Church Planting

If church planting were easy, everybody would be doing it. While church planting is not rocket science, it is a lot of old-fashioned hard work.

Most if not all church planters have heard the word scaffolding used by preachers to describe many of the people who were attracted to their church plants during their early days.

Many pastors asked me what planning and preparation were involved before I started Hermosillo Baptist Church, and I thank God for those questions. A vision without a strategic plan will be just another dream.

I do not want to discourage you about finances because God can provide them. But you must answer this question before you go forward.

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.

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.

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.