In my experience, one of the Holy Grails of church planting is relational momentum – more people bringing more people who bring more people. In the end it’s not about more people, it’s about more and better disciples, but you can’t really get there without relational momentum.

How do you get it?
First, build relationships. This doesn’t happen by accident, especially in a culture of isolation. Building relationships requires intentionality. It’s not enough to hang out at the coffee shop, or in the neighborhood, or at the gym. You have to do these things in a way that results in relationships not just a random encounters.

• Go to the same coffee shop at the same day and time.
• Learn when people in your neighborhood our outside and be outside at that time.
• Don’t just go to the gym, invite people around to you to work out together.
• Teach and train the people on mission with you to do the same.
• Second, create communities. A community is just a group of people in relationship with each other.
• It could be really small, like 4 people who play tennis together once a week.
• It could be bigger like 30 people who get together every week to grill meat and watch the football game.
• You can build communities around common interests, missional causes, or spiritual practices.

Here is the key, if you want to see relational momentum, you must do both. You must build relationships and create communities. If all you do is build relationships you will quickly run out of relational capacity. If all you do is create communities you’ll just keep the same people so busy doing stuff they won’t have time to build relationships. Do them both and you can create relational momentum that fuels more people becoming better disciples.