Church Planting
Living the Book of Acts
We understand the challenges involved in starting a new ministry from scratch. We also understand the amazing possibilities. If you’re considering planting a church or are in the early stages, we’d love to walk alongside you through the process.
We can help you understand the different stages of planting a church—from vision to team building to leadership development. We can help you think through the essential issues to consider along the way—including prayer, finances, structure, and outreach.
And if you have a vision for planting not just one church, but many churches– a multiplying movement of churches — then you’ll definitely want to connect with us to be better prepared and resourced for the amazing adventure that lies ahead.
Church planters must be responsive to the community
The term Dr. Charles Ridley uses for this essential church planter competency is “contextualizing.” A planter who is responsive to the community, “discerns the culture of the local context and implements redemptive ministries that meet the needs of people.”...
My recommendations for discipleship processes
This blog post is adapted from an excerpt from my latest book, The Church Planting Journey. In any healthy ministry, there needs to be a strategy in place for passing discipleship along from one person to the next. Here I cover a few of my most important...
Visionizing capacity: not just a dreamer
An essential quality for church planters is that he or she has a visionizing capacity. This doesn’t just mean having dreams. There are lots of dreamers. But a church planter has the dream and gets others to buy in and live it out. It means taking the dream and...
Bounce-back-ability
In this blog entry, let’s zero in on one church planter competency: resilience. The official definition from the Church Planter Assessment is: Resilience—stays the course in the face of major setbacks, disappointments, and opposition. Dr. Charles Ridley,...
Planter “knock-out” factors
I used to think you could coach and train almost anyone into anything. But after many years of being as a practitioner of both, I now see that you need to have some starting-point qualities from which to work. Without these qualities, the church planter is eventually...
What does it take to be a church planter? The timeless core competencies
I was recently teaching a church planter assessment course in Phoenix, and it reminded me of how timeless the role of church planter really is. How the Church Planter Behavioral Assessment Profile Began Dr. Charles Ridley spearheaded a qualitative research project in...
NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON- The Church Planting Journey!
I’ve teased you for some time about this one, but the wait is over. The Church Planting Journey is now available for purchase in print on Amazon! Over 40 years ago, as a young church planter, God met me in my hour of need. In the midst of struggling to plant a church...
How Alpha can help with the essential tasks of a church planter
Over the last few weeks, I've looked at the Alpha Course and church planting intersect, how people come to faith and how Alpha allows for the nurturing of gospel seeds and protection of young Christians, and how continued discipleship and church planting is a natural...
What comes after Alpha? Beta
Over the last couple of weeks, I've explored some of the ways the Alpha Course intersects with Church Planting. There are more parallels than one might initially expect, especially in the relational ways people come to faith. The Alpha philosophy fits well with that....
How people come to faith
In last week’s blog entry, I wrote about how the Alpha process parallels church planting. In today’s entry, I’m thinking about how the end goals of Alpha and church planting fit together as well. Really, the cornerstone of church planting and of Alpha are the same:...