Maurice Stargell was no stranger to church planting when God spoke to him three years ago to plant again. In 2002, Maurice Stargell moved to Newnan, Georgia, to plant Hope Church.

As it turned out, everything he learned from his first planting experience would come in very handy. “About three years ago, God started speaking to my heart about us being a church planting church and maybe launching a second campus,” Maurice says. What initially began as the idea to create a second Newnan campus quickly changed. “Instead of creating a second campus, we ended up closing the Newnan campus and started a church in a brand new location.”

Maurice had a heart for Southeast Metropolitan Atlanta. “We had a family that was a part of the Newnan campus that would drive from Jonesboro, Georgia, for church,” says Maurice. “They told us that there’s nothing like our church in their part of town and that it would be great if there was a Hope Church in the Jonesboro area.” Maurice began spending time there. “It just felt good,” he says. “I would just learn the city, have lunch on the square, try to meet people and dream about meetings.”

Hoping to attract many from the community, Maurice and his core team took on a comprehensive approach to connecting with the community. “We made a decision up front to develop a high quality, state of the art Web site before we launched. On the Web we’d be very specific and very creative about communicating the mission God had given us,” Maurice says. “We launched the church virtually before we launched it physically.”

Maurice also jumped on the social networking bandwagon and tried to develop a following on Facebook and Twitter. “I even developed a blog and invited people to follow my blog and the journey of this church that would be opening,” he says. “I built a following of people who were watching, listening and being intrigued.”

Holding weekly launch team meetings, Maurice and his team developed a culture of gatherers. “We’d bring friends and share with our coworkers and little by little we’d see new people come.”

As their launch date approached, Maurice’s team held missional house parties. “Families that were on our launch team planned a party in their home around a certain theme, such as college football night, fiesta or game night,” Maurice says. The rules for the party were simple – you can’t invite people who are already a part of the launch team. “I’d attend each of the events and over refreshments and games I’d share the mission of Hope Church,” he says.

The missional house parties even had an outreach component built in. “We asked anyone who attended to bring non-perishable food items that we could donate to a local food bank,” says Maurice. “It gave people the opportunity to invest in the community.”

Even with plans for the church firmly in place, Maurice still faced a challenge common to many planters. “We needed funds,” says Maurice. “I had a big vision and I knew God was calling us to reach a lot of people. It takes money to do that.”

Looking for funding options, Maurice went to the Church Multiplication Network. To his excitement, Hope Church was awarded Matching Funds. “We would not have been able to launch the way that we did without the Matching Funds,” he says. “We had an ambitious vision for the church God called us to plant. We meet at the Clayton County Performing Arts Center, which provides us with state of the art lighting and sound and a 350-seat auditorium. We couldn’t have secured that facility without Matching Funds.”

On January 31, 2010, Hope Church launched in Jonesboro with 253 people in attendance. Located in a culturally diverse area, Maurice is finding his church to have quite a blend of backgrounds and ethnicities. “The cultural breakdown is very diverse,” he says. “Jonesboro itself is probably 50 percent African American, 45 percent Caucasian and the rest Hispanic. The cultural makeup of our church is diverse and we say that up front. We desire our church to reflect that because real diversity makes us strong.”

Even though they’ve only been open for a month, Hope Church is already making an impact on their community. “I just met with a beautiful couple in their late 40’s with four kids. They looked me in the eye and said, ‘We’ve been praying for a church just like this to come to our city for four years. We have been begging God to birth a Spirit-filled, multi-cultural church,’” says Maurice. “They came to our launch and were blown away by the fact that they saw cultural diversity in the leadership established there. Immediately from the first Sunday they indicated they want to be a part of this brand new movement of Hope Church and are attending membership classes. They are even seeing their children inspired and fired up and excited about what God’s doing at Hope.”

With everything he did to prepare for the launch of the church, Maurice feels the most important thing was spending time developing his core team. “Don’t just focus on drawing a crowd. Spend time developing your core,” he says. “Get a broad team of leaders that can help you carry the load of ministry. It’s incredibly important. Gather a solid group of people surrounding the planter that have just as much buy in as the planter does.”