Church Planting For Beginners
My trip to the east coast has elicited much reflection & conversation about pastoring and starting new churches. I met with no less than 3 church planters while there and heard the glories and the “crap times” as one put it. I’m no church planting hotshot but i’ve got invaluable experience on several things that make it or break it for “church entrepreneurs”. Read the following at your own discretion; it will either discourage you or embolden you greatly.
Having a business sense is necessary. I might get flack for this one but I see it as an absolute necessity. Who can start with nothing and build it up to a viable community? You have to have a sense of growing things to make it in this vocation. Spiritual idealists, beware.
Experience IS required. If you’ve no experience on the inner-workings of a church it’s an uphill battle. On-the-job training is not too helpful when it comes to church planting; know how the church works inside-out from the get go or you’ll get burned. Perhaps missiologists ought to take this one into consideration when sending people out who are not experienced in “church planting” nor have a business sense about them. Thus we have a lot of spiritual idealists in the field who labor with almost no fruit after a decade…
Core commitment / chemistry is essential. A group of people who will go far with you from the get-go are a rarity; do you have a group of people whom you resonate with? Are they drawn to the vision or are they drawn to you? I find people who are drawn to you stick around longer than those who are drawn to the vision… in this sense it’s necessary to be a pastor first before being a pioneer…
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Great stuff – I agree with the points, all of them. Good wisdom.
interesting list…could you unpack “business sense” a bit more?
I appreciate this Wayne…good things to ponder. I hope your time in the East was fun as well as productive.
business sense is ignored in churches… along with management skills…
Supposedly, running church like a business is unspiritual :p.
the ability to grow something – I find is often the mark of business-savviness. Of course, the H.S. grows all things – but at times when we are forced to use man-made methods (bite the bullet) like marketing, etc., that takes some real giftedness to conjure up something out of nothing…
Actually, from all that I hear going on with Andy Stanley’s team over at North Point Community Church, they have almost exclusively drawn from their membership for pastoral positions. Most of them have no seminary training, but have a strong sense of business and leadership and mostly have business degrees. They get the mentoring and training needed. Their style of planting is different as they are going multi-site campus with Andy preaching through video, but campus pastors are still needed for those sites.
One thing I can add to this is that I have the first 2 and am seeking God for the timing to go after the third component. The problem with #3 is that it can start well, but as you noted, that initial core group probably won’t be there for long (generally less than 3 years) so it is vital to connect with others and begin training them and vision casting if the ministry is to continue.
Church planting is huge sacrifice and one that always has it’s high, high ups and its low, low down moments. Balance is so key to being in it for the long run.
interesting list. as a spiritual idealist, i think i’d have to ask what you mean by “fruit” and parse out “business sense”. Business in like risk management, marketing, sales, finance, mergers and acquisitions, negotiation, forecasts, quotas, and projections? while i’m not a church planter, i feel as though there is a frowning upon spiritual idealists who have no fruit, but i do think that’s a bit unfair. as though business sense and entrepreneurs don’t fail? or that those people don’t have results that you or others would deem as fruit? i’d have to say, that’s a little harsh, no? don’t get me wrong, i appreciate churches like northpoint and pastors like andy stanley, but a lot of small church pastors who gave their lives to their communities closed their doors because of the attraction of these mega-super-fruit-producing churches. call me an idealist, but i don’t think that’s ideal either.
spoken as a true “spiritual idealist”!
Don’t worry I probably fall within this camp as well, have been told so, and the recent hardships of planting missioDei and not really seeing it grow evidence that I am as well. One brother even told me that I am not “process-oriented” and would be a better fit for pastoring in pre-existing contexts. What a blow to my pioneering spirit!
(btw, tho, this brother can back it up as he has 6 church plants to his name…)
Either way I’ve learned from the past 2 years that people are trending towards smaller churches these days, and starting the next Willow Creek is not on many c.p.’ers minds… so they’ve dumped a lot of the vital demographical study and “business” research, etc., which I think is a mistake as well…
Isn’t it necessary to know why we do what we do where we do when we do church planting?
Since I don’t make any money from it and it’s been popular in the past, let me pimp an article I wrote about the things “they” tell church planters that are bullshit. Wait, can I say that out here? Hmmm…
Link here. Ahh, if I knew than what I know now…
Wayne, I’m thinking about your comment above:
If a cp’er feels called to a particular neighborhood, and is especially incarnational in approach, does demographic study and business research matter?
I’m thinking of the recent book by Halter/Smay, The Tangible Kingdom, where they argue that a missional/incarnational approach should start with moving into a neighborhood and then, for 2-3 YEARS, not holding any meetings, but just getting to know the neighborhood. (Talk about counter-willow creek approach…)
I think one of the hardest things about church planting is that the game is already established. in this sense the idea of church is so set that to deviate from it into an “organic ekklesia model” is too foreign to work. a “tabula rasa” society would be so much better for that kind of approach. Alas, our attempts at doing church in a more authentic, non-fake way are often met with quizzical looks and people would rather just opt for “regular ole church” whatever that is. I’ve even had people say about us that we weren’t a “real” church. I will challenge that damned accusation every day for the rest of my life.
funny thing is, even when describing missio’s methodology to our own “tribe” it was referred to as “symptomatic” of deeper problems and inevitable failure. I saw it as an attempt to create an organic, grassroots, downwardly-mobile community. Too bad it didn’t work; I guess they were right and I wuz wrong.
so in the end unless we’re a Shane Claiborne or something we’re almost forced to play by the rules of the game instead of trying to redefine them.
I hope I don’t sound too jaded after a long and weary battle, just perhaps more realistic?
Wayne,
your honesty is inspiring.
And I hear what you are saying about the game being set, I see that landscape too. But, if our observations are total, and church planting in the US has become exclusively something that willow creek or north point embodies, I would say that the church in US has redefined itself out of the kingdom. Not that anything is wrong with the mega, I think they are great, but they don’t make up the whole kingdom and they don’t define success, or perhaps better said, success doesn’t define the kingdom.
I think the challenge is to divorce from the temptation to be successful, and cling to the challenge of living and teaching the kingdom. They are two different things, in my opinion.
on the other hand, if the mission of the church is not pursued, than this argument can just be an excuse for being fruitless. But if there is healing and growth and miracles, I’ll take the slow growth path any day.
Wayne, I have a few questions. In what ways did the church plant not work? I know there was the issue of financing, and some attendance issues, but what were the objectives of your plant and how did the church succeed or not succeed in meeting those objectives, forgetting for the moment the “vagaries” of finance and attendance.
Also, going back to attendance, for an “organic, grassroots, downwardly-mobile community”, what sort of size were you/are you looking for? 25, 50, 75 people? If the attendance of a church is intended to be small, say, how does such a church finance itself? This is an area that I am not well acquainted with (church financing, that is)-or at all acquainted with-but I would think for a small, organic community to survive, some creative financing might be needed. “Creative financing” in some circles might be a euphemism for shady practices, but I was thinking more creative financing=outside the box.
Anyway, just some thoughts/questions to stimulate some discussion and get some insight.
I think one thing that defines a successful church plant is “momentum”.
While some plant intentionally small monastic communities of simple living, a church plant has in mind to grow in size as well as (gasp!) numerically. No mystery there; thus if there’s no momentum to grow in size it ceases to exist and even function properly, because to do all the ambitious things a church can do – in the social / community sphere – takes people.
Funding is also a question – I’ve observed that it takes a church numbering 100 – 150 ppl to payroll 1 pastor fully. Now I’ve heard the criticisms of church structures and “feeding the pastor” but in this day and age, almost all pastors I know live in somewhat squalid means… of course here is where “creative financing” comes in.
Wayne, I simply meant that all enterprises must have something by which to judge success or failure that goes beyond numbers, whether those numbers be attendance, profit (or financial backing), or wins and losses. I call numbers “vagaries” because they can fluctuate wildly depending on time and circumstances, independent to some degree of the success of an endeavor. While numbers can serve as an indicator of success or failure, numbers should not define it. How well an enterprise accomplishes its numbers-independent mission given what it has to work with is a better indicator of success or failure than numbers. While finances or other indicators of success can close down an enterprise, or make it difficult or impossible to continue, success is not necessarily tied up with those indicators. So, what I meant to say is given what you had to work with, how well did you accomplish the purpose for which you started the church plant?