida who introduced us to “The Rise of the Creative Class” says that Boulder is at the top of his list in “the 3T’s – technology, talent, and tolerance”—the seedbed of innovation. More than any other city, Boulder has more creative innovators and entrepreneurs (with its modest population of just under 100,000) per capita than any city in the world.

6,600 companies…52 churches

In the past five years 6,600 companies have started in Boulder while during the same period of time 52 church planters have left our wonderful city. Why is it that in the same city business and tech entrepreneurs can thrive while kingdom entrepreneurs have left town with their dreams broken. (I contend that church planters are, in fact, the entrepreneurs of the kingdom. On a Spirit-led whim, equipped only with vision and mustard seed faith, they have left the security and predictability of an existing church to build something that doesn’t exist with resources they don’t currently have. They have much more in common with business entrepreneurs than they do with the Pastor of Small Groups or Director of Missions in your church.) The answer may not be found in the heart, skill, assessment, or motives of the planters but in the ecosystem of the city. With the best soil, even a mediocre seed can germinate, grow and bear fruit. When the soil is hard and rocky with little nutritive value only the best, most adopted seeds can prosper. The soil is to seeds what the ecosystem is to startups.

Imagine…

Your city as a place where church planters are recognized and valued for who they are—entrepreneurs of the kingdom
Your city being a magnet for the best and brightest church planters, artists, creatives, and musicians from around the world
Your city as the place where multiple models of church planting, from simple church to mega-church to multi-site church were not just welcomed but wanted
Every immigrant community giving birth to multiple churches
Church planters openly sharing ideas, insights, best practices and failures with each other so that the collective whole of church planters were becoming increasingly wiser and smarter
A community of generosity, where pastors of thriving churches, business owners, entrepreneurs, Web designers and marketers joyfully give of their time, finances, and staff to see start-up churches thrive
A community where church plant success was celebrated by all the church plant community and where church plant failure was collectively mourned but the leaders were celebrated
A connected community of church planters where no planter was isolated to figure things out by himself or herself
A culture where everyone is a mentor and the best mentors are connected to the best church startups—where “the best people are given to the best people to change the world” (guiding principle of mentorship at The Unreasonable Institute)
Every church in your city engaged in church startups at some level
Regular “boot camps” for new church planters where they can be introduced into the larger church planting culture and be guided and mentored by other kingdom entrepreneurs
Regular meetups and mixers around the Bay Area where the whole church planting “stack” (planters, mentors, sponsors, funders, and advocates) can convene and be collectively resourced
Business leaders providing incubator space or convening space for church startups
Planters coming to the Bay Area for the cause but staying for the community
YOU making a difference through startup churches

To get greater traction in church planting (currently around 4,000 churches / year in the US) we need to think beyond planting churches to creating an ecosystem that supports a vibrant church planting culture. It is the good soil that helps all seeds take root and grow.

Building an ecosystem that attracts and supports church planters and fosters a thriving culture of church multiplication is more important than the success of any individual church plant, church planting denomination or organization.

If any of the above “imagine statements” sound too far fetched…too “pie-in-the-sky,” too utopian to be taken seriously, try this: Every time you read the words “church-planter” in the above “imagine statements” substitute the word “entrepreneur” and what you have is NOT an “imagine statement” but a reality in Boulder, San Jose, Burlington, Austin, Raleigh, Boston etc. For the tech community each of the above “what if” statements is a “what is” statement. If it can happen in the tech startup community why can’t it happen in the church startup community? Why should the tech community have all the fun?

Why should the entrepreneurial church planting community settle for anything less?

Since 2005 new models of entrepreneur accelerators have emerged. All around the world in cities like Boulder, Seattle, London, Austin and Boston entrepreneurs are creating startup communities. These “innovation districts” attract a critical mass of talent and capital and create an environment where people and ideas can meet, mingle and give birth to an enterprise that previously had not existed. New thought leaders and practitioners are shaping the startup conversation. Startup accelerators like YCombinator in Mountain View (founded 2005) and Boulder’s Techstars (founded 2007) are leading the way in how startups are conceived, funded, and launched in the 21st Century.

In 2012 Techstar’s Brad Feld wrote a book called The Startup Community: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City (Click HERE to see a short animation of the thesis of this book. Feld also writes a daily blog). Feld’s book and blog provides many crossover connections into the space of kingdom entrepreneurs. Feld writes, Startups are at the core of everything we do. An individual’s life is a startup that begins at birth. Every city was once a startup, as was every company, every institution, and every project. As humans we are wired to start things.

And as Christ followers we are wired to start churches. Feld puts forth his “Boulder Thesis”—four key components of a startup community. As you read these, think of how these components apply to building a church-planting ecosystem in your city. Here are Feld’s four components of a startup community:

Led by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have to lead the startup community. The entrepreneurs are the leaders; everyone else (government, universities, investors, mentors, service providers, and large companies) is a “feeder.”
Long-term commitment. Successful entrepreneurs take a very long-term view—ideally at least 20 years (and reset that 20-year commitment every day)
Foster a community of inclusiveness. The startup community must be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it. The only condition is that they come to give before they get. Current entrepreneurs welcome other entrepreneurs and introduce them to their network. They hold wakes for enterprises that fail and throw parties for those that succeed.
The startup community must have continual activities that engage the entire entrepreneurial stack—hackathons, new tech meetups, mixers, open coffee clubs, startup weekends, startup weeks, conferences, etc. “It’s just this sort of network chaos of entrepreneurs doing what entrepreneurs do, which creates things. That force of the entrepreneurs to build something bigger than just themselves and their company is so incredibly powerful”

How would you assess the church startup culture of your city?

In the past five years 52 church planters have left our city. And the saddest thing is very few people knew they were here. They operated under the radar…trying to meet existing Christians to form their critical core in order to launch. They feel like they not only have failed but that they are failures. They slink out of town feeling shameful that they let so many people down. Most feel disqualified to every plant again because they have let down their families, their sponsors, and doubt their ability to discern what God is asking them to do. Contrast that with the tech startup community. Failure is not a disqualification but rather a qualification for funding. Most Venture Capitalists will not fund an entrepreneur who has not failed. Because others in the startup community are invested in the startup they mourn the failure of the company but care deeply for and celebrate the entrepreneur. They remain part in town as part of the startup culture. They’ve earned their stripes and they have a story to tell and an audience all to eager to listen and learn.

Building a community of generosity Back in June there were two events that typify the generous spirit of our community. First was the public celebration ofGnip’s acquisition by Twitter. Instead of having a private event Techstars, the lead investor in Gnip, wanted to hold a public celebration. Feld wrote: “So, instead of having a closed, inward facing closing dinner for Twitter’s acquisition of Gnip, a bunch of us in the Boulder tech community are throwing a celebration on the evening of June 4 at the Boulder Theater to welcome Twitter to town. We’ll have food, drinks, entertainment, and lots of mingling with folks in the Boulder Startup Community.” It was an amazing evening capped with the presentation of a check for $500K by Gnip to The Boulder Community Foundation, as part of Techstar’s commitment to give back to the community that helps companies thrive. Ten days later at the Unreasonable Institute “Pitch Night,” I was part of an audience of 1000 that included 100 financial investors, 50 mentors (including John Elstrott—Chairman of the Board for Whole Foods, Chip Heath—author, Libby Cook—Co-founder of Wild Oats, et al), and a dozen social entrepreneurs who spent five weeks in a sorority house in Boulder where they were assiduously mentored, connected and resourced. “In the past 4 years, 82 ventures from 37 countries have attended [the Unreasonable Institute] in Boulder. Collectively they have raised over $42 million in funding, grown their revenues and teams by over 2.5x within a year after leaving Unreasonable, and have impacted over 2,000,000 lives.” Wow! What I saw in each instance was an incredible generosity of spirit towards helping others. It was “the best people giving themselves to the best people to change the world.”

A few days later I was sitting in the Café Barrone in Menlo Park…a stone’s throw from the Stanford Campus. I had just met with Josh Kwan of Praxis—an amazing accelerator for social entrepreneurs very similar to the Unreasonable Institute. After Josh left I stuck around to answer a few emails, within listening distance of two young entrepreneurs sitting next to me. Although this was their first meeting, the one successful entrepreneur said, “I’m here to help you…I want to help you. I know a lot of great people in this community and I want to help you in any way you need.” I couldn’t help but be struck by the amazing generosity of the tech and business community. On Friday I bumped into my friend John Winsor (CEO of Victors & Spoils–the disruptive game-changing ad agency). After a brief reconnection chat I mentioned that my entrepreneur son Jeff, who lives in Costa Rica was looking for a long distance mentor. He’s got a great business idea and was looking for some stateside sounding boards. So without hesitation John agreed to help Jeff. What generosity! But what about the church startup community? I’ve made a lot of references to Brad Feld but justifiably so. Each week, Feld, even as busy as he is creates a block of time where he holds “office hours” where he’ll give 30 minutes of his time to anyone. Brad leaves everyone with an “assignment.” Just doing the assignment qualifies you for another 30 minute block. What a spirit of generosity and an extension of Feld’s philosophy to “give before you get.” (By sad contrast, unlike the tech community, we who worship a generous and creative God, see our community as a limited pie—a zero sum game that if one church gains, another church has to lose. Can we get over that? The San Francisco Bay area, for instance has over 5 million people who do not identify with any of the 236 religious organizations.

What if…

We had the leadership to create a similar culture of generosity in the church startup community?
There were leaders who would hold a public celebration when a new church start-up broke the 200 barrier?
There were those from every domain who gave 1% of their time (1.68 hours / week…or even a month) to do something to help church startups? Web designers, artists, musicians, creatives, business people, entrepreneurs, et al, all can play an incredible role in church startups—if they are in relationship with kingdom entrepreneurs.
Leaders from the different domains sponsored monthly meetups for different streams of church startups (ethnic churches, multi-site churches, etc)
Generous leaders started a church startup accelerator modeled after Techstars, YCombinator,The Unreasonable Institute or Praxis. It’s an opportunity waiting for the taking.

In my conversations with planters and people in the community there seems to be a lot of receptivity to the concept of creating a church startup ecosystem along with a willingness to play a role. I like to think (paraphrasing Paulo Coehlo), “When you are doing what God wants you to do, all the universe conspires to help you.”

What could you do? Do you sense that God might want to create such a vibrant, life-giving culture of church planting in your city? Here are some next steps

Identify all current church planting initiatives in your city and get their input on what a vibrant startup community might look like

Identify mentors—pastors, tech / business leaders and entrepreneurs who might come alongside kingdom entrepreneurs and give one hour a week / month in mentoring, coaching, encouraging kingdom entrepreneurs
Identify potential funders and resource people—those who are interested in creating a church planting culture in your city
Determine what activities (meet-ups, conferences, office hours, lunches, , etc) are needed to support the broader church planting culture along with those leaders who may want to convene them.

How will you be involved?

Does the idea of creating a church startup ecosystem engage your heart? What if all over the US and Canada there were those who were engaged in creating a culture…an ecosystem that supports the thriving of all church startups. To build a church startup ecosystem will require the engagement of all those who have decided to follow Jesus. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a businessperson, a church planter, a pastor, leader, prayer warrior, or encourager, we need your input regarding what is needed to build a church-planting ecosystem along with the grassroot role you might play.

For now…

Read The Startup Community and The Launchpad: Inside YCombinator and ask yourself, “How can we do something like this in the church startup community?”

Introduce this conversation to your friends and associates. What kind of feedback are you getting? Do you sense that this is a wave God may be causing?

Decide what you will do to advance the conversation…and the cause