Church Planting Observations

• Church planters often resort to “business models” and demographic studies to determine where to plant their church.
• After such studies are made, inevitably a growing suburb of a large urban area is selected.
• Few churches in the rural South have ever intentionally started another church. (There have been many unintentional church starts; we call them splits.)
• Even churches reknown for their focus on planting other churches tend to use an event model, even though the church of origin most likely did not start that way. You hear of “Launch Sundays” and the like, but there is no space shuttle, only a church-in-a-box, complete with musicians and in some cases, fully-supported, multiple staffs.
• Our current church culture encourages new churches to be “up and running” as soon as possible, and as a result, seems to discourage a bivocational model for church planters.
• There is an unhealthy preoccupation with numbers, buildings, and programs.