The cultural inheritance
Long before there were buildings, the church met in homes — around tables, on porches, in fields, in cabins, in the back rooms of trusted neighbors. From its earliest days the church grew through hospitality, through family, through trust, through the multiplication of relationship. That has not changed. What changed is that we forgot.
The everyday small church has not forgotten. Many of us still pastor congregations whose grandmothers ran the kingdom from their kitchens. We are the inheritors of a relational tradition that the megachurch is now spending millions trying to manufacture through software. We do not need to invent it. We need to deploy it.
Asset 1 — The Sunday Dinner
Sunday dinner is an institution. It is also the single most evangelistic event most households host on a weekly basis without realizing it. The cousin who never comes to church will come to the cookout. The neighbor who side-eyes the building will come to the table. Pull Up Methodology: invite three Sunday dinners per family during the campaign. The Bible called it "breaking bread in their homes." We call it Sunday.
Asset 2 — The Big Mama Network
Every congregation has the matriarchs — the auntie, the grandmother, the godmother, the mother-of-the-church — who knows everybody's business and is trusted by everybody's mama. Big Mama is the most powerful evangelist in our community and almost no church campaign deploys her on purpose. The Pull Up Movement does. Identify the Big Mamas in your church and assign them not committee work but relational work. They will outproduce the entire deacon board.
Asset 3 — The Barbershop and the Salon
In our community, the barbershop and the beauty salon are quasi-spiritual spaces. Confessions get made, advice gets sought, life gets discussed. A church member who is a barber, a stylist, or a regular customer has access to ten or fifteen captive listeners every single week. The Pull Up Movement teaches you to weaponize — in the Spirit — those chairs.
Asset 4 — The Multi-Generational Household
The everyday small church often serves families that include grandparents, adult children, cousins, and extended kin under one roof or in close proximity. This means a single household conversion can ripple instantly through five or six generations. The Pull Up List you build will reflect this reality. Use the asset.
Asset 5 — The Block
Most everyday small churches sit in neighborhoods where the same families have lived for two and three generations. People know each other. People know the church. People know the pastor's car. This is not a deficit. It is the highest-trust marketing environment in America. The Pull Up Movement teaches you to walk the block on purpose, not just on Outreach Saturday but every week of the year.
Asset 6 — The Cookout
Backyard cookouts. Block parties. Family reunions. Birthday gatherings. Card parties. These are not secular occasions. They are tables. And tables, as we already established, are where the gospel travels. Deploy your members to host one Pull Up Cookout each during the campaign. You will out-evangelize the megachurch in your zip code with charcoal and chicken alone.
Asset 7 — The Smallness Itself
Yes, the smallness. A church of 60 has something a church of 6,000 does not have: every member can know every member. Every visitor can be greeted by name within thirty seconds. Every prayer request can be remembered. Every guest can be followed up on within 72 hours. The personalization that the megachurch is desperately trying to manufacture through software, you have built into your size. Stop apologizing for being small. Start exploiting it.
What the everyday small church is NOT
So we are clear. The Pull Up Movement is not nostalgia. It is not a romanticization of the past. It does not ignore the real challenges of small churches: aging congregations, financial pressure, building deferred maintenance, leadership succession, generational tension, the pull of larger churches with better music. These are real. We will address them in the next chapter, head-on.
But the answer to those challenges is not to imitate the megachurch model that is itself in decline. The answer is to lean harder into what only we can do — and to do it with the discipline, the data, and the strategy this blueprint provides.
Leader's Note
Younger leaders: do not skip the elders when you build your Pull Up Team. The Big Mama generation is your most powerful relational asset. Older leaders: do not skip the youth. They have networks (TikTok, Instagram, group chats, college campuses) that you cannot reach. The Pull Up Movement only works when both generations are at the table simultaneously. If your campaign team is all one generation, your campaign will under-perform.