Welcome:

“Welcome from Pastor Phil”
Dear Pastor Friend,

Many years ago when I was a young student at The Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Dr. George Sweeting was the school's president. He would often say, "Christ's church has many critics, but no equal."

What a ring of truth there is to that statement. There is no equal indeed! My wife and I have been planting new churches for our entire adult lives (So far we’ve completed seven - combined morning attendance is about 7,000). Additionally, we have devoted a great deal of our energy to refreshing older declining congregations. We’ve done that twice. One had 19 people after 25 years; the other had 90 in about the same period of time. Today both of those congregations average about 1,200 people. We are committed to church planting and to pastors who are planting or refreshing existing churches. We have walked in your shoes. We want to serve you in the special endeavor to which our Heavenly Father has called you. It is my conviction that there is no higher ministry honor than to see the birth of a new church - or relighting a fire in an older established congregation.

The challenges of pioneer work are significant. Perhaps our ministry will be able to lighten your load. We pray it will.

There is a story of a very old and tired North Carolina hound dog that was always lying on the porch moaning and whining. A visitor once asked his owner why the dog was moaning. He replied that there was a nail coming through a floorboard on the porch and that the dog was lying on it - and it hurt him. "Why doesn't he move," the man asked? "Oh, it doesn't hurt THAT much," he answered. Many people are like that tired old dog - dissatisfied, but not enough to move off the "nail." In every community there are people who are dissatisfied with their lives. If only we could locate them.

For years we looked for a cost-effective methodology that would accomplish this. In two communities we started FM radio stations to announce our presence to the local folks. Now, of course, there aren't very many places with an open frequency. Even if there was, the cost is prohibitive.

In 1997 we discovered a solution to this very old ministry problem. We have finally come up with a plan to find the people who are "on the nail." Because… they can’t come if they don’t know you exist.

TellStart was born out of pure necessity. We needed a cost-effective plan that would enable us to tell everyone in town a new church was forming. Furthermore, they needed to be able to respond immediately.

We moved to a new community in a new State with no local core group, and only limited financial support for the project. We didn't have many options. So we installed a single phone line attached to a computer… and it worked! It took a whole month back then to call 17,000 homes. Today we can do that in a couple of hours.

Since that time it has worked in many other communities, for both new churches, and older churches seeking to get the word out. So far, in addition to our own churches, we have made millions of phone calls for over 800 hundred churches in 48 States. Everywhere we have tried, TellStart has produced results for God’s glory. I trust you will find this material helpful, and that you will phone us with any questions you may have. I look forward to the opportunity of partnering with you for the cause of Christ.

By grace alone,
Phil Spry
888-467-1391 (Eastern Time)