What is church planting?

Question 09031.

Church planting is the work of starting new local congregations, usually where none exists or where the existing churches cannot reach the population around them. It is not a modern technique borrowed from business, whatever the language of some conferences might suggest. It is the ordinary method by which the gospel spread across the Roman world in the first century.

In Britain we need it badly. Whole estates, market towns and city districts have no evangelical congregation worth the name, and the ones that remain are frequently a car journey away from the people who most need them. So let me set out what the New Testament actually shows, what the work involves, and what it asks of the churches that send.

What Church Planting Actually Is

A church plant is not a service, a Bible study or a coffee morning. It is the formation of a congregation: a body of believers, gathered in a place, under recognised leadership, hearing the Word preached, observing the ordinances, exercising discipline and taking responsibility for one another. Anything short of that is a useful preliminary rather than a church.

That definition rules out a good deal of what gets called church planting. A satellite venue watching a sermon on a screen with no local eldership is not a church in the New Testament sense; it is an outpost of another one. The goal of church planting is a congregation that could survive the departure of the people who started it, which is a demanding standard and the right one.

The New Testament Pattern

Read Acts and you watch it happen repeatedly. Paul preaches, people believe, a congregation forms. Then in Acts 14:21 to 23 he and Barnabas return to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples and appointing elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting. Notice the sequence: evangelise, gather, teach, appoint leaders, entrust to the Lord, move on.

Paul’s stated ambition in Romans 15:20 was to preach the gospel where Christ had not already been named, lest he build on someone else’s foundation. That is a church planting instinct if ever there was one. He also worked in strategic centres, Ephesus and Corinth and Thessalonica, from which the message travelled outward along the roads and trade routes without him. The Greek ekklesia, the called out assembly, appears in the plural across whole regions, which is exactly what you would expect.

Why It Is Still Needed Here

The usual objection is that Britain already has plenty of church buildings, so planting is duplication. That confuses buildings with congregations. Many of those buildings house declining fellowships with no gospel preaching, and many have closed. There are substantial communities in this country where a person seeking a church that opens the Bible would have to travel a considerable distance to find one.

New congregations also reach people that established ones do not. A church that has been in the same place for eighty years develops habits, assumptions and a culture that make sense to its members and are opaque to a newcomer. Church planting starts without that accumulated weight, which is both its advantage and, in time, its problem, since every plant becomes an established church eventually.

Models of Church Planting

Several approaches are in use. A mother church may send a group of members with a leader to form a new congregation nearby, which is the most stable model and the one I favour. A pioneer may go alone or with his family to an area with nothing, work for years, and see a congregation slowly form. Two or three churches may partner to support a plant that none could sustain alone.

There is also the revitalisation route, where a dying congregation invites a team to come alongside and effectively refound the work. It is harder than starting fresh and it is frequently more fruitful, because the building, the legal structure and a handful of faithful older members are already there. Church planting in that form asks a great deal of patience from everyone involved.

Who Should Plant

Not everyone who wants to. The qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 apply with full force, and to them I would add a set of practical requirements: resilience, an evangelistic instinct, the ability to teach, and a wife and family who are genuinely willing rather than dragged along. A man who cannot make friends with unbelievers will struggle badly.

I would also want him tested first. The New Testament warns against novices, and church planting is not a suitable place to discover whether someone can preach or handle conflict. The best planters I know served in an existing congregation for years before they went, and were sent by people who had watched them closely. My article on how pastors should be trained and called applies directly here.

The Sending Church and Its Part

A church that sends properly loses something, and it should. It loses members it valued, givers it relied on and workers who were holding things together. Any congregation that offers to release only the people it will not miss has not understood the exercise. Antioch sent Barnabas and Saul, who were among its most gifted teachers.

Sending well means committing for years rather than months, praying by name, visiting, and resisting the urge to manage from a distance. It also means being willing for the plant to develop its own character. A daughter congregation that is a carbon copy of its mother has probably not engaged the community it was sent to.

Money, Time and Realistic Expectations

Be honest about the numbers. A plant in most parts of Britain will take five to ten years to reach a size where it can support its own minister, and some never do. Anyone promising rapid growth is either working in unusual conditions or is not telling you everything. Funding needs to be planned for the long haul, and a planter who runs out of money in year three is in a wretched position.

Expect the middle years to be the hardest. The initial excitement fades, the early attenders who came out of curiosity drift away, and the work settles into ordinary faithfulness with small numbers. That is the season when most plants fail and when the sending church’s steady support matters most. Church planting is a long obedience rather than a launch event.

Common Mistakes

Starting with a public meeting before there is a nucleus of committed believers. Neglecting evangelism in favour of attracting Christians from other congregations, which grows a plant on paper while adding nobody to the kingdom. Copying a model from a very different context. Appointing leaders too quickly because bodies are needed. Failing to teach doctrine because the group is small and everyone seems to get on.

The largest mistake is isolation. A planter without close relationships beyond his own work becomes exhausted and unaccountable, and the results are predictable. Church planting should never be a solo enterprise, however few people are involved at the start.

One further error deserves a mention: treating the plant as a permanent project rather than a church. If after ten years the congregation still cannot appoint its own elders, take its own decisions and support its own work, something has gone wrong in how it was established. The aim from the first day is a church that stands.

Church Planting and the Local Church

All of this rests on the conviction that the local congregation is God’s ordinary means of reaching a place. Not a campaign, not a conference, not a media ministry, but a body of believers living, worshipping and witnessing together where they are. That is why church planting matters more than almost anything else on a church’s agenda, and why I would rather see one new congregation established than a dozen successful events.

It also connects to the decline of the churches in this country, which I have written about in why churches are declining in the West. Planting is not the whole answer, but a movement that closes more buildings than it opens is in trouble. Related reading includes the purpose of the Church and parachurch ministry, alongside the NET Bible notes on Acts 14.

So, now what?

If you are in a settled congregation, ask when it last sent anybody anywhere. Many churches have never planted, and the reason is usually that nobody has raised it. Raise it. Ask your leaders what it would take, and be willing to be part of the answer rather than the person who suggested it.

If you have been wondering whether God is calling you to this, do not act on the feeling alone. Tell your elders, ask them to test it, and get yourself involved in the unglamorous work where you are. Church planting begins long before anyone moves house. What would it cost your congregation to send its best people away, and would you be willing to be one of them?

And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.

Romans 15:20 (ESV)