Family Church Boynton Beach (FCBB) made history this past Sunday night. We had our first ever interest meeting! These interest/informational meetings are really a win for everyone.
For those who attend, it’s a great way to gather more information about what we are looking to do in Boynton Beach without having to make a firm commitment to it. Obviously, with any sort of new and different work, people are going to have all kinds of questions: When will it start? Who else is going? Who is going to lead? What are we doing? Where are we meeting? We try to answer as many of these questions as we can so people can make an informed decision.
The church planter also wins. Over the last several weeks, there have been many conversations, phone calls, emails, tweets, Facebook posts, and visits to Bible study classes – all in an effort to put the idea of FCBB in front of people. During this process you do get a feel for who may or may not be interested, but an interest meeting really gives you a tangible grasp on your potential team members. I was thrilled to hold the interest meeting so that I, as the church planter, would have some real names and faces of people who may be ready to jump on board for this journey.
Based on the responses to those conversations, emails, phone calls, etc., I was anticipating about 30 people at this first meeting. To me, this would have been a strong way to start. If we could get 20 of those 30 to join, that would be a great place from which to build and recruit. Well, needless to say, I was thrilled when over 60 people attended our first interest meeting! I know that not every family that attended the meeting will be a part of the team, but I was thrilled that so many families have some level of interest in impacting Boynton Beach with the gospel.
One of our goals during the meeting was to show those in attendance the necessity of planting churches (plural) in the Boynton Beach area. A little bit of research and some simple math make it quite clear:
- Currently, in the zip codes that we are targeting, there are about 152,000 people.
- Based on the research that I was able to do, there are about 20 churches in the area that we would consider to be evangelical churches (meaning that they intentionally preach salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone) – and to be honest, 20 is a pretty generous number.
- This means there is roughly one evangelical church for every 7,600 people!
Just in case you’re wondering, that’s not good. In circles where they research this sort of thing, a healthy church to person ratio is one church per 1,000 people. So in order to get to a healthy ratio, assuming the population doesn’t grow (but it will), we need another 132 (yes, one-hundred-and-thirty-two!) churches planted in the Boynton Beach community.
This is not a large area. It is roughly 6 miles from east to west and 5 miles from north to south. It’s no Manhattan, but it certainly has a much higher than national average population density. On top of this, Boynton Beach – specifically west Boynton – is projected to experience significant growth over the next five to ten years. Recognizing this trajectory, I went a little further with my research to see where these evangelical churches are located. I think you’ll find the following map pretty eye-opening:
It seems like a no-brainer, right? On the west end of Boynton, an area that is booming right now, there is very little church presence. We want to change that. Our meeting this past Sunday night was a huge step in that direction. It’s time to get the team together. We have a mission field to reach, and it’s our own neighborhood!
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