Why Am I Seeking to Plant a Church?

Rick Warren is most famous for having written Purpose Driven Life in 2002. But before Purpose Driven Life became the bestselling book in America, I was greatly impacted by his earlier work, Purpose Driven Church, which I read in the spring of 2001, while I was a freshman in Bible college. God used that book to spark in me the desire to plant a church.

In the book, Warren tells the story about how God led him from Texas to Southern California to plant Saddleback Church. I had vaguely heard of church planting before that, but it certainly was not on my radar. Reading Warren’s story got my imagination running wild.

Most of my classmates had their sights set on becoming youth pastors. And most of them viewed youth ministry as a stepping stone to eventually becoming senior pastors. That seemed to be the normative path for young guys looking to enter vocational ministry. One of my roommates even said, “Why would you start a new church when there’s already so many churches that need pastors?” That didn’t sit well with me.

Warren’s words have been rolling around the back of my head for more than two decades. Today, Warren and I would likely fiercely disagree on many points of theology and ministry philosophy, but I’m still forever grateful for his words.

Over the last twenty-two years, since reading Purpose Driven Church, I’ve served in local church ministry, started multiple businesses, worked for a missions agency, and I’ve been a college professor. All along, I’ve talked a lot about church planting, but never took any tangible steps towards church planting until recently.

But why now? And why me? There’s four reasons.

1- We need more churches, everywhere.

2- History says that launching new churches is the best way to minister.

3- We need more church-based ministry in North America and less parachurch.

4- I have the traits that can be helpful in church planting.

We need more churches, everywhere.

When I consider the question, “Why am I planting a church?” my mind first thinks about the need. As we examine the demographics and church attendance statistics of every major metro region of North America, we quickly discover that there are simply not enough churches in any city. Not one North American metro area can boast of having enough churches to adequately disciple all the people in their region. We need more churches, everywhere.

History says that launching new churches is the best way to minister.

Even a cursory examination of church history quickly reveals that the greatest mechanism for revival, discipleship, and cultural transformation is local church ministry—and there is not even a close #2.

If we want to make an impact in our society, we need to launch more gospel preaching churches. If we want to see more people come to Christ and if we want to push-back on detrimental ideologies wreaking havoc on humanity, history tells us that we must launch more churches. The expansion of gospel-preaching local churches has always been the key to genuine transformation. That’s always been true, and I’m convinced that’ll always be true.

We need more church-based ministry in North America and less parachurch.

In the post-World War II era there was an explosion of parachurch ministry structures in North America. Evangelicals largely went away from denominational structures and local churches, and moved towards leveraging parachurch ministries and 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. The local church discipleship strategies that were the hallmark of Christianity for nearly 2,000 years have been thrown out the window and broken ecclesiology runs amok. This has had devastating consequences on North American evangelicalism.

There’s been a correction, of sorts, amongst North American evangelicals over the last 20 years. However, there’s much more work to be done. The best way to help correct this is to plant more gospel-preaching churches that will then plant more gospel-preaching churches, and for the bulk of ministries across our nation to be under the leadership of those local churches. I want to be a part of that.

I have the traits that can be helpful in church planting.

To be honest, for many years, I was not confident in my own call to church planting. I dreamt of it. I wondered what it might be like. But I was not confident that I was actually the guy to do it.

In my years of local church ministry, I’ve loved preaching God’s word and leading local church ministry initiatives. When I’m involved in these types of ministries, I come alive. But I wasn’t convinced that I should indeed pursue church planting.

However, in spring 2019, I had a long conversation about this with a man who had coached more than two dozen church planters throughout his ministry career. He said, “Church planters need to be elder qualified, right? You need to be a pastor, not just a pioneer. But not all pastors are called to be planters.” He then highlighted two specific traits that he believes are most helpful for planting—traits that he believed separated the men called to church planting versus the men called to ministry in established church settings.

The first trait was an entrepreneurial spirit. He said, “When I see a guy that has started businesses or started various ministries in his life, the type of guy who starts stuff from scratch without a whole lot of coaching, that’s the kind of guy I think could be a church planter.” Then he said, “Not everyone is called to church planting. It’s hard. A lot of guys aren’t designed for it. But when we come across a guy who is designed for it, who’s got that entrepreneurial bent, I think that guy should seriously consider church planting.”

The second trait he highlighted was dynamic preaching. He said, “It doesn’t mean all dynamic preachers should be church planters, and it doesn’t mean that the lack of dynamic preaching automatically eliminates a guy from being a church planter. But in most cases, if the church planter is not a dynamic preacher, I think he’s going to struggle.”

Later, I had a handful of conversations with men in my life that I trust. All of them affirmed that I had these two traits—entrepreneurial bent and gifted dynamic preaching. Each man encouraged me to pursue church planting. If I believe that we need more churches, then we need men to step up to lead those church plants. Not all men, it seems, are equipped for this task, but it’s become clear to me, and the men around me, that I am indeed equipped to do this. So, if guys like me don’t step-up and do it, then who will? God has been very kind to me these last twenty-two years, giving me many great opportunities to train and prepare. But the time for dreaming and talking is over. It’s now time to get to work.