Unwritten Rules

(Yeah I know I am not supposed to be posting and that I shouldn’t post this because it might hurt someone’s feelings but I got some things I’ve been thinking and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t post them)

There are several church plants in our area and believe it or not I am for all of them. In the early days I will admit to being over competitive and that is something God really worked on me about. I now feel I have a very good relationship most of the church plants in the area. The ones I don’t have a good relationship with is simply because I don’t really know the guys so I have no relationship. I have learned that there is enough lost people for all of us.

I think (could be wrong) that there are unwritten rules in church planting and what you do in regards to getting the word out. For instance in regards to our church signs that we put out. When a church plant before us was meeting at the movie theatre we never put our signs close to them even though the theatre was in a prime area where you would want signs. It happened one time and I put a stop to it as soon as I found out. Another example is we use to put out signs at an intersection very close to the high school. Another church plant moved in and we stopped. They didn’t ask us to stop and the guy who is there pastor is so kingdom minded he would have never asked us to stop. However I feel there is a unwritten code about respecting their “area.” There is a church plant south of us and I remember meeting with the pastor before we launched because we were both looking at launching next to each other and we both agreed to separte a little in distance. It was a great move by both of us.

The simple fact is God called me to plant RSC and not the other churches in town so what we do is always in the best interest of RSC but call me Earl but I believe in Karma. I truly believe what goes around comes around so we have tried to live by some unwritten codes.

Some of those include:

Never bashing other churches in our marketing
Trying our best to not overly market in their areas
Not bashing them to our people

Yesterday a smaller church plant finally decided to do some outreach. That was good and I was excited to see them finally do something. However I found funny that they decided to hand out Narnia tickets for free at our theatre. That is TOTALLY their right. We don’t own the theatre. I will admit though that I thought it was odd and to be honest it kind of bugged me knowing that we on purpose never put signs out in their area out of respect. Matter of fact we were going to launch our church in this area and didn’t out of respect to the “unwritten rule.” But like I said, “what goes around comes around.” This church gave out tickets and simply said the church they were from. I guess after the movie that people had forgotten which church it was and simply saw our banner and assumed it was us. This morning I had three e-mails thanking us for the tickets and two visitors who came to church thanking us for the tickets.

So to this church plant I say “thank you” for helping us spread the word about Ridge Stone.

What goes around, comes around.