Intersected

From Ed Stetzer at SendRDU’s March Church Planting Forum. Full title Pitfalls in Planting: What We and Others Do that Undermine the Work and How to Avoid Them

• 68% of church plants exist after 4 years
  • Mean attendance is under 100
• Most church plants fail because planter is not prepared
• “The things that drive you are the demons that bring you down”
• Every church Ed has planted had a negative impact on his personal spiritual growth

1. Lack of Spiritual Preparation

• Must have a spiritually robust life, must be a spiritual self-feeder
• Spiritual dissatisfaction won’t be solved by planting a church
• Must be pastoring your family
• Prepare for spiritual warfare

2. Stressful Family Relationships

• Need to tend  your own garden with your family
• Don’t plant a church when one is willing and one is enthusiastic
• Guard your family
  • Don’t make the church your mistress
  • Value of someone from the outside looking in on your marriage and inquiring about it. 

3. Inadequate Training

• You learn enough to think you’re qualified, but you don’t survive your first contact with the enemy
• “Drunk with vision”
• Know more about church planting than you think you know
• Matt Keller The Up the Middle Church, “I wish someone had told me to have more than one idea”
• Read lots of books, get lots of ideas
• “Know the place before  you know the plan”
• “Too many church planters plant in their head instead of in their community”
• Specific training needed (principle-specific training, not model-specific training)
• Not every tool will work in ever setting
• Read
  • Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch by Nelson Searcy & Kerrick Thomas
  • Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church by Mark Driscoll
  • Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century: A Comprehensive Guide for New Churches and Those Desiring Renewal by Aubrey Malphurs
  • Community of Kindness by Steve Sjogren & Rob Lewin
  • Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer
  • The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
  • The Forgotten Ways, Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch
  • Starting New Churches on Purpose by Ron Silvia
  • Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond by David J. Hesselgrave
  • Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World by David Garrison

4. Lack of Accountability

• Church planters have more abilities that lead to success than maturity to handle it
• Need someone to ask you “Are you making the right decisions?”

5. Unrealistic Expectations

• If church planter has realistic expectations, there is a much, much higher chance of survival for church plant
• Normal in North America is plant a church and in four years, attendance is 100
• Church planting is much harder today, no church planting movements in Europe
• Don’t be discouraged

6. Broken Partnerships

• Broken relationships between mother and daughter churches
• “Mother’s remorse”
• Church planters get focused on the plant, and forget about the partners
• Paul and Barnabus reporting back to the Antioch church

From Q&A

• Celebrate in Church Planting
  • Baptist General Conference (Converge)
  • Local churches owning church planting (Keller, Driscoll, Patrick, Roberts)
• Enable people to speak into your life with authority (“in your life-ness”)
  • You’re not accountable to someone unless they know your propensity to sin
  • Getting past the superficial trivialities in your marriage regarding planting
• Planting Plans
  • Hold your models loosely and Jesus tightly
  • Missional/Incarnational  - maybe no plan, so don’t expect funding

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 11:57 am and is filed under Church Planting, Faith, Pastoring, The Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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