Hello all!
Sorry for the long post, you can keep scrolling if it's too much.
I'm writing today to ask for advice on how I should go about planting a church. Just to give some backstory, I have been feeling the call to ministry for several years now, and only recently felt confident in it enough to share it with leadership at my church. I have an area that I want to plant a church in, and it's the next city over from where I live. It's a bustling college town of about 70k people, but despite that, there is not a single church there that preaches the gospel. There's only maybe a dozen or so small churches in the area. I have done the research, and examined their websites and statements of faith, and every single one is either universalist, sin affirming, or has major moral issues that are contradictory to the bible or gospel. I have seen the need for a very long time, and have earnestly wanted to reach this community with the gospel that saves, and see the Lord work. This is an abundant harvest with no workers, and I have a heart for them, many are living similar lives to me before Christ saved me. The elders of my church have also seen this need and have been praying for someone to desire to plant a church there for several years, and my pastor was elated when I expressed my interest.
But it is not as simple as saying I want to plant there, be mentored, and then be sent off. It's a big process, and takes more time than becoming a doctor. My church has created a church planting ministry that's now separate from it that has planted a number of churches in the surrounding areas. The process is that they take seminary graduates from around the country, put them through an internship/mentoring program for a year, then a 2 year residency where they get ready to be sent off to start the church. The church is then funded by the church planting organization until they're self sufficient. There's been about 30 people who have gone through the internship program since it started, but there's never been anyone from my church who's gone through it. The guy who runs it all used to be the head pastor of my church but stepped down to run church planting ministry full time.
My biggest concern stems from a conversation that I had with one of the current interns/residents. He gave me a lot of good insight into what's involved with seminary and everything, but he told me that I'd have to be very careful and patient with the internship and residency and getting anything going. He said that I would essentially have to sign a blank check with the memo being where I want to plant a church, and then just let the rest of it play out. He said I would have to essentially play politics with the guy who runs the organization in order to get what I want because he's slow and calculating and often want's things a different way than you anticipated or were hoping. He said him and the other current interns/residents have all had to deal with the same stuff and be careful not to burn the bridges, and that it's actually been a point of contention over the years so much so that of the ~30 people who have gone through the program, only 3-4 actually did something afterward that directly involved the organization's support or involvement because it's that hard to get something going, and many of the interns get impatient and enter ministry another way or on their own.
He also said that I likely would not get much creative freedom in how I structured or ran the church. He said that the guy who runs the organization and is very uptight about the methodology and sees no reason to change it. He even told me that the strategy they were planning to use for the town I want to plant in is to create a carbon copy of my current church. I think this is where I disagree the most and have my biggest doubts of moving forward this way. While my church is successful, it mainly attracts older people and those in middle to upper middle class. There's also not often many converts from people outside of church, many new people are already Christians who moved from other areas. I'm not saying there's no growth at all, but there's clearly not as much from the types of people who make up the area I want to plant in. That area mainly consists younger and lower class people, with a lot of homelessness, drug addicts. It is a city where sin abounds, but contrary to Romans 5, grace is not abounding more. My church mainly preaches sermons that while helpful to believers, would be understandably difficult for someone who's never been to church before and lived in sin their whole life to pick up on and want to come back. If I'm to plant in this area, I would want leeway to differentiate the culture and overall vibe of the church. not in a way that compromises the gospel, but in a way that attracts people with a different culture than those who make up my church. And there would be no reason for this anyway, since these two churches will be located just 20 minutes apart. If people do want what my church has, then they should just go to my church.
And this shows in their current attempts to get something rolling there. While they don't have anyone to spearhead the ministry yet, they are trying to get bible studies going there. They do this in the form of a college ministry that is located on the college campus. They're hoping for this to attract enough students to make up regular Sunday gathering, which would turn into a church. The problem is it's been incredibly unsuccessful. There's currently one college student who attends it, and he's already saves and leads the meetings since you have to have a student in the ministry in order for it to meet on campus. There's 4 other people who go, but they're all out of college and go solely to raise the numbers. The last time someone was saved through it was 8 or 9 years ago. I used to go, and when I did, there were occasional guests, but none of them ever stayed, or came back, and I believe this to be directly due to the studies/messages being geared for the kind of people who go to my church, not the kind of people they are trying to reach. The intern I was speaking to said I'd like to have no choice then to use the plan of using the college ministry to start a church there.
Obviously none of what they are doing is sin, but it makes me concerned as to whether it is a good option for me and for any church that I would plant there. There's been talks about continuing to further separate my church from the church planting organization, and plant this church out of my church rather than the organization, but nothing is in stone. The benefit of that is the new head pastor of my church agrees with my takes on it a lot, and I think would be more flexible with how it is done.
I guess I am just looking for people's thought and opinions on how I should go about this. I know it will be a long time in the making, but I can't see myself being content doing anything else.
Thank you, and God bless.
Sorry for the long post, you can keep scrolling if it's too much.
I'm writing today to ask for advice on how I should go about planting a church. Just to give some backstory, I have been feeling the call to ministry for several years now, and only recently felt confident in it enough to share it with leadership at my church. I have an area that I want to plant a church in, and it's the next city over from where I live. It's a bustling college town of about 70k people, but despite that, there is not a single church there that preaches the gospel. There's only maybe a dozen or so small churches in the area. I have done the research, and examined their websites and statements of faith, and every single one is either universalist, sin affirming, or has major moral issues that are contradictory to the bible or gospel. I have seen the need for a very long time, and have earnestly wanted to reach this community with the gospel that saves, and see the Lord work. This is an abundant harvest with no workers, and I have a heart for them, many are living similar lives to me before Christ saved me. The elders of my church have also seen this need and have been praying for someone to desire to plant a church there for several years, and my pastor was elated when I expressed my interest.
But it is not as simple as saying I want to plant there, be mentored, and then be sent off. It's a big process, and takes more time than becoming a doctor. My church has created a church planting ministry that's now separate from it that has planted a number of churches in the surrounding areas. The process is that they take seminary graduates from around the country, put them through an internship/mentoring program for a year, then a 2 year residency where they get ready to be sent off to start the church. The church is then funded by the church planting organization until they're self sufficient. There's been about 30 people who have gone through the internship program since it started, but there's never been anyone from my church who's gone through it. The guy who runs it all used to be the head pastor of my church but stepped down to run church planting ministry full time.
My biggest concern stems from a conversation that I had with one of the current interns/residents. He gave me a lot of good insight into what's involved with seminary and everything, but he told me that I'd have to be very careful and patient with the internship and residency and getting anything going. He said that I would essentially have to sign a blank check with the memo being where I want to plant a church, and then just let the rest of it play out. He said I would have to essentially play politics with the guy who runs the organization in order to get what I want because he's slow and calculating and often want's things a different way than you anticipated or were hoping. He said him and the other current interns/residents have all had to deal with the same stuff and be careful not to burn the bridges, and that it's actually been a point of contention over the years so much so that of the ~30 people who have gone through the program, only 3-4 actually did something afterward that directly involved the organization's support or involvement because it's that hard to get something going, and many of the interns get impatient and enter ministry another way or on their own.
He also said that I likely would not get much creative freedom in how I structured or ran the church. He said that the guy who runs the organization and is very uptight about the methodology and sees no reason to change it. He even told me that the strategy they were planning to use for the town I want to plant in is to create a carbon copy of my current church. I think this is where I disagree the most and have my biggest doubts of moving forward this way. While my church is successful, it mainly attracts older people and those in middle to upper middle class. There's also not often many converts from people outside of church, many new people are already Christians who moved from other areas. I'm not saying there's no growth at all, but there's clearly not as much from the types of people who make up the area I want to plant in. That area mainly consists younger and lower class people, with a lot of homelessness, drug addicts. It is a city where sin abounds, but contrary to Romans 5, grace is not abounding more. My church mainly preaches sermons that while helpful to believers, would be understandably difficult for someone who's never been to church before and lived in sin their whole life to pick up on and want to come back. If I'm to plant in this area, I would want leeway to differentiate the culture and overall vibe of the church. not in a way that compromises the gospel, but in a way that attracts people with a different culture than those who make up my church. And there would be no reason for this anyway, since these two churches will be located just 20 minutes apart. If people do want what my church has, then they should just go to my church.
And this shows in their current attempts to get something rolling there. While they don't have anyone to spearhead the ministry yet, they are trying to get bible studies going there. They do this in the form of a college ministry that is located on the college campus. They're hoping for this to attract enough students to make up regular Sunday gathering, which would turn into a church. The problem is it's been incredibly unsuccessful. There's currently one college student who attends it, and he's already saves and leads the meetings since you have to have a student in the ministry in order for it to meet on campus. There's 4 other people who go, but they're all out of college and go solely to raise the numbers. The last time someone was saved through it was 8 or 9 years ago. I used to go, and when I did, there were occasional guests, but none of them ever stayed, or came back, and I believe this to be directly due to the studies/messages being geared for the kind of people who go to my church, not the kind of people they are trying to reach. The intern I was speaking to said I'd like to have no choice then to use the plan of using the college ministry to start a church there.
Obviously none of what they are doing is sin, but it makes me concerned as to whether it is a good option for me and for any church that I would plant there. There's been talks about continuing to further separate my church from the church planting organization, and plant this church out of my church rather than the organization, but nothing is in stone. The benefit of that is the new head pastor of my church agrees with my takes on it a lot, and I think would be more flexible with how it is done.
I guess I am just looking for people's thought and opinions on how I should go about this. I know it will be a long time in the making, but I can't see myself being content doing anything else.
Thank you, and God bless.
