Church plants face many challenges throughout their young history, but one of the most overlooked challenge is the infant church plant phase. The phase where the church needs to be self-sustainable, but also needs to add staff to grow beyond their infant phase, which requires costs that push them beyond self-sustainability.
There are three benefits of investing in an infant over a baby church.
The first is the record of faithfulness. A church plant able to get to the infant stage has to have demonstrated a record of discipleship, mission and faithful witness to the neighborhood causing growth. There is a decreased risk of funding a non-viable or ineffective church, because you have seen the fruit.
The second is a benefit of further church planting. These infant churches have seen the fruit of church planting and often still have the passion to plant new churches. They know what it takes to plant an effective church in their city, and funding them can lead to future church planting efforts that are as effective as they have been.
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The third is the long-term impact from helping the infant church become an established church. We will always need church plants, but more than that we need effective churches that are faithful for generations. Some modern church planting is due to population growth, but much of church planting is the result of dying churches who were ineffective at discipling the next generation. Did they lack the funding to hire additional pastors and ministers to promote the discipleship of kids, youth and adults?
A change to the church planting funding mechanism can put the energy of money behind the effectiveness of discipleship. Funding infants over baby churches is an easy adjustment to fund the growth of God’s kingdom.
3. Send Pastors Over Planters
This third change assumes that many churches, networks and denominations will send church planters to new cities and that the need for planters may outpace the ability of local churches to develop indigenous churches.
This change is focused on sending people to become local pastors before they become planters. I live in NYC and the most effective church planters are those who have been ministers and pastors at local churches before they planted their churches. These people embedded in local churches served as volunteers and supported local pastors while getting opportunities to lead, preach and teach in their local context.
These planters had the ability to develop relationships with their neighbors, establish their presence as leaders who want to know and bless their neighborhoods, and adjust to their new homes. Many of them planted their churches with new and non-Christians from their neighborhood rather than bringing a community from another church.
We cannot settle for simply planting new churches as a metric of success. We must adapt our strategies to make sure the emphasis aligns with the heart of Jesus Christ. The call of Christ is to make disciples knowing that will grow God’s kingdom and lead to new churches.
These three strategic changes can contribute to a healthier future for church planting.
