In 1991 I heard a pastor speak to a teen audience about serving the Lord in full-time ministry. God communicated to my heart as clearly as if He had pointed me between the eyes. He said: “I want you to be a pastor in the suburbs outside of New York City.” I was 19, and the idea of becoming a pastor had never once crossed my mind. Frankly, I detested the idea; but nevertheless, God spoke.

Fourteen years later, after teaching at a Midwestern college for 10 years, once again I felt like God spoke and said, “It’s now time to make plans to become pastor of the church I called you to start.” I felt anxious and scared, but also excited and even relieved at the prospect of stepping out as a spiritual entrepreneur and seeing this God-sent dream fulfilled. In 2005 I gave a one-year notice to my employer and made the executive decision to launch a new church in Westchester County, N.Y., just 15 minutes north of New York City.

Entrepreneur Howard Schultz wrote: “If I don’t seize the opportunity, if I don’t step out of my comfort zone and risk it all, if I let too much time tick on, my moment will pass. I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, I would replay it in my mind for my whole life, wondering, What if? Why didn’t I? And, It’s one thing to dream, but when the moment is right, you’ve got to be willing to leave what’s familiar. … That’s what I did in 1985. If I hadn’t, Starbucks wouldn’t be what it is today.” And I felt the same way. For 14 years since my “calling,” I had pondered and envisioned the launch of a musical church that aggressively loves God and serves people—where the theme wouldn’t be religion, but a vibrant relationship with God. And though it seemed like the timing would never seem exactly right on all human counts, if I didn’t step out now, I never would.

I had no resources. To be exact, I had some solid ministry experience, a supportive wife, a 5-year-old boy, a newborn girl, a dream and only $500. And $500 and a dream won’t cover housing and food in of the nation’s most expensive communities. In the summer of 2006, I had a serious discussion with God, one of those “If-you’ve-ever-been-there-you-better-be-there-now” talks. I said, “Lord, I’m either called to start a church, or I’m crazy. There’s no middle ground. This is either the answer to a calling, or the stupidest decision of my entire life. There are people who think I should do this and others who think I’m senseless. But I know it’s not about what people think; it’s about what you want.”

On Sept. 2, 2006, my family traveled back East and moved into a friend’s one-bedroom basement apartment an hour west of Westchester County. Our first goal was to search out a place to live. After a month, we moved into our own tiny but expensive apartment in Westchester. After another month, when we settled on the right location to host a grand opening Christmas concert, I printed some literature and began knocking on doors in the community, telling people about People’s Church. For a month and a half, I traversed this hilly region, door-to-door, extending invitations to our grand opening.

I became scared, cold, exhausted, overwhelmed, yet sometimes still excited about my calling and vision. Sometimes on my more exhausting days, my mind would think cynical questions like: Do you realize you’re inviting people to a church that doesn’t exist? Did it occur to you that most people around here aren’t looking for a church? And what’s it going to be like if no one shows up for the grand opening? I had to counter myself often and insist that People’s Church did exist in the mind of God, and in my heart too. I’m a spiritual entrepreneur; I’ll take the risk, and I’ll live like the invisible is visible.

Risk for Reward

Spiritual entrepreneurs are, in many ways, like business entrepreneurs. The word “entrepreneur” comes from a French word that means to undertake a risk for reward. Entrepreneurs step out, take the risk, blaze a trail, take the arrows, fight the wild beasts, and discover destinations or treasures that no one thought existed. Entrepreneurs are an unusual breed of people who dream while others dither; follow a guiding star while others go home and call it a night; invest in a venture while others naysay; stick their neck out while others play it safe and secure; live for an idea which others don’t quite comprehend; leap with seemingly reckless abandon while others laboriously slog; labor to make the invisible visible while others don’t see it; and reap rewards in the end that are as savory as the risk was steep at the start.

Bookstore business sections abound with success stories of fledgling companies that started with a few partners committing to an idea in a garage that, in time, burgeoned into the corporate pantheon. One reason I have a penchant for reading these tales is because they deliver insight and encouragement for spiritual entrepreneurs like me.

Michael Dell found his freshman year of college boring in light of the prospect of starting a business with an unprecedented concept. Instead of attending classes, he was upgrading computers in his dorm room for attorneys, doctors, and businesspeople in the area. He applied for a vendor’s license and began conducting a lucrative business building and selling high-performance computer models at lower prices out of his room. At 18, Dell aspired to compete with IBM.

With only $1,000 in capital, Dell registered his business as Dell Computer Corporation and left college after his freshman year, obsessed with the notion of selling custom-built computers directly to end-users, bypassing the system of middlemen reselling mass-produced computers. In Direct from Dell, he wrote: “I’m sure if I had taken the time to ask, plenty of people would have told me that my idea wouldn’t work—I’ve heard that a lot … since starting the business. Sometimes it’s better not to ask—or to listen—when people tell you something can’t be done. I didn’t ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it.”

By 2000 Dell Computers had grown to a $30 billion company and became the world’s largest direct computer company, the number-one ranked PC business in the United States and the second largest in the world. Moreover, Michael Dell became the youngest CEO of a company to earn a slot on the Fortune 500. He wrote: “People have often told us that what we wanted to do couldn’t be done. … Dell is proof that people can learn to recognize and take advantage of opportunities that others are convinced don’t exist. You don’t have to be a genius, or a visionary, or even a college graduate to think unconventionally. You just need a framework and a dream.”

Five Key Factors

Every prosperous startup, from a church plant to a small business or corporation, will have five essential components (the framework and the dream). Though organizations vary in their terminology, and the components themselves may evolve over time, the following five factors should be present or forged at the outset of the venture:

The Dream: “What will be”
In 1876 Western Union’s president disregarded Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone as an “electric toy,” and the company called Bell’s vision of putting a phone in every home “utterly out of the question.” A Michigan banker counseled his client not to invest in Henry Ford’s business in 1903, because “the horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty.” Sam Walton said about the launch of his first Wal-Mart stores: “I knew we were on to something. I knew in my bones it was going to work. But at the time, most folks—including my own brother, Bud—were pretty skeptical of the whole concept.”

The Bible tells us that Joseph shared his two dreams when he was 17, and, at the time, none of his brothers took him seriously; instead, they resented him. The siblings had already perceived Jacob’s favoritism for Joseph, and his prescience only further fueled their animosity. After an unforeseeable sequence of chutes and ladders and more than two decades later, Joseph’s dreams were fully realized when, as the 39-year-old Egyptian second-in-command, his band of brothers bowed to him as their patriarch.

Biblical dramatizer Marquis Laughlin once said to our church family: “Churches usually start with one individual in whose heart God has put a vision of what He wants to accomplish. Over time, as people catch a glimpse of that vision, they will step forward and devote themselves to it. And before you know it, there’s a large congregation of people who are wholeheartedly committed to the same cause.”

Someone first must vividly see what others yet can’t see. And they must feel it in their bones.

The Theme: “What we will do”
Every organization—big or little, profit or nonprofit—should have a clearly expressed mission declaration—a rallying bottom-line concept that defines what we do. For eBay, it’s: “To provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything.” Intel: “To delight our customers, employees and shareholders by relentlessly delivering the platform and technology advancements that become essential to the way we work and live.” Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”

I’ve made it clear from our grand opening Sunday that People’s Church won’t try to do everything, and we certainly can’t please everyone. Our mission is “to inspire and instruct ordinary people to become extraordinary followers of Jesus Christ.” All we do—and don’t do—centers around this.

The Scheme: “How we will do it”
Author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau said, “If you build castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” The dream will dissipate if the foundation isn’t fashioned beneath. After solidifying the overarching mission, a plan must be set in place—not described merely by broad brushstrokes, but by specific action steps that outline how we will do what we’ve set out to do. The plan may be altered, even edited many times, but it’s far easier to take action based upon a strategic plan than upon an emotional whim.

From the start, my personal philosophy of ministry was this: “If I was stranded on an island for five years with nothing but the Bible and no one but God, and then came to New York to start a church, what would it look like?” In a postmodern mindset with myriad cultural variables, I don’t profess only one way to do church. Every pastor must wrestle with the question of how to fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment within the context of their community. But the how must be grappled with, over and over.

The Team: “Who will do it”
Warren Bennis, founding chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California, said, “Who succeeds in forming and leading a Great Group? He or she is almost always a pragmatic dreamer. They are people who get things done, but they are people with immortal longings.” And, “The most exciting groups—the ones … that shook the world—resulted from a mutually respectful marriage between an able leader and an assemblage of extraordinary people.” Christ Jesus chose to shake the world through the effort of a team too.

I made a lot of mistakes during the first few years of People’s Church, but I know I did two things right. First, as soon as I could, I began to gather people into ministry teams that would carry out facets of ministry that my wife and I initially did by ourselves. Of course, the teams depended upon people’s faithfulness, talents and willingness to serve. Second, I waited for the leaders to step up. I watched for the men who had the character and integrity, the grit and elbow grease, the talent and humility, the passion and loyalty—the ones everyone else looked to for information and direction when I couldn’t be found. When these men became apparent (and they were not the men who clamored to be in charge), I asked if they would form a leadership team that would shoulder the burden of ministry with me. For a couple years, we have met together, prayed, planned, strategized, hashed over problems, and more effectively carried out what I struggled to do by myself. We recently celebrated our five-year church anniversary, and I don’t know how I could have endured years four and five without all our teams.

The Steam: “We will keep on doing it”
“Steam” can be defined as a driving force, vigor or energy. I once interviewed author Jean Craighead George, author of the best-selling children’s books Julia and the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain. At around 90 years old, she told me she was currently writing her 109th book! I was inspired and impressed with her steam. You can have the right dream, theme, scheme and team, but without the steam, the train will never leave the station. I’ve observed that, in any given field—from cooking to writing to retail to evangelism—those who rise to the top in today’s culture don’t simply keep on keeping on; they keep on passionately, with driving force.

And now, on Sundays when I see how our church family has coalesced, and I watch people faithfully serving—greeting and seating and setting up and singing and playing and teaching and cleaning—and I watch people who had never before toted a Bible taking notes in the margins—I recall the fears and insecurities I deeply felt when we first moved here when none of this was visible. Today our congregation is comprised of caring individuals and families spread abroad an hour radius around our Sunday meeting place. And in the next few months, we’re making our first move to a larger Sunday space. When I recollect the initial risk and all the crazy surreal anxieties, I can relish the reward of having labored with God as He materialized a dream He conceived in my heart when I was 19, nearly 20 years ago.


Rocco Dapice is a pianist, former Disney jazz musician, songwriter, former college professor, nationwide public speaker, writer, husband and dad, and founding pastor of People’s Church in Westchester County, New York. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.