An evidence-anchored plan to grow Word of Life Local Church Ministries from 460 active church partners toward an official year-end goal of about 485, with a funnel and coaching model the team can actually staff and ship. About 80 new partnerships is the full-engine target; net of first-year attrition it lands near 485, with roughly 540 as the stretch.
Sources: National Congregations Study (Duke, 2018 – 20); U.S. Religion Census (ARDA, 2020); Pew Religious Landscape (2014); NCES Private School Survey (2021).
"Curriculum drives revenue. Coaching is the relationship. Gospel events drive awareness. The coach is the front door for all three."
We help churches build deep and engaging youth ministries. The work itself does not change. The way we reach churches does. For decades our missionary coaches have been our entire marketing engine. Relational, slow, hard to scale. This year we build the marketing system that nurtures churches into a coach conversation, so coaches spend their time on the partnerships only they can drive.
We do not ship a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Every partnership starts with the Youth Ministry Health Check, a standardized self-assessment that ranks a church's ministry health, then a coach connects them to the right pieces. The Health Check is live and already showing strong results. Connecting it to our CRM is the near-term IT step.
Annual subscription. 36 lesson credits across nine modules, leader resources, planning tools, the Multiply App, and a dedicated YMC.
Web-based leadership training in 20+ languages. Volunteer-ready short trainings that lower the barrier for Sarah.
Tracks Quiet Times completed, Scripture memorized, service challenges logged, and volunteer logins. Gives Pastor Jim real visibility into discipleship without micromanaging Paul. Also serves Sarah's small group leaders with discussion prompts and a leader view she opens in the car before group.
One passage. Every age. Every day. A three-year unified Bible reading plan trusted by churches for 50+ years.
30+ faith-funded missionaries. Onboarding, in-person visits multiple times per year, ongoing strategic friendship.
Fascar, Storm, Slopstacle, Nerf war, custom builds. Branded curriculum plus post-event discipleship. Reverb anchors the brand annually.
Paul is our champion. Jim is our gatekeeper. Sarah is our end user. Each one needs a different door, and each one walks the same six-stage journey in their own voice.
Bi-vocational, overwhelmed, prepping lessons on Saturday night while his family waits. Primary drivers: simplicity and effectiveness. He needs a system, not more content.
"Lost a small group leader last spring. I've got four left. I can't lose another one."
Risk-averse gatekeeper. Has signed off on three curricula in eight years. Two are in the closet. Primary drivers: trust and transparency. He needs visibility without micromanaging.
"Two youth pastors in five years. Every transition is another year of kids slipping through the cracks."
Small-group leader. Mom of two. Showed up because nobody else would. Primary drivers: equipping and encouragement. Adoption and retention hinge on her confidence.
"A girl asked me why God lets bad things happen to kids. I mumbled something about Job and changed the subject."
Each one walks through the same six stages from Status Quo to Decision, in their own voice. Paul's journey centers on curriculum, time, and the volunteer team. Jim's centers on confident leadership and a plan he can sign off on. Sarah's centers on equipping and not feeling alone.
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This is the content map behind "Don't Lead Alone." Each stage leads with the message that moves the persona, then the assets that carry it. Switch personas to see both.
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Awareness, free resources, and a coach call get us a partnership. Activation in the wider Word of Life ecosystem, adoption of the tools that fit, and advocacy are where ministry actually compounds. The coach call is the consistent point of decision.
Search, Meta ads, conferences, gospel events, the Stacking Chairs podcast, and the Multiply blog. Where youth pastors actually look when they need help.
Multiply U training, a free Multiply+ trial with real curriculum, leadership assessments, and webinars. We build trust by giving the help first.
Every funnel ends here. A no-pressure strategy session with a missionary Youth Ministry Coach. The point of partnership decision.
The coach connects the church to camps, missions, and regional LCM events. The partnership grows beyond the subscription.
Churches adopt the Word of Life discipleship philosophy and use the tools that fit their context. For most, that lands at full curriculum.
Churches who built deep youth ministries with us tell other churches. The next acquisition starts inside the partnership.
A funnel that ends at a coach only works if the coach is trained and responsive. Routing already runs in Salesforce. The response standard, the inbound-lead playbook, and the accountability tracking are the Q1 build, so a warm lead never goes cold.
Every inbound lead is assigned to the regional Youth Ministry Coach automatically in Salesforce, with a home-office team member on the follow-up.
A 24-hour first-touch standard. The coach reaches the church the day the lead comes in, while intent is high, not weeks later.
An inbound-lead playbook trains coaches to open a warm lead well: listen, assess, route to the right resource, no pitch. A different muscle than outbound relationship building.
A home-office owner watches response time so no lead is dropped. Manual today, moving to Salesforce task tracking with a simple weekly view.
Some churches partner through the full curriculum platform. Others start with coaching and free training and grow into more over time. Others come in through a gospel event and build from there. Once a church is connected to a coach, the coach is the conduit to Bible Institute, camps, missions, regional LCM events, and the full Multiply ecosystem.
Multiply+ subscription with lessons, planning tools, the Multiply App, a YMC, and the Annual Roadmap plus 6-Month Impact Report. The most scalable path and the revenue engine.
YMC, Multiply U, ad-hoc resources curated by the coach, Quiet Time bulk pricing. No subscription required. The transitional path. Many churches grow into Multiply+ from here.
Local gospel event kits (Fascar, Storm, Slopstacle, Nerf war). YMC plans end-to-end. Branded curriculum plus follow-up. Coach as conduit to Bible Institute, camps, missions, and regional LCM events after the event lands. Reverb anchors annually.
Reach and depth run opposite ways: gospel events reach the most churches, coaching partners broadly with no subscription, and curriculum is the narrowest path but the deepest, and the goal. Which door each partner enters is not yet tracked. Tagging entry path in Salesforce is an FY26 measurement priority.
These are entry points, not closers. Each asset earns the first yes and the email, then drops the persona into the journey where the nurture and the coach do the rest. Jim gets the packet that opens the approval conversation. Paul gets a free month of curriculum that proves the system works. Sarah gets the weekly prompts she actually uses.
High-quality PDF plus physical mailer Paul uses to win Jim's approval. Theology Map, six-year scope and sequence, doctrinal positioning, and the financial framing of a partnership versus hiring more staff.
A complete 4-week Multiply module Paul can teach this Sunday. Lessons, discussion guides, planning tools, leader-ready. No credit card. One month of real curriculum proves the system works, and the coach is one click away.
Five small group conversation prompts in Sarah's inbox every Wednesday, built for the volunteer who is prepping in the car. Low-friction Instagram opt-in. The asset that gets her in the ecosystem before Paul ever asks her to.
A retention engine already producing revenue today.
Our biggest differentiator is already in the field.
Word of Life founded 1940. Quiet Time published since 1962.
Free Lessons Meta campaign. Peaks of six per day. To hit 1,300 annual trials, we need to roughly triple the daily run rate.
80 leaders at launch with zero marketing spend.
Fascar, Storm, Slopstacle, Nerf war. Reverb (annual flagship).
The coaches are the destination of the funnel, not its source. Marketing does the reaching, so new partners arrive as warm coach calls the funnel has already qualified, not cold relationships. Here is the load, honestly.
30+
Faith-funded coaches in the field
The differentiator is already deployed. Every new partnership plugs into coaching capacity we already fund.
~15
Churches per coach today
460 active partners across the current field team. A load the coaches already carry well.
+80
New partners in the plan
Delivered as ready coach calls, staged through the year. Not 80 cold starts landing at once.
~18
Churches per coach at the ceiling
A manageable step even at the full ~540 gross-new ceiling. Q1 sets the capacity baseline with Advancement so we staff ahead of the load.
Set against what we already have running. Every rate is an attainable working assumption based on current campaign performance, not a forecast. The 20% Coach Call Rate is the lead metric, where coaching turns digital interest into multi-year partnership. Targets reflect a July 2026 launch and a 12-month execution window through June 2027.
13,000
Unique Leaders Reached
Top of the bowtie. One leader per depth-seeking church across the SOM segment.
1,300
Free Trials & Lead Captures
10% of reached leaders enter the funnel.
260
Coach Calls
20% of leads complete a call with a coach.
80
New Multiply+ Partners
30% close from coach call to subscription. The gross new-partner target for a full engine year.
460 partners today. About 80 new is the gross target for a full engine year. Net of first-year attrition (about 25% on new cohorts, retention improving toward 80%), the official year-end goal is about 485, roughly 10% growth. ~540 is the stretch if the engine runs a clean twelve months.
No single channel carries the year. The lead target is spread across four lanes, so a soft quarter in one does not sink the plan. Each lane already has a working analog running today.
The Free Lessons Meta campaign and Google Search. The daily engine, scaled from today's 2 to 3 leads toward the run rate the target needs.
Energize, Connect, and Conclave activations. Booths, breakouts, and seat-drops that convert in-person trust during peak conference seasons.
The Multiply Blog, search-optimized comparison content, and the Stacking Chairs Podcast. Slow to start, durable and low-cost once built.
Local gospel event kits and the Shepherd's Guide, coordinated by YMCs, plus referral from the 460 partners already in the family.
Every dependency in this plan has a fallback. None of them stops the launch. We name them up front so nothing is a surprise later.
Plan B. Coach calls book manually through existing YMC calendars until the Q1 scheduling tool ships. The metric still runs, just with more hands on it.
Plan B. The 80% renewal figure is a target, not a measured floor. Q1 establishes the baseline from current renewals before we commit the number to leadership.
Plan B. Conversion depends on pages the current stack may not support. If IT flexibility is granted, we ship them outside the stack and keep the funnel moving.
Plan B. Today's 2 to 3 leads a day must roughly triple. We weight budget toward the proven Meta mechanic first, then expand to new channels once it holds.
Plan B. Eighty new partners add load to a 30-coach team. Q1 capacity planning with Advancement stages intake so no coach is overloaded.
Plan B. Approvals can bottleneck output. We lock the campaign creative and content calendar in June, so launch is not gated on per-asset sign-off.
A diversified funnel, staged intake, and proven mechanics mean no single miss breaks the year.
The work does not change. The way we reach churches has to.
460 partnerships, built by hand.
Almost every one came through a coach conversation, one table at a time. That model works, and it has reached its ceiling. A coach can only sit at so many tables in a year.
For decades our missionary coaches have been the entire marketing engine. Relational, trusted, and slow. That model built 460 partnerships, and it has reached its ceiling. Meanwhile the churches that need us most are searching right now. Youth pastors are carrying full-time jobs and full-time ministry, volunteer teams are thinning, and leaders are making the impossible choice between depth and engagement every week. The hunger is not coming. It is here.
We do not need a new mission. We need a marketing system that brings ready churches to the coaches, so the coaches can do the work only they can do. The year to build it is this one.
This plan is more than one person can build. It needs cross-functional partnership across approval, resourcing, and IT.
Approval here starts the plan. Build June 2026. Launch July 2026. Run, retain, and renew through June 2027.