Church Planting

Most leaders start out with passion, a sense of calling, and a focus on building ministry skills. Such things might get some results, but they are not enough to sustain a healthy ministry - or a healthy life. Beyond the vocational capacities every church planter needs, there's a range of capabilities more difficult to measure but even more essential: What veteran church planter Tim Morey calls spiritual competencies. Morey provides here a practical guide to spiritual formation geared to the unique needs of church planters.

It's not enough to plant individual churches in isolation from each other. The spiritual need and opportunity of our cities is too big for any one church to meet alone. Pastors Neil Powell and John James contend that to truly transform a city, the gospel compels us to create localized, collaborative church planting movements. They share lessons learned and principles discovered from their experiences leading a successful citywide movement. The more willing we are to collaborate across denominations and networks, the more effectively we will reach our communities for Jesus.

As churches rapidly expand, Christians risk viewing the church with an entrepreneurial mindset. Church planters can be tempted to fixate on gaining numbers and achieving financial stability as their only metrics for success. They fail to focus on lifting up Christ’s people within the church. In Planting by Pastoring, author Nathan Knight challenges our view of church planting and centers the goal of pastoral ministry on a basic biblical foundation: a church plant is in fact a church, and a planter is in fact a pastor.

While much of church planting today is approached as an innovative new effort, church leaders can take comfort in the truth that they are simply stewards of what the faithful church has been doing for millennia. By rediscovering the foundations of our heritage, we are able to build healthier, more faithful, and more effective churches. At the same time, the act of planting new churches can breathe new life into these ancient traditions as they are applied to a variety of cultural contexts.

Planting a church is one of the most exciting adventures you’ll ever embark on. It’s also one of the hardest. It requires initiative, leadership, strategy, systems, and a lot of prayer. In this second edition of Planting Missional Churches, not only will you find a completely redesigned book with new content in every single chapter but you will also find several new chapters on topics such as church multiplication, residencies, multi-ethnic ministry, multisite, denominations and networks, and spiritual leadership.

Planting a church is one of the most exciting adventures you’ll ever embark on. It’s also one of the hardest. It requires initiative, leadership, strategy, systems, and a lot of prayer. In this second edition of Planting Missional Churches, not only will you find a completely redesigned book with new content in every single chapter but you will also find several new chapters on topics such as church multiplication, residencies, multi-ethnic ministry, multisite, denominations and networks, and spiritual leadership.