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.
October 22, 2010
This week Verve, a Christian church in Las Vegas, held “Vault,” a church planting lab “where current and future church planters can learn how to start a church for people who don”t like church.” The event began Monday and ends today, and included sessions on a variety of topics including “Understanding & Starting an Indigenous Church for Your Community” and “Marketing to the Unchurched.” Click here to learn more.
October 16, 2010
By Jennifer Taylor Last Sunday was 10-10-10 (October 10, 2010)–and churches developed several creative ways to celebrate the day. Some encouraged inviting others to church or talking to 10 people about Jesus; others collected special offerings or suggested members begin tithing. And some planted new churches! The team behind the Exponential Conference developed the 10-10-10 Initiative to focus attention on church planting. Individuals and congregations participated by praying, adopting a church plant for encouragement and financial support, or helping a new church hold its first services. In addition, Stadia: New Church Strategies (Irvine, California) asked each of its plants and
October 14, 2010
By Jennifer Taylor Indian Creek Christian Church (Indianapolis, Indiana) is more than halfway through “Project 52″“”a 52-day challenge to complete construction on a new church building in New Orleans with at least 5,200 hours of labor and an additional $52,000 in funding. Five years after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the city, New Orleans residents “are still rebuilding their lives, particularly spiritually,” writes Indian Creek senior minister Gary Johnson. “That”s why a group of people has formed a church called The Gathering and have established it . . . where some of the greatest destruction occurred.” The time, money, and labor
September 1, 2010
By Jennifer Taylor October 10, 2010, is 10-10-10. It is a Sunday. And it will be the birthday for new churches across the country. The team behind the Exponential Conference, “the largest gathering of church planters on the planet,” developed the 10-10-10 Initiative to focus attention on church planting. Individuals, congregations, and even entire planting networks can participate by praying, adopting a church plant for encouragement and financial support, planning a sermon series, or even launching a new church. The Web site includes a central repository of sermon content, service ideas, and other materials (for free!), and offers affinity groups to connect participants
August 11, 2010
By Brad Dupray After graduating from Cincinnati (Ohio) Christian University, Bart Stone spent 13 years on staff at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Sensing a call to risk something greater for the gospel, Bart and his wife, Jodi, left the comfort of ministry at Northeast to heed the call of starting a new church in a community south of Atlanta, Georgia. Momentum Christian Church held its first service in January 2007, and has not looked back. The church is now running more than 400 in attendance in a warehouse. Bart and Jodi have two children, 9-year-old Keaton and 4-year-old
November 18, 2009
By Brad Dupray Greg Nettle is celebrating his 20th anniversary as senior pastor of RiverTree Christian Church, Massillon, Ohio, this year, and he is also celebrating a collaboration of churches from throughout Ohio. About 30 churches have joined in Kingdom Synergy Partnerships (KSP) with a goal of starting 50 churches in a 10-year period. Although RiverTree is running about 3,000 in weekend attendance, Greg sees the value of every church, large and small, as an important link in the partnership model. Greg and his wife, Julie, have been married 16 years and are the proud parents of two children, Tabitha
September 6, 2009
 by Tom Jones Recently, I”ve been thinking quite a bit about my home church. I have a special place in my heart for that little church, located on the corner of Penn and Neville streets, in Follansbee, West Virginia. Do you know what a sure sign of a home church is? It”s when you are 49 years old and the good folks still call you “Tommy Jones.” I have so many fond memories of my home church, like when I was 11 years old and stole Communion grape juice from the church refrigerator with my best friend Randy Weaver.
September 6, 2009
by Douglas J. Crozier In my 12 years of service with Church Development Fund, I have been blessed to participate in international missions in Chile and India. I have also been privileged to work closely with the team at Impact Canada to expand the kingdom north of our border. I am sold out for global missions that continue to expand the kingdom. But in late 2007, a phone call from Steve Edwards, executive director of the Intermountain Church Planting Association, opened my eyes to a mission field right in our backyard. I had never met Steve, but he challenged me
August 26, 2009
By Brad Dupray Todd Wilson serves as director of Exponential Network and is on the leadership teams of several national church planting ministries. Todd received his BS in nuclear engineering from North Carolina State University and spent 15 years working in the Division of Naval Reactors on nuclear submarine design, operation, maintenance, and overhaul. In 2000, he entered full-time vocational ministry as executive minister with New Life Christian Church (Centreville, Virginia). As a church-planting church, New Life releases Todd as a missionary to the kingdom with a primary focus on church planting and other entrepreneurial initiatives. Todd and his wife,
October 12, 2008
By Rick Grover Church planting can be described as a high-octane, caffeine-pumping, roller-coaster-riding, faith-testing, prayer-building, life-changing experience. If conventional church life can be likened to espresso, church planting would fit the double-espresso category followed by a “chaser” of Red Bull. Journey Christian Church launched October 6, 2002, with 212 people (40 of whom were “well-wishers”). We experienced the roller-coaster ride of dropping down to about 100 people with the gradual climb back up to about 200, the development of a discipleship process, small groups, and the beginning stages of an eldership-study process. Within three years things were moving along pretty
October 12, 2008
By Troy McMahon I was sitting on a park bench at Ozark Christian College, next to the young woman who would soon become my bride, when I made the decision. I was going to live a life without regrets. I had just attended the National Youth Leaders Conference where I heard Tony Campolo speak. He shared some statistics about people in their 90s. When asked what they would do differently in their lives if they had to do it all over again, three themes emerged. First, they would take more risks; second, they would reflect more; and third, they would
October 12, 2008
By Jared Witt Editor”s note: ImagineNYC is the latest project of Orchard Group Inc., a church planting organization in New York City. The new church will launch in September 2009 in two separate Manhattan locations, the upper West Side and Greenwich Village. Jared Witt is lead minister. Additional staff for the new church has yet to be selected. Â Â Â Novelist Tom Wolfe has suggested that New York City is no longer a real city inhabited by real people. It is, rather, a spectacle, a drama staged and orchestrated for the benefit of tourists, a massive public exhibition. New
By Brad Dupray Jim Putman planted Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho, nine years ago with a vision of a church whose relationships would exhibit the same passion as those of New Testament Christians. Real Life has grown to weekend attendance of 8,500, with 7,600 people involved in small groups each week””all in a town of 17,000 and a county of 120,000. Jim was a three-time All-American wrestler in college and he holds degrees from Boise State University and Boise Bible College. He and his wife, Lori, have been married 20 years and are the proud parents of three
By Bill McClure My brother was once a professional Pacific Ocean fisherman. I vividly remember the times we were out in his boat looking for increasingly hard-to-find salmon. It was so windy one time I could barely stand straight and had to hold on to avoid falling overboard. Another time, in spite of over-the-counter remedies, I got really seasick. I also recall the time we went far from shore””even losing sight of land””and the fog became so dense we navigated using only the radar gear on board. It dawned on me later: we had taken some major risks. Why would
By Bill McClure Today, in the United States and around the world, “church” is where you find it: storefronts, hotels, theaters, bars, nightclubs, coffee shops””almost anywhere in addition to the more traditional church buildings. One of the most unusual locations is in a former Cambodian brothel””a structure used in the much-publicized child exploitation, commercial sex area of Phnom Penh. With God”s blessings, that storefront is being used to bring the light of Jesus Christ into the very darkest parts of the Cambodian capital. Now a new church meets there. No Choice Svay Pak is a down-at-the-heels area at the edge
By Janet C. Smith In September 2004, Maya Morgan left the United States to take an engineering position at an American company”s Chinese manufacturing facility. By January 2005, this intelligent and hard-working young woman, by God”s grace and her own initiative, had taken the first steps toward planting a small church of Chinese nationals within the company walls, and with the full knowledge and consent of her American boss in China. That”s the short version of this remarkable story that began several years earlier in the Marketplace Ministries division of Christian Missionary Fellowship (CMF) in Indianapolis, Indiana. Background In the
By Brad Canning “Blur the lines between church and community.” Those words were uttered a few hours past midnight as we crafted a vision statement for a church that could become a reality. From the beginning of Church! Of Park Slope, that statement has significantly impacted the way our team views this new church in Brooklyn, New York. We are the kingdom of God in our neighborhood. We have tried to move beyond defining “church” as a building with pews or as a place where people worship on Sunday. The church is a group of Jesus followers who go into
March 26, 2008
A longtime church planter reflects on how new methods once sparked excitement, how age can crave stability, and why older leaders may look grumpy even when they’re grateful for bold, faithful change.
November 7, 2007
Vince Antonucci shares how reading the Bible led him to Christ and into church planting. In this interview, he explains Forefront Christian Church’s focus on reaching the unchurched and why they’re willing to do ministry differently.
October 28, 2007
Outreach magazine ranked “America’s Top 25 Multiplying Churches.” Five Christian churches made the list—each with a distinct approach to church planting, resourcing planters, and building reproducing churches for greater kingdom impact.
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