Church Planting — Where Do We Begin?

In a recent Sunday School class we spent some time watching and discussing “Every Church Plant a Church”, a video put out by the PCA about church planting.  The video gives attention to church planting efforts going on in different parts of the country. One of the more startling facts about church planting came from Tim Rice, pastor of Trinity PCA in Lakeland, Fla. Referring to his own church’s efforts to plant new congregations, he said if they planted 30 churches of 500 people, they wouldn’t even reach 10 percent of the unchurched population. This underscores the urgent need for healthy, Gospel-believing churches to reproduce themselves in the communities where God has put them.

In the video, there are five steps given to all churches interested in starting new congregations. That includes New Life, so here’s what we need to do right away:

1. Pray for a vision of the harvest and for a vision for church planting. We need to pray that our congregation gets excited about church planting, that God would make it clear where we are supposed to plant, that He would open doors in the community we target, that He would lead us to the right church planter, and that a sufficient amount of money could be raised for the effort to start strongly.

2. Build outreach and ongoing church planting into the culture of your church. This is primarily the job of yours truly, and the rest of the elders here at New Life. As it stands now, church planting is part of our Strategic Plan; it is listed as our long-term goal on our “Looking to the Future” insert; I emphasize it during all membership classes, and you will be hearing more about it from the pulpit in the future.

3. Focus on lay leadership and encourage them to take the lead in church planting. Everyone at New Life should prayerfully consider right now whether he or she might be called to leave with the new church plant one (See “Church Planting” on pg 3)      day. A successful church plant takes much more than a gifted church planter. It requires a group of faithful, hard-working people who are outwardly focused, who love their community, and who want to see the lost come to faith in Christ.

4. Recruit and mentor church planters. One of the most significant steps in starting a new church is choosing the person who will serve as the church planter. Church planters must have the gift of evangelism and leadership. They must be
self-starters who can gather people. To plant in the PCA, the person must be ordained and must be approved by our denomination’s Assessment Center in Atlanta. New Life elder Tony Guinn (and his wife Dorinda) will be heading to this center next month to discern whether the Lord might be calling them to plant churches.

5. Develop the ongoing vision for churches who plant churches who plant churches. Our job is not done when we plant one church! God willing, we want to continue to plant more churches ourselves, but we also want to make sure that the churches we plant are also committed to planting churches. Ultimately we are looking for a church planting movement to gain momentum here in central Indiana.

Let’s keep this discussion going. Please contact me with your questions and ideas. And make point #1 above a priority immediately — pray…

My love to you, in Christ,

Bob