How Do I Start a Promise Fellowship?

Believe it or not, it’s not as hard as you might think.

But it can feel a bit overwhelming.

Taking the step to faithfully serve God and serve others by starting a Promise Fellowship assembly in your home is a wonderful blessing, though it can seem daunting or even impossible at times. It might be natural to think, “There’s no way that I’m qualified to do this,” or “We have no idea what we are doing.” Our sense is that if those might be concerns that you have, then whether you know it or not, you understand the significance of local assemblies of believers, and revere God’s Word. Those are remarkable qualifications, and a willingness to serve God and a commitment to do your best are all that you really need to start.

The process to launch a Promise Fellowship assembly isn’t difficult, but we’ve put together a set of steps and some resources to help make it as smooth as possible.

A Brief Overview of the Process

• Prayerfully consider if God is leading you to start a micro-fellowship.
• Gather your family and friends for your first meeting.
• Go through a six-week series as a trial run.
• Decide to launch your micro-fellowship, and start official onboarding.
• Work with The Promise Fellowship to legally set up and run your assembly.

Start with Prayer

This process starts simply by being open to the possibility, and prayerfully considering whether God is leading you toward this opportunity. Don’t rush this step, and pray and consider if this is what God wants you to do. Talk it over with your spouse, or your family, or your friends. Stepping forward and being willing to help lead and shepherd others within the Church is a big responsibility, but a fantastic one.

Even if you aren’t entirely certain that it’s time for you to start your own local assembly, that’s OK! The first part of the onboarding process is something that we call the “Six Week Promise Fellowship Starter Pack.”

This is a short six-week series that will help inform you and the other members in your assembly about some foundational elements of biblical doctrine. All the materials and teaching can either be done by Zoom, or with pre-recorded videos. There is a lot of flexibility for how to run these six meetings, so we can work with you for what is best for you. But, before that, gather your family and friends, and whoever would like to join you for your first meeting.

Gather Your Family and Friends to Meet

You are welcome to pick whatever time and day of week that works best for you.

Some Promise Fellowships meet mid-week, others on the weekend, Saturday or Sunday. Because one of the most important aspects of local assemblies is being able to come together as a body, and to help support each other in life, it’s important to pick a schedule that works best for you.

The Promise Fellowship Six-Week Starter Series

After that, for the first six weeks, you’ll go through the “Starter Pack” as a group. It’s a time to work out the kinks in scheduling, communication, and other logistics, but most importantly, it’s a time for you all to come together as believers to support one another, to worship God, and to study His Word.

Meeting 1: What is the Promise Fellowship?

The first meeting will answer, “What is the Promise Fellowship?” We’ll explain how and why the early Church functioned the way it did, and start to set the foundation for the next meetings that will cover core and critical biblical doctrines.

Meeting 2: The Simplicity of Salvation

The first of the doctrinal overview meetings is “The Simplicity of Salvation,” and it focuses on the core essentials of saving faith, which is to believe in Jesus for everlasting life. We cannot overstate how important this topic is, and sadly, it is one that most of professed Christianity gets wrong. Most likely, that is one of the main reasons that led you to start a Promise Fellowship assembly in the first place.

Meeting 3: The Necessity of Assurance

Next, we’ll cover “The Necessity of Assurance.” This is closely related to the topic of eternal salvation, and it is essential for us to understand for eternal salvation. Understanding this not only helps us to be free to pursue the Christian life without fear, it also prepares us to better evangelize unbelievers.

Meeting 4: The Priority of Rewards

The fourth meeting discusses “The Priority of Rewards,” which is a major emphasis in Focused Free Grace Theology. Where many people go wrong is assuming that everything in the New Testament is evangelistic and is about how to obtain eternal salvation. Instead, most of the New Testament is actually all about discipleship, not evangelism. Understanding eternal rewards is an important way to make sure we don’t forget the difference between those topics.

Meeting 5: The Clarity of Dispensationalism

The last of the biblical doctrine meetings is not so much on biblical doctrine itself, but it is about a system of thought that enables us to correctly approach the Bible and understand what it means.

This is called “dispensationalism.” It is not a “theological system,” but instead it is a “system of thought” for how we ought to seek the meaning of the text. Any belief or opinion that comes from that system is simply a natural result of letting the Bible speak for itself.

At this point, what you’ll need to do is pray together and speak with the others in your group about whether you’d like to move forward with establishing your Promise Fellowship. There is no pressure here, and the decision is between you, your assembly, and God.

Week 6: The Lord’s Supper

If you feel that moving forward is something that God is leading you to do, a great way to formally “launch” is to observe the Lord’s Supper together. This commemorates what His sacrificial death has achieved, and what it guarantees in the future.

It is also a great time to decide what you will study next. If you don’t feel comfortable teaching, we have a wealth of pre-recorded sermons, or we can have some of the best pastors and teachers teach virtually. If you want to teach, but maybe you are new to it, we can help with that too!

Why???

The biggest thing to keep in mind when considering whether to start a Promise Fellowship is “why?” Why do you think it is important? Why do you want to host one? If the answer is that you know it is indispensable to build up and strengthen others in the body of Christ, and to faithfully serve God, and teach His Word, then we are here to help you do just that.

Once that decision is made, the last step for this part is to affirm the Statement of Faith document for The Promise Fellowship. Take your time and go through each of the sections carefully and prayerfully. If you have any questions, or concerns, we are here to talk through them.

Then, to legally form your Promise Fellowship as a church, there are a number of significant (but a bit boring) administrative items that you’ll need to handle. We will help you through that process as well. To be quite honest, at this point, you’ve already done the hardest part of starting a Promise Fellowship. The rest of the administrative items are really quite simple.

In the next article, we’ll go through the high points of those administrative requirements.