State of Church Planting in the U.S. Today

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State of Church Planting in the U.S. Today

• A Leadership Network Research Project

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• Trends in Church Multiplication

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Transition to local

• It is clear that the energy of successful church
  planting is moving quickly from denominational
  structures to the more hands-on local churches
  and networks.

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Evangelistic Effectiveness

• This generation of church planting leaders is
  committed to increasing not only the
  survivability and multiplication of church plants
  but also the evangelistic effectiveness of those
  plants.

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Church Planting Systems

• assessment, basic training, coaching
• Plants using these systems are more likely to
  reach unchurched and grow more quickly than
  plants who do not.

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Resources

• Church plants that grow larger, more quickly,
  tend to be more heavily resourced and staffed
  than those that do not.

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Funding

• Church planting emphasis is shifting from the
  initiative and oversight of a national or
  regional agency to that of a local church.

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The shift

• There is a trend where funding rests on the
  shoulders of the parent church and the church
  planter with the national agencies providing no
  more then 33 percent (or less) of funding needs.

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National support

• There appears to be a trended correlation between
  the amount of money the national agency
  contributes to each church plant and the number
  of parent churches in that denomination.

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• More money from the national agency correlates
  with a lower percentage of churches that become
  parent churches.

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Observations

• Local churches traditionally place a value on
  planting churches similar to themselvesand tend
  to do so through direct mothering or
  sponsorship.

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Budgeting and Funding

• Churches that aggressively pursue church planting
  have a number of financial factors in common.

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Church planting churches

• Expect new planters to raise a sizeable amount of
  the church planting budget (50 percent 80
  percent)

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Aggressive, reproducing churches

• Provide less financial support than do
  less-aggressive churches.

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• The more money a parent church puts into a single
  church plant, the fewer number of churches they
  actually planted.

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More-aggressive parent churches

• Assigned 10 percent or more of the churchs
  overall budget to domestic church planting

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Staffing and partnerships

• One-third of larger churches had paid staff
  assigned to church planting.

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Church planting staff

• Most of these staff spent less than 50 percent of
  their time focused on church planting.

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• There is however a positive correlation between
  the number of staff who assist with church
  planting and the number of churches planted by
  that church.

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• There is a direct correlation between the senior
  pastors commitment to church planting and the
  churchs ability to plant successfully.

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• The more staff involved in church planting, the
  trend is for the church to become more involved
  with other partners and providers.

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• The more rapidly a church grows, the more likely
  they seem to initiate or become involved with a
  para-church church-planting network.

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• Churches that were 200 or less in attendance were
  four times more likely to plant a church than
  churches of 1000 or more in attendance.
• Churches between 200500 in attendance were twice
  as likely to plant a church than their larger
  counterparts.

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• The more partners and service providers a parent
  church worked with the more churches they planted.

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• A reproducing, multi-staff, high-impact style
  church plant seems to be more popular with larger
  churches, and parallels the number of partners
  and providers with whom they associate.

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Recruitment, Assessment, Training

• Churches that reported aggressive church planting
  results viewed assessment, training,
  encouragement, coaching, and mentoring as more
  important and strategic than financial support.

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• Church-planting churches self-perceived role is
  to prepare the planter for the work in the field
  and to press him to self-sufficiency. There is a
  lot of freedom given to church planters to
  determine methodologies and form.

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Vision and Value

• A shared trait is the importance of articulating
  the vision and value of church planting to the
  church body through multiple levels of mass
  communication.

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• Success is conveyed in terms of personal
  involvement by its membership through prayer,
  financial giving and being sent out as a part of
  the planting core group.

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• The value of church planting is expressed as the
  most effective means of evangelism that a church
  can participate in for the expansion of Gods
  Kingdom and the fulfillment of the Great
  Commission.

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• The lead pastors encourage staff participation
  through lending their expertise in their
  particular ministry area to the church-planting
  efforts.

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Analysis

• Church-planting churches consistently reported a
  goal to create self-sufficient church planters
  and churches.

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• Most of them do not fund heavily. Rather, they
  place the planter into a great amount of
  training.

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What is a Church Planting Church?

• Do your church's founding documents or published
  vision, mission, values and strategy documents
  identify church planting as a key component of
  your church's vision?

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DNA 2 of the following

• Does your church regularly send members out to
  help with church plants?
• Does your church give 5 or more of your annual
  budget to support direct church planting?
• Does your church have a Church Planting Director
  or Coordinator on staff? (full or part-time)
• Do you have a church planter internship or
  residency program?

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How are people getting other churches involved in
church planting?
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Assemblies of God (AG)
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Evangelical Free Church

• Reproducing Clinic 101
• An Introduction To Church Multiplication

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Evangelical Free Church

• Six Critical Questions
• Why start new churches?
• How do we prepare to parent?
• How do we get our church to plant?
• How do we design our basic strategy?
• How do we select right planter place?
• How do we establish a healthy parenting process?

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Books on Multiplication

• The Multiplying Church The New Math for Starting
  New Churches (Bob Roberts)
• Be Fruitful and Multiply (Bob Logan)
• Churches That Multiply A Bible Study on Church
  Planting (Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter)
• The Ripple Church (Phil Stevenson)
• The Dynamic Daughter Church Planting Handbook
  (Paul Becker and Mark Williams)