Planting Missional Churches

Why Your Church Needs to Multiply

October 18, 2016 By Daniel Im

After the disciples received the Great Commission before Jesus’ ascension, they began to preach the gospel, first in Jerusalem and eventually expanding into other cultures. The book of Acts details early efforts to obey Jesus’ command. The letters of the New Testament give us an inside view of the establishment of Christianity in new territory. It may seem obvious to us now, but we should continue to contemplate the fact that everywhere Christians have gone to share the gospel churches were formed.

Church planting should not end with the establishment of one church. The process can repeat itself when a new church matures to the point of becoming a sponsoring church. The kingdom is best advanced through multiplication and not just addition. Reproduction is in the biblical DNA of churches.

Church planting should not end with the establishment of one church.

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Percentage of Churches that Multiply

In Viral Churches, Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird shared research from an interview of senior pastors in various denominations in the United States. In that research project, they discovered that 28% of those they surveyed indicated that they had directly participated in helping a new church. While that number may sound good, upon further investigation, they discovered that only 12% of that 28% were actually churches that acted as a mother church or accepted direct financial responsibility for a new church as a primary sponsor.
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Seismic Shifts and a Missional Response

October 4, 2016 By Daniel Im

seismic-shift

There have been two seismic shifts in the church and culture in the English-speaking Western world over the past few decades. The first shift is predominantly a good one, while the second shift has mixed reactions.

Seismic Shift #1: An Increased Focus on Church Planting

Recently, I came across a tweet from my friend, Jeff Christopherson, who leads the North American Mission Board’s Send Network.

jeff-christopherson-tweet

I love this! In the Southern Baptist Convention, church plants baptize almost four times the number of people than existing established churches! I agree with the hashtag, #plantingworks.

Statistics like this are one of the reasons that denominations are placing a greater emphasis on church planting. The dynamic long-term growth of many church plants has helped as well. Consider Life Church with Craig Groeschel, Saddleback with Rick Warren, and Redeemer Presbyterian with Tim Keller, among many others. Compare that to a few decades ago, when church planting was on the periphery and seen as a ‘suspicious activity’ to most.

Seismic Shift #2: The Church Moving to the Periphery

Multisite AND Church Planting

May 10, 2016 By Daniel Im

Through the research LifeWay conducted surveying multisite pastors, we discovered a trend among many pastors considering multisite. For them, “the multi-site strategy [did] not replace any other method of participating in kingdom growth. It [did] not replace church planting, personal evangelism, visitation programs, investing and inviting, servant evangelism, or evangelistic training.”[1]

For them it was merely another strategy to reach their city:

Planting churches, building larger buildings, adding services, adding venues at your current site, and relocating a campus are all still viable solutions today. Multi-site does not replace these other solutions. It adds one more possibility for consideration.[2]

Some once believed this move to grow via multiple campuses was a temporary trend, but it appears to be a trend that’s here to stay. After all, there are more than 8,000 multisite churches in the US alone with more than 5 million people worshipping in them![3] While it was once the domain of only the largest megachurches, multisite is now a common option for smaller churches to consider. In fact, although a thousand is the average size of the church that goes multisite, many have gone multisite at eighty.[4]

What’s interesting though, is the number of churches that utilize a multisite methodology and are also committed to church planting. The two are definitely not exclusive of each other.

Take a look at these three different models that are committed to both multisite and church planting:

Top Quotes and Images for Planting Missional Churches

May 3, 2016 By Daniel Im

Here are my 11 Favorite Quotes for Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply:

Missional means being a missionary without ever leaving your city.
Church planters should be known first and foremost as people of integrity.
Success is measured in multiplication of churches and quality of disciples.
If your church is empty in a single location, it will still be empty with two locations.
Multisite is not a substitute for church planting; it’s a substitute for a large auditorium.
You cannot lead people to godliness when you are not regularly encountering God.
You cannot love a city if you do not know a city.
Without an intentional developmental approach, the church is likely to become a mile wide and an inch deep.
Everywhere Christians have gone to share the gospel churches were formed.
Churches  of all sizes and ages can take part  in church planting.
Your ultimate calling is not to plant a church; it’s a calling to come to Jesus himself.

I’d be honored if you shared these images with your friends and followers on your favorite social media platforms!

The NEW Planting Missional Churches: Changes in the 2nd Edition

April 19, 2016 By Daniel Im

When I began working with Ed Stetzer, one of the first things that I did was approach him about revising Planting Missional Churches. It has been such a helpful book to tens of thousands of people around the world, but much of the stories and content needed to be refreshed. Furthermore, there were new questions and issues that planters and multipliers were facing, like multisite, residencies, multi-ethnic churches, theological education, and the difference between denominations and networks.

So we decided to revisit the book, and in doing so, we ended up changing over 50% of the content. The stories, content, and models are different in each chapter. We also wrote five new chapters, completely reorganized the book, and integrated the research we conducted in the new State of Church Planting study, a research partnership of over a dozen denominations on church planting in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

In addition to rewriting the content in the existing chapters, we wrote five new ones from scratch:

Chapter 8: Multiethnic or Monoethnic Churches
Chapter 9: Multisite Planting
Chapter 27: Residencies and the Future of Theological Education
Chapter 28: Denominations and Networks
Chapter 30: Spiritual Leadership