Five realities most small churches actually face
Every other chapter in this workbook treats the campaign as if you have abundant resources. This one treats you like an honest pastor in an honest situation.
1. The Bivocational Pastor
Roughly half of all small-church pastors in America hold a job outside the ministry. You may be a school teacher, a hospital chaplain, a postal worker, a barber, a nurse. You preach Sundays and Wednesdays and you bury saints, marry couples, counsel families, and you do all of it on top of forty or sixty hours of secular work. You do not have ten more hours a week to give to a campaign.
Pull Up acknowledges this. The full campaign asks for 5–8 hours/week from the Coordinator and 2–4 from each role lead. If you are bivocational, that math may not add up — and it should not be your job alone to make it add up. Pull Up Lite reduces those numbers and the Done-With-You partnership tier exists specifically so that Davis's team picks up the operational load you cannot personally carry.
2. Volunteer Scarcity
On paper your church has 80 members. In reality your active core is 12. Asking 12 people to fill seven team roles is a recipe for burnout. The full campaign assumes a team of seven; Pull Up Lite reduces that to four combined roles, and the Done-With-You partnership lets our team take three of those four off your plate.
3. Financial Fragility
Your tithe income is stable but tight. A $300 expense for tools, print, and signage is real money. You cannot afford to test what does not work. Pull Up Lite is built to run on under $250 of out-of-pocket expense for a full 8-week campaign. Pilot churches receive free workbooks, free coaching, and no out-of-pocket fees — see Appendix N.
4. Aging Congregation
The faithful saints who built your church are now in their seventies and eighties. They are still showing up. They are also tired. Pull Up Lite scales the campaign to your demographic reality. Vertical Video Team becomes "three videos posted total" (not eight). Outreach Saturday becomes one outing (not two). Story Workshops can be done in a single Sunday-school hour.
5. Pastoral Burnout Risk
If you are reading this at 11 PM after a hospital visit and a family argument and a budget meeting, you do not need another program. You need a system that respects your finitude. The single most important rule of the Pull Up Movement: the campaign that breaks the pastor was not worth running.
Pull Up Lite — the 6-week, 4-role, sub-$250 version
Pull Up Lite is the campaign right-sized for the church under 50 active members or the bivocational pastor. Same theology, same framework, same Pull Up Sunday — just with fewer moving parts.
| What changes | Full Campaign | Pull Up Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Team size | 7 distinct roles | 4 combined roles |
| Team meeting cadence | Weekly (60–90 min) | Bi-weekly (60 min) |
| Campaign length | 8 weeks | 6 weeks |
| Outreach Saturdays | 2 | 1 |
| Story Workshops | 3 separate sessions | 1 Sunday school hour, 1 follow-up |
| Vertical videos | 8+ | 3 |
| Pull Up Cards | Printed (4×6 cardstock) | Digital + 50 printed |
| Pastor weekly load | 5–8 hrs | 2–3 hrs |
| Out-of-pocket budget | $300–$600 | Under $250 |
The 4 combined roles for Pull Up Lite:
- COORDINATOR / COMMUNICATIONS — owns calendar, weekly text, social posts, bulletin, Sanctuary Wall.
- PRAYER / STORY — owns Daily Prayer Chain, post-it wall, story workshops, vertical videos.
When to run Lite vs. Full
| Run LITE when… | Run FULL when… | Run Done-With-You when… |
|---|---|---|
| Church under 50 active members | Church 50+ active members | You do not have the team capacity for either alone |
| Pastor is bivocational | Pastor is full-time | You want to run faithfully but need our team's hands |
| Out-of-pocket budget under $250 | Budget allows $300+ | You want a partner walking with you week by week |
| This is your first campaign | You have run one before | You want to scale faster with proven support |
| Active core under 15 people | Active core is 15+ | Your team is willing but stretched |
Honest expected outcomes
Because we promised brutal honesty: here is what most small churches who run a Pull Up campaign with discipline can reasonably expect at the 90-day mark. These numbers are not promises — they are realistic ranges. Your mileage will vary based on execution, leadership, and the soil of your specific community.
| Outcome | Modest target | Strong target |
|---|---|---|
| Pull Up Sunday attendance lift | 20–30% above baseline | 40%+ above baseline |
| First-time guests | 10–20 | 25–50 |
| 90-day guest retention | 15–25% | 30%+ |
| New disciples (decision + 90-day fruit) | 1–3 | 4–8 |
| Sustained Sunday attendance gain at 6 months | 5–15% | 15–25% |
| Members who can deliver their 2-min testimony | 60%+ | 80%+ |
Do not market these numbers to your congregation. They are for your private planning. Promise less than you expect to deliver. Celebrate every soul, not just the spreadsheet.
Where Davis and the team can pick up the slack
If you are reading this and feeling the weight of "we cannot do this alone," you are not weak. You are honest. The Pull Up Movement was designed with the bivocational, under-resourced, faithful pastor in mind. Here is what our team specifically does for churches at the COHORT, DONE-WITH-YOU, and INTENSIVE tiers.
| What we do for you | Cohort | Done-With-You |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly group coaching call | Yes | Yes |
| Private community of campaigning pastors | Yes | Yes |
| Weekly office hours with Davis | Yes | Yes |
| Pre-built campaign calendar with your dates filled in | — | Yes |
| 1:1 strategy session with Davis | — | Yes |
| Custom Pull Up Cards + social graphics designed for you | — | Yes |
| Story Workshops facilitated by our team via Zoom | — | Yes |
| Connect Card data flow built for you | — | Yes |
| 72-hour follow-up sequence scripted for your church | — | Yes |
| Our team on your Tuesday meetings as advisors | — | Yes |
| 30-day post-launch coaching | Optional | Yes |
Leader's Note
Pastors: humility about your own bandwidth is not a lack of faith. It is wisdom. Jesus himself withdrew to lonely places, delegated to disciples, and refused to do every miracle every crowd asked for. If the campaign requires more than you have, the right move is not to fake it — it is to accept the help God has put within reach.
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