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25 Things I've Learned About Church Planting
- Hospitality is essential.
- For the church planter, church planting teaches two things
more than any other: that God is faithful and how to depend on that faithful
God.
- Programs matter a lot to some people, especially families
with small children. It takes special families who can grasp the vision of
church planting to invest in a church plant on the ground level.
- On the other hand, some people love the early stages of
church planting but grow uncomfortable when the church grows to a size where
they cannot know everyone.
- Church planting happens one relationship at a time.
- Sometimes church planting feels like you’re pretending to be
a church. And then one day (after back breaking work and lots of prayer) you
realize you have an honest-to-goodness church.
- You cannot church plant without support and encouragement
from others.
- The Word is living and active. When we let God speak through
His Word, He changes people. Every church plant must gather around the Word.
- The church plant often takes on the personality and the
passions of the church planter and his wife. This is why it’s important to have
biblical vision.
- A lot of people, especially outsiders, don’t know what it
means when you say you’re church planting.
- One of the greatest assets and resources a church planter
has: other church planters and pastors in the same city. These relationships
should be cultivated.
- One of the hardest relationships a church planter may have:
other church planters and pastors in the same city. Sadly.
- The calling to church plant must be sure because it will
have to be returned to again and again.
- The gospel is everything: it sustains when discouragement
comes (and it always does), it keeps a church planter and his wife in their
city (because they will want to give up and leave), it compels its ministers
forward (and sometimes it’s the only motivation left), and it changes lives
(which makes it all worth it).
- A church planter cannot drive by an established church
without appreciating what it took to make it that. And he will first think
about the secretaries, nursery workers, and janitors.
- As much as possible, a church plant should be structured how
it wants to look a year in the future.
- It is unhealthy for the church planter, the church, and especially
the church planting wife if she is doing childcare during church each week.
- A failed church plant is not failure. Lack of faith is
failure.
- Slow and steady growth is healthy growth. Explosive growth
is often fragile growth.
- A good worship leader is essential.
- Spiritual warfare is real.
- Church plants should never be started by a pastor who was
disgruntled or unable to sit under authority at their former church. Church
plants cannot be rebuttals to another pastor’s way of pastoring. They must be
built upon a clear call from God.
- A church planter and his
wife must pray for and develop a love for their city, and not just their city
and all its coolness, but for the people of their
city.
- The church planting wife's main role in helping her husband is, like Aaron holding Moses' arms up in battle, praying for and encouraging him to keep on.
- There is joy and reward in sacrifice and service.
Which have you found to be true? What would you add that you have learned?