Seeking a Church Planting Model

Church Planting Models Today

There are a number of church planting models today. Many require extensive budgets (up to $350K), well trained leadership teams, facilities, fund raising, staffing, marketing campaigns, music teams, and several years of planning, practicing, planting, and establishing to complete. Some of these models seek to follow scriptural patterns and precedents closely; some only very loosely connect to scripture.

These models can include detailed flow charts and intense assessments and selection criteria for both staff and target geographies and demographics. In their detail, they sometimes look similar to business plans and project plans. Many begin with up to a year of planning and pre-launch activities, an initial launch and a second grand opening launch, take an additional two to four years before the church is officially planted, being self-supporting and with permanent staff. The leadership team is typically in place before there is an actual church planted. The church planter is frequently considered a founding pastor, and may stay with the church from several years to 20 or more years as the senior pastor. Some examples of these models include:

• http://www.churchplantingresources.com/timeline/start_timeline_browser.html 
• http://www.epaumc.org/sites/default/files/PDF/ministry/All%20phases.pdf
• http://www.e3partners.org/Document.Doc?id=180
• New Church Checklist

There are a number of traditional and nontraditional church planting models that impact the nature of the public launch for the new church. Six models have been identified that represent a majority of churches being planted throughout North America. The traditional church planting models are the program-based model, the purpose-based model, the seeker-based model, and the ministry based model. Nontraditional church planting models are the relation-based model and the affinity-based model.

The distinction between the traditional and the nontraditional church planting models relates primarily to the forms and structures of the new churches. Traditional models tend toward church forms and structures that require buildings, paid staff, et cetera. Nontraditional church planting models are more organic in nature and may meet anywhere. They often have lay pastors and are relationally driven. 

• The Resurgence
• Acts 29 Network
• Church Planting Village
• Leadership Network
• Organic Church Network
• See our collected list on Church Task Force
• This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

God is at Work

We can rejoice over the work being accomplished. Even the most formulaic of these models work. With the right planning and an extensive direct marketing campaign, following these methodologies will produce a new church launched on its first official day with several hundred first time visitors. And, there are some real benefits to the church in general. These models produce necessary change in the church and improved considerations for reaching present cultures and for service ministry. A fresh start allows the church to break away from traditions, reforming "under new management" with new ways of doing church together.

Whatever weaknesses and flaws there may be, God is using these methods, as He uses us—in spite of our flaws, our weaknesses, and our misunderstanding of His will and word. God is using the men and women who make the sacrifices, work very hard, and do the very best they know for advancing the cause of Christ. In any way we can, as we can, we should give these efforts our prayerful and active support and encouragement. The benefits include:

• Proven Effective
• Reproducible 
• Resulting in Major (Positive) Change in How Church is Done and Defined

Some Concerns

But even the most successful of these models have downside limitations. We are told that in order to just keep up with the population growth and the number of churches being closed every year, that we need to plant thousands of new churches every year. While the established formulas for church planting both work and are reproducible, due to the financial costs, professionally trained staffing, and extensive timeline, they are not very extensible. Because many of these models require a heavy cash infusion, they experience greater controls in who is sent and when and where they are sent and on what basis funds are distributed and released. Unfortunately, as in all of our endeavors, this grows into an ineffective bureaucracy too quickly.

Almost all of these models leave the clergy system intact, with its unbiblical models of positional leadership, its requirement for professional clergy training, and its limited expectations of functional ministry by "lay" people. This structure suffocates the mutual ministry of the saints, the very purpose for which the saints are to assemble together (see Heb 10:23-25; I Cor 14:23-40; Rom 12:3-10; I Thess 5:9-11; I Pet 4:8-11). And, it leaves the church without normative biblical leadership with a plurality of elders who derive their persuasive authority over time through experiential relationships rather than through simple positional authority. The top down, one man at the head, authoritative leadership structure the church uses today, adopted from the world's principles of leadership, is the same one about which Jesus said:

"Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." -Matt 20:25-28 

Finally, many of these models rely heavily on pragmatics. If it works and if it makes sense to our natural thinking, it is not scrutinized further. It can be as though since it works, it must therefore be God's best design and we should not question God. But Pragmatic considerations and what makes sense to our own logic should never be treated as on par with the authority of scripture. With such high barriers to entry as these models require, not everyone can participate in these efforts; with the mix of human logic and pragmatics, not everyone is comfortable with the underlying principles employed.So, the drawbacks include:

• Not Extensible
• High Barriers to Entry
• Leaves a major structural problem (leadership and the priesthood of the believer) untouched
• Pragmatics can become Authoritative

Dave Fitch - the Cultivate Talk on Missional Orders from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

Examining Acts for Church Planting Guidelines and Principles

In Acts 13 through 21, the activities of Paul and his coworkers establish the first church planting movement, and demonstrates a church planting methodology that is flexible, financially lean and operates under a surprisingly brief timeline. Their work was taking place among very similar cultures and times to our own. We can look to their methods to re-examine and revise the church planting models we use today, and especially to increase our expectations of what God can accomplish through His people as He builds His Church.

Here are some thumbnail overviews to get our imaginations (and hopes) racing:

The Galatian Churches

Paul was probably sick (Gal 4:13, perhaps from beatings and stoning, II Cor 11:24,25) during much of the time he proclaimed the gospel and taught new believers over the course of a year in the Galatian region. He spent from two to six months in each of the cities of Iconium, Lystra and Derbe (Acts 14:1-23). After His initial work with them, newly planted churches were left for months at a time on their own.

Paul and his coworkers returned to each city on their departure from the region to ordain multiple pastors in each church. Most of these new pastors had only six months experience as believers in Jesus Christ. These churches, in much less than a year from their launching, had their own local leadership teams and were able to function independently under difficult oppression. Paul would visit again in about 18 months to two years (Acts 16:1-3), only staying a few months in the province. Another three years would pass before Paul visited for the last time, again for only a few months (Acts 18:23).

• Three churches planted in an average of four months each 
• Left largely on their own after that for months—without any leadership in place
• Local leadership teams emerged from within the startup churches
• Pastors were appointed within six months of their salvation, on average

• Paul is planting multiple churches regionally
• The key church planter was in poor physical health, and the team left the area altogether within one year
• New churches functioned independently (and indigenously) in less than a year

The Macedonian Churches

Paul and Silas visit the churches in Galatia on their way forward, sharing with them all the letter from the Jerusalem council. As a result, these young churches were established and growing, "so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily," Acts 16:5. At Lystra, they decide to add Timothy, a believer now for perhaps two years, to the church planting team. While they had targeted Asia, they are redirected by the Holy Spirit to Macedonia. At Troas, Luke rejoins the team.

The itinerant team of church planters again spends a brief time planting new churches, somewhere between two to five months at Philippi and Thessalonica, as little as one month at Berea (I Thess 2:17). Silas and Timothy stay on for a bit longer in Berea (Acts 17:14). At Philippi, Paul, Silas and a local worker (Justin) endure severe persecution (I Thess 2:2) and amazing deliverance. Philippi becomes Paul's, "dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown" and the only church from which Paul receives personal support, "no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only" (Phil 4:1,10,15,17). Women are prominently mentioned and associated with the work in these churches (Acts 16:13; 17:4,12; Phil 4:2,3). The work here is also associated with converting whole houses, not just individuals (Acts 16:15, 31-34). Paul was not what we consider a "full time" minister today; He was functioning as what we call a bivocational church planter, working full time ("night and day" I Thess 2:9; II Thess 3:8).

• Three churches planted in an average of two to four months each 
• The newly planted churches are left on their own for a time without formal leadership
• They function on their own in a relatively short period of time (months rather than years)

• Paul was functioning bivocationally
• Whole households were being converted, not just individuals
• Paul is planting multiple churches regionally

The Churches of Achaia

In Corinth (and briefly in Athens), the team spends as much as 18 months, and while there, do some followup work in Thessalonica and Berea. Unable to visit them though he wanted to do so (I Thess 2:18), Paul writes I Thess during this time and sends Timothy to deliver it (I Thess 3:1,2). Paul then sends again for Timothy and Silas to join him (Acts 17:15), which they do at Corinth (Acts 18:5). Timothy had likely left Thessalonica after delivering the letter to rejoin Silas in the work at Berea.

Paul is again functioning as a bivocational church planter in Corinth (Acts 18:1; I Cor 9:6-15; II Cor 11:6-10. We also see again that whole households are being converted (Acts 18:8, household of Crispus; I Cor 1:16, household of Stephanus). We also learn that Paul is giving responsibilities for ministry to others in the work (Paul only baptized the first converts, Stephanus's household, plus Crispus and Gaius, I Cor 1:14-16, though many were baptised there from the beginning, Acts 18:8).

During the Corinthian work, Paul relates that they are presently glorying about the Thessalonians "in the churches (plural) of God" (II Thess 1:1-4). Paul makes mention of a church in Cenchrea (Rom 16:1), a nearby port city to the capital Corinth. It seems quite likely that Paul and his team, perhaps along with workers from Corinth, were busily planting several other churches in the region during this 18 month period (see Paul's statement about the firstfruits of Achaia, not just of Corinth, in I Cor 16:15 and his mention of the dedication to the ministry of the saints demonstrated by Stephanus). This inference is also supported by II Cor 1:1 "unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia" and Rom 15:26 "it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints."

While Paul follows up with a series of letters, he does not return again for three or four years (Acts 20:2).

• While Paul stayed in Corinth for 18 months, it is likely that several churches were planted in the region
• In a relatively short period of time, these churches are able to stand on their own
• The church planters leave the region after the church is planted

• Paul is planting multiple churches regionally, this time from a base camp in Corinth (we will see this repeated in Ephesus)
• Paul was functioning bivocationally
• Whole households were being converted, not just individuals
• Paul enlists additional workers from among the new churches

The churches of Asia

Paul begins working in Ephesus. During this time, Paul and his team are also ministering to the troubled church in Corinth (Acts 19:22; 20:1-3; I Cor 4:17; 16:10; II Cor 12:18; 13:1). As to timelines, Paul is likely there for three years (depending on how you take Acts 20:31, perhaps for only two and a half years). Paul is clearly proclaiming the gospel three months in the synagogue, and holding discussions for two years through the school of Tyrannus. We also see Paul continuing his practice of bivocational ministry (Acts 20:33-35; I Cor 4:11,12).

During this time, "all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greek," Acts 19:10.  We also learn from the trouble with Demetrius the silversmith, that Paul and his team had widely spread the gospel in Asia, "not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands." Philemon with his slave Onesimus is one of these converts from Colosse, as is Epaphras. They are likely responsible for the work in Colosse, Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col 1:6,7; 4:11-13; Philemon 1:22-24).

The churches of Rev 2 & 3 are the likely result of Paul's work and workers in Ephesus. It is also likely that because of Paul's concerns for Rome (Acts 19:20-22) that he may have sent Pricscilla and Acquila there as he sent Timothy, Erastus and others into Macedonia. Priscilla and Acquila had fled Rome under persecution, and had worked alongside Paul in Corinth and Ephesus. Paul greets them preferentially in Rom 16:3-5.

• Paul is planting multiple churches regionally, this time from a base camp in Ephesus
• In three years, Paul not only plants the church in Ephesus, but the many churches of Asia are birthed
• Paul was enlisting, training, and sending out additional workers

• Paul established multiple pastors in Ephesus
• Paul was functioning bivocationally
• Paul was continuing to support churches previously planted by visits and letters

Consider the practices of the Apostle Paul and his teams in your church planting strategies. Especially, increase your expectations of what God can do with new believers in a relatively short period of time. We may be placing entirely too much importance to our labors and oversight, compounded by grossly underestimating God's power and place in the church planting process.