5 Tests Church Planters Face

I love being able to chat and dream with church planters, and one of the questions often asked by them is, "What's the one thing you would have wished you'd known before you started?"

My answer is simple: I wish that someone had told me the decision to launch the church was actually going to be one of the easier ones and during the next year or so I would face five critical tests that I believe every church planter goes through.

Exponential Growth

In my early Christian discipleship I was steeped in a system that encouraged us to share our faith. This was a good thing. We were often encouraged by some sort of simple diagram which showed us the power of exponential growth. If we just shared our faith with two people a year, and they shared their faith with two people a year in a very short time the entire human race would be won to Jesus. It never happened, at least not yet. Why?

Charles Spurgeon: "Building the Church"

I want you to notice this, that they were breaking bread from house to house, and ate their food with gladness and singleness of heart. They did not think that religion was meant only for Sundays, and for what men now-a-days call the House of God. Their own houses were houses of God, and their own meals were so mixed and mingled with the Lord’s Supper that to this day the most cautious student of the Bible cannot tell when they stopped eating their common meals, and when they began eating the Supper of the Lord. They elevated their meals into diets for worship: they so consecrated everything with prayer and praise that all around them was holiness to the Lord. I wish our houses were, in this way, dedicated to the Lord, so that we worshiped God all day long, and made our homes temples for the living God…

Lessons Learned in the Fields

Recently I was asked to describe what I would do differently if I were to start church planting again. Here was my response.

20 Reasons We Don't See Harvest

1. We spend so much time with other believers we don't have time to invest in the lives of those who do not know Jesus.

2. We are afraid of being contaminated by having too much contact with the world.

"Frog” or “lizard” churches?

Church Planting Movements are acts of God, but it’s amazing how much mankind is capable of interfering with them. As with most of God's works among us, He allows us to actively cooperate with Him or become obstacles - consciously or unconsciously - to His desired purposes. Missionaries involved in Church Planting Movements have identified several very human courses of action that tend to obstruct, slow or otherwise hinder CPMs.

Even though we cannot create a Church Planting Movement, we can certainly work to avoid blocking their emergence. Here [is one] of the most prominent obstacles to Church Planting Movements facing missionaries today: Planting “frog” rather than “lizard” churches.

10 Steps for going from a "movement to a monument."

1. From Biblical Priorities to Non-Biblical Priorities: Valuing methods and traditions sacred as scripture

2. From Leadership to Management: The people expect to be managed and those that led now simply manage the people they have.

3. From Volunteers to Employees: Increased staff creates pressure to maintain levels of income