Launch - Resources

About Nelson & Kerrick

NELSON SEARCY - Nelson Searcy is the Founding and Lead Pastor of The Journey Church in New York City. Since 2002, The Journey Church has grown from one family to over 1200 in weekend attendance, over 700 baptisms and 1400 in small groups! This groundbreaking church sees the majority of its growth coming from new believers and currently meets in multiple services in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Nelson is the author of the books Launch: Starting a New Church From Scratch, Fusion: Turning First Time Guests into Full-Engaged Members of Your Church, Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups and Ignite: How to Spark Immediate Growth in Your Church. Nelson is an experienced church planter, coach and church growth strategist. Before moving to New York, he served as the Director of the Purpose Driven Community at Saddleback Church. He is also the founder of Church Leader Insights (www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com)

KERRICK THOMAS - is the Executive Pastor and a Teaching Pastor at The Journey Church and regularly leads church leader and church planting training events with Nelson Searcy. Kerrick and his wife Lorie moved to New York City in 2001 to help start The Journey from scratch. He oversees the design and implementation of The Journey's small groups system which regularly see over 100% adult participation. Kerrick is the co-author of Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch and Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups.

An Interview with Nelson & Kerrick

What is the inspiration for your book?

The failure rate of new churches in America is staggering. Most church plants don't make it through their first year, often because the church planter doesn't have the necessary knowledge and tools for starting a church from scratch. When starting our church, The Journey in New York City, we searched high and low for a church planting resource that would help us stay on track and enable us to learn specifics from the wisdom of those who had gone before. It didn't exist. Launch is the book we wish we had been able to refer to in launching The Journey - a tool that will help church planters transform the failure rate of new churches in America as they learn to build successful, thriving churches from the ground up.

Why are you passionate about it?

We are passionate about Launch because we are passionate about new churches, and because we have been practitioners of this successful launching process for the last five years. As Peter Wagener said, "The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches." New churches breed evangelistic enthusiasm. In turn, every failed church plant is a failure for the Kingdom - a failure that causes emotional pain and disappointment for everyone involved. We are dedicated to stopping the unnecessary disappointment of called, well-intended, hard-working church planters by providing them with a roadmap for leading their new churches from scratch to success.

What is the story behind your book? What led you to write about this topic?

In 2001, we were called to start a church in New York City. We had no money, no members, and no meeting location. In five short years, The Journey has grown into a vibrant community of over twelve hundred. In 2004, we were presented with The Church Health Award by Purpose Driven at Saddleback Church. The launching process we developed and followed along the way came from innumerable conversations with diverse church planters and through our own study of the New Testament church. It's a process that, in some ways, goes against traditional ideas of church planting, but never strays from the Biblical precepts set down for the church. Launch encompasses both the story and the practical steps of our launching process - a process that now belongs to many others, as well.

Over the last three years, we have trained close to a thousand pastors through Church Leader Insights (www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com) using the Launch process and have been overwhelmed by the results. God is working through these principles, growing the churches of those who are willing to put in the work and who refuse to be bound by limited church planting notions of the past. We were led to put the principles of Launch into book form so that pastors everywhere would have access to the step-by-step guideposts that will help them start growing churches of significance. Having seen this process work from large urban communities to small farming towns and everywhere in between, we knew the time had come to stop limiting the knowledge to coaching networks and seminars. We wanted to make it available to anyone involved in starting a church for God's glory.

Who is this book written for, and why will they be excited about it?

Launch is written primarily for three types of church leader:

Those thinking about starting a church
Those who have already decided to start a church and
Established pastors interested in starting new churches out of their current churches.

The book will also appeal to spouses of church planters, church growth students, seminary students, church planting team members, and leaders who support new church plants. Church planters themselves and all those involved in the various aspects of church planting will be eager to discover the principles that have helped new churches across the country grow quickly and healthily from the outset.

How would you like your book to impact the world?

Launch will spur a paradigm shift in the church planting world. In today's culture, new churches should not be "planted" as much as "launched." That is, a new church is no longer something you put in the ground and wait passively for it to grow. Instead, as Launch contends, the pastors of today's new churches are called to Launch Large - to be proactive in starting their churches in a way that will reach as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Launching a church is a dynamic, life-giving opportunity for reaching into our society and sharing the greatest story ever told.

The church's message has not changed since the first church started in the book of Acts, but the method of starting a church successfully has evolved through the centuries. Starting a church slowly, as has been recommended for the past several decades, is not working in today's environment. Slow-starting, inwardly focused churches are not fulfilling the potential God has given them. His power is being limited by their unwillingness to take on the magnitude of His vision. Launch will revolutionize the thinking around new church growth, raising a new breed of church "launchers" committed to launching large and growing from the outside in, reaching more and more people for God's glory.

Anything unique or special about your book that you'd like to share?

The timing for Launch is not haphazard. We fully believe that the greatest churches in the world are yet to be started. Over the next decade, in the power of the Holy Spirit and with the help of the ideas presented in this book, we will see churches launch effectively, reach the unchurched, grow people to maturity in Christ and start new churches at an unprecedented rate. Given the culture war we are engaged in, the way we think about starting new churches is more important than ever. Launch is the guidepost, the roadmap, the how-to manual for launching a new church in cooperation with God's vision and power. With these principles at hand, more and more new churches will quickly grow from scratch... to stability... to success.

For Interviews, please call 1-800-264-5129 or email info@churchleaderinsights.com

Church Leader Insights with Nelson Searcy