Throwing money at church planting
What would you do with an accountant who lost $100,000 of your money? You’d probably look for another accountant. What would you do with a leader who lost $100,000 of your denomination’s money? You’d probably promote him.
I often meet with church leaders have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in church planting only to see the majority of the new churches fall over. The financial and human cost is enormous. Eventually people start saying, “We tried church planting and it didn’t work.”
What do you do? Here are three suggestions:
1. Stop giving church planters lots of money.
Love offerings? YES. Training in how to raise support? YES. Modest seed funding? YES. Long-term, generous subsidies? NO.
The movements that are planting the most churches are not paying their church planters very much at all. After 19 years in the game I am yet to see a positive relationship between financial subsidies and healthy new churches.
THE RESOURCES ARE IN THE HARVEST or it’s not a movement.
2. Start assessing your church planting candidates.
The good news is you don’t have to go out and create your own system. Charles Ridley and Bob Logan have come up with the 13 Characteristics of Effective Church Planters and a tried and tested method for discovering them.
Make sure you send your planters to a trained assessor. Even better, become a trained assessor. It’s one of the modules in our Matrix program.
If you need an assessment in the US, visit newchurches.com for Ed Stetzer’s list of options. I liked the look of the Church Planting Assessment Center. For options in Australia and New Zealand get in touch with CRM Australia. In the UK and Europe try Ian Hamilton at CRM UK.
3. Issue hunting licenses
Give potential church planters permission to reach new people, start new groups and new ministries and grow leaders who do the same.
The danger of a system of church planter assessment is that we set the bar too high for the leaders of tomorrow. Take the pressure off them. Don’t call it a “church plant”. Don’t fund it. Just give them permission and support to pioneer ministries that reach new people. When you see a pattern of fruitfulness call them a “church planter” if it helps.
Throwing money at church planting will get you nowhere. Investing in a system of assessing church planters and growing the next generation of pioneering leaders will yield a harvest.
