Turn the Key · Leader's Guide

Planning outreach together, one meeting at a time

This guide is for the pastor, elder, or ministry leader who wants to read Turn the Key with the people who will actually make decisions. It follows the discussion questions at the back of the book, which were written for leadership teams, elder boards, and ministry planning.

The book is honest about its goal, and this guide shares it. The goal is not inspiration. Inspiration fades. The goal is clarity: a clear picture of what kind of ministry your church could start, why it matters, and the first three steps to beginning. If your team finishes the series with those three things, it has done its job.

Before you start

• Use one chapter per meeting as a discussion anchor. That is the book's own suggestion for leadership teams. For the later parts, the book groups several chapters under one set of questions, and this plan follows that grouping.
• Read before you meet. The early chapters are short, often five or six pages. The grouped weeks (the case study, the ideas catalog, and the getting-started guide) are longer, so give people two weeks' notice for those.
• Keep a running list. Assign one person to write down every need, passion, affinity, and name that comes up. By week twelve, that list becomes the raw material for evaluating ideas.
• Invite the quiet passions. The book says your next ministry is probably hiding in someone who has been doing something quietly, on their own, because they couldn't not do it. Consider inviting that person to a meeting or two.
• Don't rush to launch. The book's most counterintuitive advice is to spend three months listening before you launch anything. This series is a good place to plan that listening, not skip it.

A 75-minute leadership meeting

Thirteen-week planning series

The book says a twelve-week series could easily be built around it, but its own question sets (one for each of Chapters 1–9, then four grouped sets) make thirteen sessions. If you need twelve, combine Sessions 4 and 5; both deal with relationships and partnership.

Session by session

Session 1: Outreach as the church's permanent posture

Read: Chapter 1, "The Mission Has Always Been Outside" · Open with: Matthew 28:18–20

The big idea: The Great Commission is not a program to add when everything else is running well; it is the permanent, defining orientation of the church.

To open: What is one place in your community where you see the same people week after week?

1. When your church talks about outreach, does it feel like a program you’re adding or a posture you already have? What’s the difference in practice?
2. Matthew 28 grounds the Commission in Jesus’ authority, not our readiness. How does that change the conversation about whether your church is ‘ready’ to do outreach?
3. Where is your church’s Jerusalem — the immediate community where the concentric circles of Acts 1:8 begin for you specifically?
4. What is one thing your church is doing that would not exist if the Great Commission were not true?

This week: Drive or walk the few miles around your church building this week and write down what you notice: who lives there, what's closing, what's struggling. Bring the list next time.

Session 2: Modality and sodality

Read: Chapter 2, "Two Structures, One Mission" · Open with: 1 Corinthians 12:14–17

The big idea: The local church tends the found and the mission structure seeks the lost; the body needs both, and they should strengthen each other.

To open: What is a ministry or organization outside your church that you've admired for how focused it is?

1. Can you identify the modality and sodality expressions currently operating in or around your church? What are they?
2. Charlie Cotherman and the Center for Rural Ministry use Winter’s framework to help small churches think about mission. How does the modality/sodality distinction change how you think about the relationship between your Sunday service and your outreach ministries?
3. Where do you see the modality and sodality competing in your church context? How might you reframe that competition as complementarity?
4. What would it look like for your frontier ministries and homestead ministries to actively strengthen each other?

This week: Make two columns on one sheet of paper: everything your church does that tends the found, and everything that seeks the lost. Notice which column is longer.

Session 3: Ending the outreach vs. discipleship debate

Read: Chapter 3, "Frontier and Homestead" · Open with: Ephesians 4:11–12

The big idea: The homestead forms, the frontier deploys, the frontier sends back, and the homestead deepens; the whole body functioning as designed is the point.

To open: When did serving someone teach you something about your faith that a sermon hadn't?

1. Has your church ever felt pressure to choose between outreach and discipleship? What caused that pressure?
2. The chapter argues that the homestead forms people the frontier deploys, and the frontier sends people back to the homestead asking better questions. Have you seen that cycle work? What did it look like?
3. Which is your church more naturally inclined toward: frontier or homestead? What are the risks of that inclination?
4. What would a healthier balance between outreach and discipleship look like specifically in your congregation?

This week: Ask two people who serve outside the church walls what questions that service has raised for them. Bring their answers to the next meeting.

Session 4: Presence, genuine care, and honest faith

Read: Chapter 4, "The Relational Bridge" · Open with: John 1:14

The big idea: The gospel travels through relationships, across three spans: presence, genuine care, and honest faith.

To open: Who is one person who made faith real to you before you understood much about it?

1. Think about how you or someone you know came to faith. How important was a specific relationship in that story?
2. The chapter describes three spans of the relational bridge: presence, genuine care, and honest faith. Where is your church strongest? Where is there room to grow?
3. The affinity model says: find something people actually love and gather around it genuinely. What affinities exist in your congregation that could serve as the basis for an outreach ministry?
4. Apply the “would they still come if we never invited them to church?” test to your current outreach activities. What does that reveal?

This week: Ask five people in your congregation what they love doing in their free time. Add every answer to the running list of affinities.

Session 5: Partners in the gospel

Read: Chapter 5, "Tier One, Tier Two, Tier Three" · Open with: Philippians 1:3–5

The big idea: The big-C Church is bigger than any small-c church; shared tier-one convictions are enough ground for partnership in outreach.

To open: What other church in your area do you know the least about?

1. What tier-one convictions do you share with other churches in your community that could form the basis for partnership?
2. Are there tier-two differences that have prevented your church from partnering with other congregations on shared ministry? Are those differences worth maintaining in an outreach context?
3. The chapter describes the big C Church as bigger than any small c church. How does that conviction shape your church’s posture toward collaboration?
4. Is there another church in your community with whom you could partner on a specific outreach ministry? What would the first conversation look like?

This week: One person on the team calls another pastor in town this week, not to propose anything, just to ask how their church is doing and how you can pray.

Session 6: Seven marks of a ministry that lasts

Read: Chapter 6, "The Sweet Spot"

The big idea: The more of the seven characteristics a ministry has (multi-skilled, multi-generational, repeat contact, practical and spiritual, affordable, volunteer community, scalable), the stronger and more sustainable it will be.

To open: What's the most generationally mixed group you've ever been part of, and what made it work?

1. Rate your church’s current outreach ministries on the seven sweet-spot characteristics. Where are the gaps?
2. Multi-generational ministry is described as a theological statement, not a demographic strategy. Do you agree? What would it take to be more intentionally multi-generational in your outreach?
3. The chapter argues that the best outreach ministries build community among volunteers as well as serving the community outside. Does your current outreach accomplish both? If not, how might it?
4. If you were designing a new outreach ministry from scratch for your church, which of the seven characteristics would be most important to build in from the beginning?

This week: Write the seven characteristics down the side of a page and score each current outreach effort with a check or a dash. Bring the sheet next week.

Session 7: Growing in balance

Read: Chapter 7, "The Three-Legged Stool"

The big idea: The people you serve, your volunteers, and your infrastructure must grow together or fail together; leadership's job is proportional attention to all three.

To open: Think of something good that got too big too fast. What broke first?

1. In your current or potential ministry, which of the three legs (customers, volunteers, infrastructure) is most likely to outpace the others?
2. Have you ever seen a ministry collapse because one leg grew too fast? What happened?
3. What does “proportional attention” to all three legs look like in practice for a ministry your size?
4. What infrastructure investments would most strengthen your ministry right now?

This week: For one existing ministry, list who is served, who serves, and what systems hold it together. Circle the shortest leg.

Session 8: Let the work be the curriculum

Read: Chapter 8, "Discipleship Happens Here" · Open with: James 1:22

The big idea: Outreach is not only something the church does for the community; it is something God does for the church.

To open: Who taught you something important while you were working alongside them?

1. Can you identify specific people in your congregation whose faith has been formed through service rather than classroom instruction? What did that look like?
2. How intentional is your church about building discipleship into the DNA of your outreach, rather than treating it as a separate program?
3. The chapter says the hard moments are part of the curriculum. How do you help volunteers process difficult experiences in a way that leads to formation rather than burnout?
4. If a first-time volunteer joined your outreach ministry today, what would they be learning about faith six months from now?

This week: Before your next service project or work session, give five minutes to a short devotion: a story, a scripture, and a question, led by a volunteer rather than a pastor.

Session 9: Founders and organizers

Read: Chapter 9, "The Founder and the Organizer"

The big idea: The person who starts a ministry rarely scales it; every ministry that lasts needs both founding passion and organizational capacity.

To open: Are you more energized by starting something new or by making something run well?

1. Which are you — more founder or more organizer? Is there someone in your congregation who complements your profile?
2. Have you seen a ministry struggle because it had a founder without an organizer, or vice versa? What happened?
3. How do you create a culture that honors both roles without one dominating the other?
4. If you were handing this ministry off tomorrow, who would you hand it to, and what would need to be true for that person to succeed?

This week: Go around the table and name, honestly, whether each person is more founder or more organizer. Then name one person outside the room who could supply the missing profile.

Session 10: Clear roles and honest costs

Read: Chapters 10–11, "White Hats, Blue Hats, Red Hats" and "The Hidden Costs Nobody Warns You About"

The big idea: Clarity about roles is kindness to your volunteers, and the ministries that endure ask whether they are a faithful expression of love, not only whether they are producing enough results.

To open: Have you ever volunteered somewhere and not known who was in charge? How did it feel?

1. Does your current ministry have clear leadership roles for work sessions? What would the white/blue/red framework add?
2. Which of the five hidden costs — emotional cost, weight of need, volunteer drift, success complexity, the dangerous question — do you most need to prepare for?
3. Have you ever asked the “would anybody notice if I stopped?” question? What did you do with it?
4. What is the difference between “is this producing enough results?” and “is this a faithful expression of love?” Which question does your team ask most often?

This week: For your next ministry event, name the white hat, the blue hats, and the red hats ahead of time, and tell each volunteer which hat they're wearing.

Session 11: Lessons from The Garage

Read: Chapters 12–17, the case study, from "Ideation" to "Multiplication"

The big idea: The Garage grew from a driveway to a nonprofit through passion, small experiments, honest adjustment, systems, and partnership; the principles travel even where the model doesn't.

To open: Who in your congregation has been quietly doing something good on their own for years?

1. Which phase of The Garage’s development — ideation, experimentation, iteration, formalization, expansion, multiplication — most resembles where your church is right now?
2. The chapter describes a church culture that says “go ahead and try it.” Does your church have that culture? What would it take to develop it?
3. What is the “oil change and car seat check” equivalent for your ministry — the simpler, faster, higher-volume version that might reach more people?
4. What would the 501(c)(3) question look like for your ministry, and is it time to ask it?

This week: Talk with one person whose quiet passion came up tonight. Ask what they'd try if the church said, “go ahead and try it.”

Session 12: Choosing the right idea

Read: Chapters 18–20, "The Affinity Principle," "Thirty Ideas for Small Churches," and "Evaluating Your Idea" · Open with: 1 Corinthians 9:22

The big idea: Create spaces around genuine shared interests, test every idea with four filters, and ask whether someone would still come if you never invited them to church.

To open: Of the thirty ideas in Chapter 19, which one surprised you most?

1. Apply the four filters to your top two or three ministry ideas. Which ones survive all four?
2. What affinities exist in your community that your church has not yet gathered around?
3. Apply the “would they still come?” test to your ideas. What does it reveal?
4. If you had $200/month and six committed volunteers, which one idea from Chapter 19 would you start first?

This week: Narrow the running list to your top two or three ideas. For each one, write a sentence describing how a church volunteer and an unchurched participant might become genuine friends.

Session 13: Listening, building, and beginning

Read: Chapters 21–27, from "Become a Listener First" to "Turn the Key" · Open with: Philippians 4:13

The big idea: Listen before you launch, solve one problem well, build a team, let funding follow faithfulness, connect people, plan for the long game, and begin.

To open: What's one thing in this series you've changed your mind about?

1. Have you done a genuine listening phase in your community? If not, who would you start with?
2. What is the one problem you could solve exceptionally well in your community? What would “indispensable” look like for your church?
3. Map your current funding streams against the five-stream model in Chapter 24. Where are you overexposed? Where are you underdeveloped?
4. Thirty days from now, what is the first concrete step you will take toward starting something? Name it. Write it down. Tell someone.

This week: Each person names a first step, writes it down, and tells someone outside the room. For most teams, the first step is a listening conversation: a principal, a social worker, the police or fire chief, a nonprofit leader, or a business owner on your main street, asked one question: what problem keeps showing up that nobody is solving well?

Planning a retreat instead

The book suggests that if you're planning a ministry retreat, Parts Four and Five together, the ideas catalog and the getting-started guide, make a natural framework for a one-day or weekend planning session. That is Chapters 18 through 27, which this guide covers in Sessions 12 and 13.

For a one-day retreat, spend the morning on the affinity principle, the thirty ideas, and the four filters (Session 12), and the afternoon on listening, focus, team, funding, connection, and the long game (Session 13). For a weekend, give Friday evening to the affinity principle and the ideas catalog, Saturday morning to the four filters, and Saturday afternoon to the getting-started chapters. Either way, end with the final question below.

The four filters and the test that matters most

Chapter 20 gives four filters for whether an idea can work in a small church. Volunteer load: can three to six people run this? Cost: can you run this on a few hundred dollars a month? Repeatability: will the same people return regularly? Relational depth: can meaningful friendships actually form?

Beyond the filters is the test that matters most: Would someone still come if we never invited them to church? If the answer is yes, you've found a genuine community asset. Those ministries create the strongest relational bridges and the most credible opportunities for evangelism. The Ministry Idea Quick Reference at the back of the book rates all thirty ideas on the four filters and is worth copying for your team.

End with a step, not a feeling

The book's final discussion prompt is the one to leave in the room: Thirty days from now, what is the first concrete step you will take toward starting something? Name it. Write it down. Tell someone.

Put a date on the calendar thirty days out and meet again to hear what happened. You don't need a large church, a perfect plan, or everyone on board. You need a real need, a few willing people, a church culture that says yes, and the courage to turn the key.

Questions are from the discussion questions for leadership teams, elder boards, and ministry planning in Turn the Key by Mark Sentell. The book is available in 3 formats on Amazon. marksentell.com/books/turn-the-key/