10 times not to plant a church

Here’s ten times that I’d encourage a would-be church planter to slow down and think twice before stepping out to start a church. I wouldn’t necessarily say these are hard-and-fast rules, but they should at least be reasons to step back, bring in some outside wisdom, and tread with more care before jumping in. Being a pastor, after all, is an immense and serious calling; planting a church I believe is much more so, not less.

I would love more people to plant churches! I really would. But I would prefer these plants started well, were led responsibly, and lasted long.

Church planting is massively needed and should be encouraged. However, in the same way that having a child is not a decision to be taken lightly, so should we birth new communities with a great deal of care, support, and responsible thinking.

Here are ten times that I’d ask you to slow down and think more carefully.

Planting because you’re hurt

I too bear scars from poor experiences in churches. If, however, I responded to my hurt by trying to build my own hospital, something would probably be amiss.

Starting with the pastor, church is not designed as a way for the leaders to make themselves feel better, or as a way of ‘fixing it’ in others without waiting for true healing. Planting out of hurt will often shape all the ministry we do subversively to this end. What often results is building ourselves a yes-network of also-hurting people. This will leave a church isolated and separate from the wider Body of Christ, and view those ‘outside’ as aggressors and those within as victims. This might be a support group, but it’s not – on its own – a church.

Church should be a place for the wounded and the hurt, for sure – but I’m not convinced that fresh personal hurt is a sound enough reason to plant. In the same way, we shouldn’t have a baby to make us feel better, so too we should be careful with creating a new church because of hurt.

Planting in the middle of deconstructionism

Looking at deconstructionism in its original form (Derrida et al), we need to be understanding it as a process of exploration in order to find truth – you are supposed to reassemble the parts afterwards. We, however, have made an art of deconstruction as a perpetual state, where the pieces stay fractured. Our ‘question everything’ turns into ‘question, but don’t actually seek answers.’ This, I think, becomes lazy, and worse, can actually stop wounds from becoming scars.

Pastoring a church from within the middle of this is like running a racetrack, and each night dismantling all the cars and hiding all the fuel. When the drivers arrive each morning, they’ve got nothing left but a pile of parts, and are left alone to deal with it.

Although we should always seek to question and challenge, assuming deconstruction as our ultimate posture is not the right frame of being for someone who is seeking to be a shepherd of others.

Planting to prove something

Have you ever looked at a preacher or a pastor and thought ‘I could do that better than them’? Me too. It’s a big leap, however, from thinking that to actually doing it to prove it.

Planting a church to prove you’d make a good pastor, or to show other churches how it’s supposed to be done, makes the plant about you. Being a pastor, however, is essentially a selfless pursuit. A church is fundamentally there to serve people not your ego.

If you think there could be true calling inside your egotistical ‘I could do that better’ musings, then instead talk to a pastor and look at ways you could serve and find out with accountability what that calling might look like.

Planting because you weren’t hired

This one seems to be surprisingly common. Someone wasn’t chosen to be a pastor, but still has a burning desire to do so, and so they plant instead.

There might be some situation in which this is the right course of action, but my suspicion is mostly this would be a reactionary response to disappointment. If we don’t get a pastor position, then a period of reflection should follow. We should reflect on why we were not a good fit, and perhaps whether there are still things we need to learn before continuing.

Also, leading an established church and planting a new one, are totally different callings requiring different skills – so if you were seeking the first, I’m be cautious before assuming you’re equally equipped for the second.

Planting when you haven’t identified a mission area

Plants should exist because there is an area that another church isn’t currently doing healthy mission and ministry within. We plant where people are being missed and there are plenty of these places available.

This means that what should drive a plant are local needs, compassion for missing people, and a desire to bring the gospel where it is not currently spoken.

When churches are planted without this, what tends to happen is they just siphon people off from other churches. This can weaken the wider body of Christ by actively disrupting established communities. When these plants fail, which statistically seem to be after about nine months, these people are often left feeling they can’t go back, meaning they end up nowhere.

Planting when you’re not being mentored

Every pastor needs to be accountable to somebody. Every church planter needs the personal support and discipleship of somebody wiser and more experienced than they are. This can be provided locally, or by a national body, or even a good friend, but it is utterly essential for a healthy pastor of a sound plant. They must be asked the hard questions and challenged deeply and lovingly about their motives. I believe all pastors should welcome this before stepping out.

It’s too often the case that somebody retreats from church, isolates themselves from the community, doesn’t seek personal spiritual support, lives in their own head, resounds in their own echo chambers, and then – somehow, miraculously – discerns a sudden and divine calling to plant a church.

I think this is rarely how God works. He calls us to be subject to one another, and to thrive within accountable community.

Planting as a favour

This is a bit weird, but I’ve seen people plant because other people asked them to as a favour. It wasn’t necessarily that the planter felt a calling to lead a church, but that other people within churches wanted someone else to do a better job somewhere else than what they had. So rather than getting involved in serving, they subversively went around corners and behind backs to convince someone else to make somewhere more favourable for them.

The issue with this is similar to not identifying a mission area in that this doesn’t create a church plant so much as a church split.

Friends can encourage you and say they see pastoral gifts in you, but that shouldn’t come with conditions and baggage. It might be a nice ego stroke but instead encourage them (and model for them) getting involved more actively by serving within the community that exists.

Planting when you haven’t talked to other churches

There are true church plants that do the homework, research the area, communicate with the right people, and then start well so have a good chance of pastoring uniquely and with longevity. Then there are church plants that happen sneakily, subversively, often without the other local churches even knowing.

Unless every church in your area is actively preaching heresy or damaging the reputation of the Kingdom of God, then you really shouldn’t seek to plant without talking first with those who have been doing it.

If you’re planting a church then, like it or not, you’re becoming part of the wider Body of Christ. If you don’t seek to add to the health of the whole, then you’ll end up being something like a severed limb. You’ll do some things well (at least for a while) but you’ll be sadly missing out on others.

Planting when you can’t speak clearly on what a church is

What you might be discovering here is that I’m speaking out against half-baked and reactionary church plants that don’t really know what they are. I’m fine for people to plant a ministry, a home group, a support network, a charity, a missionary organisation, or any other kind of healthy group, but it means something very specific to plant a church.

I’m not suggesting that you necessarily need a theology degree or encyclopaedic understanding of ecclesiology, in the same way a parent doesn’t need to have read Piaget. But if you’re about to plan to have a baby, then if would help if you were fully invested in understanding what it was that you were getting into. If you thought that having a baby would be all cuddles and cuteness, then you’ll be pretty freaked out by what you’d get!

A church is not a home group, a support group, or me and my mates hanging out and singing songs. These might all be important parts of what a church could be, but this is far from the whole picture. Ask a Pastor who’s been doing it for a while what a church is and what’s truly involved.

A church is a living and active lifetime community that seeks to develop lasting and deep local expressions of mission, ministry, care, worship, prayer, sacraments, teaching, fellowship, and support for vulnerable people. It’s a mutual network of believers – real people with families, jobs, histories, and needs. There are tragedies, bereavements, conflicts, personal battles, and very real pastoral responsibilities. It’s not a small business marketed well for a few years, then closed when the customer base runs dry.

Starting a church is no less than starting a family, it’s important that we understand some of the weight of that before we jump in.

Planting when God didn’t tell you to

I believe church planters should still have to go through a process of assessing their calling as pastors. This process will take a little while and should involve a lot of people who ask objective and challenging questions about motives. It should include individual and community support periods of deep reflection. It should include long family conversations on how it will shape the entire direction of life for the foreseeable future.

In the bottom resonant part of your heart, you should feel the rumble of God saying, ‘I’m with you and I want you to step out and do this.’ Before you think of a mission area, a location, a style, a building, a team, or anything specific or physical, you should have felt the pull of God on your life to pastor. The calling should drive the plant, not the other way around.

Don’t just decide that God has told you to go without properly asking Him about it. If God tells you go – then go! But ask that question with all the right accountability, reflection, and with a sense of humble realism. Then, if He says go – go. And strap in!

All the best.

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