While I was on deputation, I took advantage of the extra time I had to read. There are many good books on church planting, and I was able to read about ten of them before starting Hermosillo Baptist Church.
God intends for church planting work to begin in our Jerusalem and continue systematically outward to our Judaea, our Samaria and then finally to the uttermost parts of the earth.
A church plant is an awesome adventure, an important calling, a needed endeavor, and much more. However, for all the things church planting is, there are many things that it’s not.
For many years pastors and mission boards have seen the wisdom of sending first term missionaries to the ministry of an established missionary who already has been working in that country.
Church planting cannot be considered just another "fad" of which a few pastors and churches are now emphasizing as a small part of their overall church program. Church planting must be considered the very core of world evangelism...
What You Must Do Before You Can Expect God to Work
In Acts 13:1–5 it’s interesting to note the spiritual activity and priorities the early church at Antioch possessed before starting the first of three recorded “church planting journeys.” We see the following spiritual activity preceding the activity of the Holy Spirit:
Most people do not think of Joshua as a church planter, but there are many good principles that can be gleaned from his life that will help the church planter.
It is a scientific wonder how specific traits are passed on from one generation to the next. Although children often look more like one parent than the other, they are a combination of both parent's DNA.
From the moment you realize the call of God on your life to plant a church, you begin to develop a new mindset. It seems as though every passing thought and every new discovery is centered on getting this new church started. Dreaming begins, strategies are contemplated, and goals begin to be set.
What is the pressing need of our generation? For every Christian to be a reproducing Christian, every pastor to be a reproducing pastor, and every church to be a reproducing church...
The devil loves church planting. Mormon churches, Kingdom Halls, mosques, and doctrinally-weak Christian churches are all fruit of Satan’s plan to twist the true, biblical church-planting model. He inspires false teachers to spread a false gospel and a false church.
I couldn’t pass up the chance to tease some teen-aged young men. They were right on me and another teacher from the Christian school where I taught, and though we couldn’t see their faces, they were obviously afraid to ride. We began to banter with the young men who looked no older than thirteen to put them a little more at ease.
Only two dozen American mega-churches—a church with at least 2,000 people in average attendance—existed in 1990 according to Outreach magazine. Today there are over 1,300 mega-churches in America. The mega-church movement has boomed.