Church Planting: Good News, Bad News

Church Planting was a topic of concern and desire at our recent General Council meetings. This information came from "Project Jerusalem," a church-planting ministry of Baptist Bible Seminary in Clarks Summit, PA. We thank Pastor Ken Chroniger for the link. More info here.

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Church planting seems to be in vogue today across North America, attracting hundreds of young seminarians and Bible college students. This resurgence has resulted in an estimated 4,000 new churches being planted every year.

A study by Leadership Network shows more new churches now open than close yearly. Only in recent years has the annual number of new churches in the United States actually outpaced the annual number of churches closing their doors. This is a trend for which all Bible believers should be grateful.

But another recent study revealed we still have a long way to go.

A 2010 LifeWay Research survey of over 1,000 Protestant pastors found only 3 percent of their churches served as the primary sponsor of a new church plant in the past year. And only 14 percent gave financial support in partnership with other churches to help start new congregations.

Let that sink in for a minute. Bottom line: Only a few established churches are getting directly involved in the Great Commission task of starting new churches among the unreached of our land.

That’s not very encouraging. We need to see a much higher number of churches starting churches. That’s God’s plan for global missions. Church multiplication – churches birthing daughter churches, taking primary responsibility to reproduce themselves.

The irony is that far more churches reported participating in global missions than church planting, particularly here at home. The LifeWay study found 85 percent of the pastors reported their congregations prayed as a corporate body for missionaries at least once a month during the previous year. And 74 percent said their people focused their prayer on a specific mission field or people group – most often overseas. Fifty percent said their congregations conducted one or more short-term mission projects during the past year. In fact, 20 percent reported their church actually sent out missionaries who served 10 weeks or longer.

“All Bible-believers should rejoice to see these numbers,” said Project Jerusalem Director Ken Davis. “Prayer is where a heart for missions and church planting begins. But Christian leaders will need to challenge their people to not neglect their own Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria while they do international missions (See Acts 1:8). North American Christians need to transition from short-term hands-on-involvement to longer-term investment of their lives in both local and global (or “glocal”) church planting missions. Rather than merely sending dollars, they need to be challenged to work directly in the fields that are ‘white unto harvest.’”

The LifeWay research revealed a pervasive apathy about investing in church planting missions – a cause for concern. Among all Protestant churches surveyed, 5 percent provided one-time direct financial support, such as a cash gift, for a church plant. Only 4 percent provided tangible support, such as equipment or rent-free meeting space.

Every North American church, no matter how large or small, should be prayerfully considering what they can do to further the cause of local and regional church planting.