Church Planting

Church Planting equips leaders and teams to start new congregations and multiply disciple-making communities. Explore biblically grounded resources on calling and vision, team building, evangelism, leadership development, worship gatherings, discipleship systems, and healthy launch strategies. You’ll also find guidance for fundraising, partnering with sending churches, contextualizing ministry, and sustaining spiritual health through the pressures of planting. Whether you’re discerning a call, preparing to launch, or strengthening an existing plant, these articles offer practical wisdom for planting churches that make disciples and serve their communities in Jesus’ name.

February 10, 2021

Christian Standard

NewThing Planted Nearly 1,000 New Churches in 2020

By Chris Moon Even in a pandemic, the work of church planting continues. Chicago-based church-planting organization NewThing reports it planted 982 churches in 2020, an increase from 855 in 2019. Most of those church plants occurred outside the United States—many of them in Africa and Asia. “COVID hasn’t slowed it down,” said Patrick O’Connell, global director for NewThing. NewThing is the church-planting mission of Community Christian Church in Naperville, Ill., which was founded by Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson. The organization has been around for about 15 years and has planted a total of 6,373 churches in 26 countries so

January 1, 2021

Phil Claycomb

How the Pandemic Impacted Planting Churches

7 Counterintuitive Ways to Interpret Reality By Phil Claycomb I’ve coached, mentored, and trained church planters since 2001, so I’ve been involved in many different crisis situations. I’ve sighed deeply and asked, “OK, what just happened?” more times than I care to remember. I’ve brainstormed through a host of “where do we go from here?” discussions. I’ve rolled up my shirtsleeves and jumped in to help “pick up the pieces and move on.” And I’ve discovered that while the causes of crises may vary, and churches are amazingly creative at finding ways to get into trouble, the one thing leaders

December 1, 2020

Christian Standard

Raders Persevere in Planting NYC Church During Pandemic

By Jim Nieman The launch of Reunion Church in the heart of New York City hasn’t gone off exactly as planned this year . . . but few things in life have escaped the far-reaching impact of COVID-19.   “There’s no book on how to do what we are doing,” says Russel Rader, who is launching Reunion in the Union Square neighborhood with his wife, Katie, and the help of a core launch team, Orchard Group, and churches from across the country. “On Wednesday, March 11th, our community had an amazing evening of hospitality in our home with a group

November 25, 2020

Christian Standard

Every Church Is Now a Church Plant

Three Significant Considerations for Every Church in the Midst of and Post-COVID-19 By Trevor DeVage As every aspect of our daily lives is being reconsidered and refashioned by the pandemic, churches are rethinking their futures, too. Or at least they should be. But I’m afraid some are anticipating the days ahead only with a vision of the years behind. And I’m convinced this just won’t work. My thinking on this was influenced by the recent mentoring retreat I attended with Cal Jernigan, lead pastor with Central Christian Church in Arizona. I get together several times a year with Cal and

May 17, 2020

Brent Bramer

This Is Why We Plant Churches

By Brent Bramer Mike and Kelly were jolted out of bed by screams and the smell of smoke. They ran to their two kids and hurried out to the street. The backside of the home next door was engulfed in flames and a crowd was gathering. The elderly woman who lived in the home was screaming for her husband who had just run back into the house to search for their dog. She feared he’d been inside for too long, and there was no sign of him. Mike and Kelly, their children, and the neighbors watched in horror as flames

May 17, 2020

Christian Standard

A Listing of Church-Planting Organizations

We have compiled a listing of Church Planting Organizations associated with Christian churches and churches of Christ. Note that organizations often partner on church plants. This list is not a comprehensive count of church plants from the past five years but is meant to demonstrate who is actively planting churches and where. For each church-planting organization, we have listed its location, leader, website and contact information, the region where it plants, and total number of churches planted in the past 5 years. We will update this list at a future time. If your organization should be listed, please provide us

February 19, 2020

Christian Standard

Carolina Movement Seeks to Involve More Churches in Planting

By Chris Moon The Carolina Movement is growing and learning. The four-year-old church-planting group in North Carolina is in the process of putting together a more permanent organizational structure as it prepares for its second statewide conference in April. The group has planted 10 churches so far and has connected with more than 30 churches that are helping financially to start even more. The group is hoping for 150 pastors and church leaders to attend the conference in Asheboro, up from 50 at its first statewide conference last year. Chris Hankins, lead pastor of Point Church in Raleigh, N.C., and

February 5, 2020

Christian Standard

More Nexus Church Planters Choosing Bi-Vocational Path

By Chris Moon If you’re going to coach it, it helps to live it. And so Phil Claycomb got another job. That is, he got an additional job. The executive director of Texas-based Nexus Church Planting during the past year and a half also has worked 10 to 12 hours weekly helping out a local church that is trying to resurrect itself after falling on hard times. Central Christian Church in Richardson, Texas, saw its attendance drop in half and its finances lag. The church convinced Claycomb to come serve as its pastor in 2018. Claycomb was happy to help.

January 15, 2020

Christian Standard

Kairos Church Planting Names Clark as New Director (Plus News Briefs)

Compiled by Chris Moon and Jim Nieman Kairos Church Planting has named Ron Clark, of Portland, Ore., as its new executive director. Clark brings more than 30 years of ministry experience to the job, including 13 years as a lead church planter. Clark has served as lead minister with Agape Church of Christ since planting it in 2006. He also serves as an adjunct instructor and dissertation adviser for Portland Seminary and co-chairs the New Testament section of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Northwest region. Ron and Lori Clark have been married 32 years. Stan Granberg, founding director of Kairos,

November 6, 2019

Christian Standard

Multiethnic Church Planned for Johnson University Florida Campus

By Chris Moon A church plant is in the works at Johnson University Florida. Encounter Church is expected to launch at the Kissimmee campus in September 2020. It will be led by pastor Gonzalo Venegas and is backed by Florida Church Partners and Nexus Church Planting. “Things have gone pretty fast,” Venegas said. The church already has 53 committed adults involved in its prelaunch phase. Venegas was featured in March 2019 article in Christian Standard as he embarked on planting a church in Florida after leaving his former home in Michigan. Part of Venegas’s story is his history as a

September 18, 2019

Christian Standard

Exponential, Outreach Team for ‘Church Multiplication Challenge’

Exponential and Outreach magazine are partnering for “The Church Multiplication Challenge,” and an initial goal of identifying 100 reproducing churches has expanded to 1,000. “We want to see reproduction and multiplication become normative,” Exponential CEO Todd Wilson says in an article at ReproducingChurches.org. “We want to see leaders changing their scorecards as they think differently about what it means to lead successful churches and to build legacies that last.” The response thus far has been encouraging, Wilson says, especially since an attempt several years ago to identify 10 rapidly multiplying churches fell far short. (The research team couldn’t find even

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

Mid-Atlantic States: Moving Back to the Small Town (Part 2)

Church Planters Find Big Opportunities in Small Places By Tim Cole During the past generation, Christian churches and churches of Christ have become respected within the body of Christ at large for our leadership in church planting. This position of national influence mostly results from our outsized success planting new churches in rapidly growing suburban areas surrounding larger metropolitan centers.  More recently, within the past decade, many of our church-planting organizations have begun to focus on planting churches in downtown, urban settings. Waypoint Church Partners enjoys a rich, 80-year history of starting and serving Christian churches and churches of Christ

July 22, 2019

Christian Standard

Planting Roots in the City (Los Angeles)

By Andrew Alesso “Wait. So, you’re a minister, right?” she blurted out in the middle of our book club’s group discussion. “Ha ha. Yeah, something like that,” I responded nervously. “I’m surprised you’re being so nice to me,” she said. And then—with no hint of sarcasm—she asked, “And you really don’t hate me?” I’d recently started the book club as a way to meet people in my city. I moved to Los Angeles to facilitate conversations like this. She had just told the group she was an evolutionary biologist. I had just acknowledged she must have a fascinating job. “Wait.

July 22, 2019

Christian Standard

Mid-Atlantic States: Going Back to the City (Part 1)

After 50 Years, a New Generation of Young Leaders Spurs Urban Church Planting in the Mid-Atlantic States By Tim Cole One of the seminal events on the timeline of the Restoration Movement occurred 50 years ago. Although tensions had been brewing for decades with their conservative counterpart, the more progressive wing of our tribe formally adopted a denominational design and officially changed their name to Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1969. In urban areas, which typically espouse a more liberal stance on theological issues, a significant portion of downtown churches aligned with this newly formed denomination. Their impressive buildings,

July 22, 2019

Christian Standard

‘You Can’t Do Better Than That’ (Inner City Church of Christ, Baltimore)

By Melissa Wuske “We were in heaven. You couldn’t tell us we weren’t in heaven.” That’s how Eric Lorick recalls the early days of Inner City Church of Christ in Baltimore, which started in January 2014. On Sundays the church would set up for worship—and then tear down—in a rented space in a community center. “[Such] work brings us together as a church family,” he said. From those earliest days, his vision was “to make a difference, to bring hope to the hopeless. . . . You can’t do better than that in a city like Baltimore.” That vision is

March 27, 2019

Christian Standard

A Fortuitous Announcement for Stadia (Church Planting)

Stadia Church Planting marketing manager Josie Barton had some fun with Google’s announcement that its revolutionary cloud-based gaming system would be called . . . you guessed it: Stadia. “These past few days, we’ve been having fun introducing unsuspecting gamers to our church planting mission,” Barton wrote on Stadia’s website Sunday, noting, “it’s easy to use the wrong handle in the twitterverse.” Cloud-based gaming could mark the end of console-based systems that have ruled since the early 1980s.  If gamers are excited for Stadia, Barton opined, “We need to be as excited [because] Stadia Church Planters is even better.” She then listed several

March 27, 2019

Christian Standard

New Churches Planted in Texas and California

Two new churches have started in recent weeks. Venture Christian Church, Katy, Texas, held a four-week grand opening from Jan. 20 to Feb. 10 and saw 151 different people come to its services.  Lead planter Nathan Boldt wrote that Venture’s intent is to “reach people with no connection to a church.” He added, “If I were to share one stat, it would be that about 80 percent of our crowd are unchurched. . . . We are thrilled at what God has been up to!”VCC is a plant by Nexus Church Planting and is also supported by several Texas congregations.  Further west, Luminous

February 2, 2019

Kent E. Fillinger

Kent E. Fillinger

Church Multiplication Scorecard

By Kent Fillinger  A new question on our last annual church survey asked, “Using the scale created by Exponential.org, which of the following best describes your church in 2017?”              Level 1: Declining (attendance going down) Level 2: Holding Even (attendance largely unchanged) Level 3: Growing (attendance growth by 5 percent or more) Level 4: Adding/Reproducing (we directly launched another new campus or church plant) Level 5: Multiplying (a campus or church we helped to start has itself become a reproducing church) In Exponential’s e-book Becoming a Level Five Multiplying Church Field Guide, Todd Wilson, Dave Ferguson, and Alan Hirsch provided

January 29, 2019

Christian Standard

My Life Story . . . from Gang Member to Church Planter

By Gonzalo Venegas as told to Christian Standard   I was sitting in a prison cell, serving time for crimes I had committed as the leader of a street gang, when God spoke to me: “My children, my children—take care of my children.” I sensed his radical love. It is the only time I have ever heard from God in such an amazing way, and I cried because I knew exactly what he meant. God wasn’t talking only about young children, but all of his children. He was calling me to be a pastor.   My Life on the Streets

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