Church Planting Problems

I was a church planter before I became the pastor of the church I am currently serving. I love church planting. I truly believe that I will be involved in church planting for the rest of my ministry. I worked hard to get my current church to plant a church in a neighboring town. That church plant is expected to constitute in September. My next goal is to try to plant a church in another neighboring city. This will be difficult, but most great things are difficult to do. Needless to say, church planting is a major priority in my ministry.

The reason I see church planting as a priority is due to the fact that it is a priority in the New Testament. Jesus commissions the church in Matthew 28:19 to go out and make disciples all over the place. The New Testament church did just that. They went all over the known world and made disciples. They made disciples by making churches. You cannot read the book of Acts and deny the emphasis on church planting. Church planting was the way Paul ministered.

I believe that you cannot make disciples without placing them in a church. Thus, if we are to reach out as Acts 1:8 tells us to; we must then do it with an emphasis on church planting. Thus, church planting must be the centerpiece of any mission organization. This leads me to my problem. Our state and national conventions claim that church planting is a priority, but I fail to see the leadership and the resources given to prove their claim.

I can speak only for church planting in Ohio, but I would not be surprised if the problem is convention wide. The pathetic management of church planting is the only reason I applaud the removal of Bob Reccord as the President of the North American Mission Board. I hope the next president will spend more time on this important topic, and less time promoting their self-interests.

Our state and national conventions have three major problems to overcome if church planting is to be successful.

First, the funding of church planters. Church planters are paid very little and expected to do a lot of work. My total package was $25,000 my last year of church planting. The term total package includes; salary, insurances, retirement, and social security. My actual salary was around $17,000. You cannot raise a family on this type of money. The sad truth is that I made more than many other church planters.

Three years ago, we developed a package for our current church planter. His total package is around $35,000. This total package is an exceptional package for a church planter. Most church planters would give their left arm for this type of salary package. This is sad. Nevertheless, it is true.

If our convention wishes to be a successful church planting organization they must find a way to pay church planters. Church planting is an extremely difficult and time consuming ministry. Most church planters are making half of what the average pastor is making. If they wish to live at a comfortable level, they will need a second job. If they get a second job, it will take time away from their church plant. You can see how this can cycle out of control.

Second, the convention must find qualified church planters. Most of this problem could be solved if they fixed the first problem. Why would our best and brightest ministers plant churches when they can be paid twice as much pastoring an established church?

Church planting is not for everyone. You have to be a self starter. You have to have vision. You have to be optimistic. You have to stay focused. You have to be able to shake off disappointments. Church planting is just plain tough.

Due to the fact that we refuse to pay our church planters, we often are left with people who cannot find churches to pastor. This isn't always true, but I believe that many of our church planters are young men looking to get into the ministry. They go to church planting to get their foot in the door.

Many church plants fail. These failures are due to many reasons. However, if we can find a proper way to get more qualified men into church plants; I believe the failure rate would be much, much lower.

Third, We must find good mother churches. Churches start churches. This statement should be tattooed on the foreheads of every Director of Missions in our convention. If we want to see successful church plants, then we must have dedicated mother churches.

Our national and state conventions must begin to convince our large churches to take a part in this task. I would love to see our next SBC president make planting churches an issue. Most churches are not involved in church planting. We must find ways to change this. Church planting is expensive, and many churches do not believe they have the funds to support a new work. Our convention must develop a plan to get churches to work together to support new works.

Over the last 10 years in Ohio, church planting efforts have been an abysmal failure. I cannot speak for the rest of the nation, but I am confident things are not great there either. The three items that I mentioned are not new. They have been talked about for years. However, I have not seen any leadership in dealing with these problems. I believe we will continue to flounder unless drastic changes our made.

I do know one thing. If I pastored the same church for 10 years, and never truly addressed and fixed any problems, I would resign in disgrace. I would apologize for my pathetic efforts, and I would pray that God would forgive me for wasting valuable resources. Dr. Reccord should probably be the first of many to go. It is time that our national and state conventions evaluate their church planting efforts. We need to stop pouring new wine into old wineskins.