The current "strategy forces the church planter to focus on attracting givers more than on evangelizing lost people"

As a church planter raising support, I really appreciated this article. In one of the churches we presented our ministry in, the pastor asked us to share the process of planting a church. I began by saying the first step was for the church planter to figure out how to support his family. That support can come from multiple sources: perhaps he is independently wealthy and can live off investments, perhaps he can raise support from other churches and individuals, perhaps he will be bi-vocational, or perhaps it will be a combination- regardless he must be able to make ends meet in order to have a good testimony in the community he is ministering to.

We are currently in the process of raising some support while being bi-vocational. We are already on the field (I resigned my pastorate to move and plant a church in Worthing, SD just south of Sioux Falls along the I-29 corridor). As we raise support, I am also trying to establish a business (I am a self employed carpenter/handyman). My hope is that the work will give us some further contacts, but it also means that our goals for a realistic time table are a bit longer than some would like, because we do need balance ministry here (we are already on the field) with ministry of deputation, as well as bi-vocational work to pay the bills. We are in a town with a lot of young families, but no established church meeting on Sunday mornings. I have been leading a Bible study on Monday nights with about 13 adults who regularly attend, but we want to branch out more and do more Bible studies to reach more potential converts and believers who are committed to starting a new church. Our January prayer letter may give you a more personal perspective on the whole process. You can read it below:

Jerry and Crystal Miller Worthing, SD

January 2015 Prayer Letter

In 2014, we put on about 19,0000 miles for deputation and presented our ministry in 46 different churches in addition to the 2 weeks we spent working at a Bible Camp. Needless to say, it was a busy year.

This year we are finding that we must contact churches farther away in order to schedule meetings. That often means missing 3 days of work, since we would have to travel back on Monday instead of Sunday night (if we can get home by 2 a.m. I will drive back Sunday). As we have looked at this challenge we realize that this may not be the best stewardship of our time and thus we have begun to reevaluate our support goals. We had hoped to get to 60% and then tentmake for the other 40%. I was recently able to purchase a manlift for carpentry work and that should allow me to make more per hour.

Our new goal is 40% support and we are already at about 30%. Thus we plan a lighter deputation schedule through this next year- using some of the extra time to establish some business leads so that the carpentry can support us more (it takes a while to establish a business just like it takes a while to establish a church. Current customers are our best advertisers but they are also great contacts in the community for ministry).

Our hopes are that by this fall we can shift our focus from deputation ministry to local ministry. That is not to imply that we have not been doing local ministry already. Yet hours and days are spent just finding churches to send information packets to, and then more days spent trying to contact pastors to line up meetings. That does not even include the time spent on the road traveling.

Deputation has been a real blessing, but our heart is in Worthing, South Dakota. Please pray that God provides for us and that we will be able to find the proper balance between ministry and manual labor. Pray as well that the carpentry work will open many doors to further ministry and that our final support would come.

Praises:

-Crystal’s health has improved greatly (diet changes and progesterone supplements)

-Carpentry work through the winter and new equipment for the work

-Safety in Travel

-Good heath even when others had the flu.

-Pledges to increase our support to nearly 30%

Prayer:

-That we might reach 40% support by this fall

-Wisdom for printing up brochures to promote the church plant in our community (We have not canvassed the community yet because our support level had not been high enough to have the time to follow up on contacts that we would make if we did canvas. So much time has been spent working, traveling, and following up on the contacts we already have)

-Carpentry Work- That it would provide both revenue and ministry opportunities

-That God would use the newspaper article for His glory

-Strength for travel (staying awake driving etc)

-More contacts in Worthing-

-That we would have a good testimony and glorify God

-Laborers for the harvest as unbelievers believe and believers are taught to be

faithful in serving our Great Savior

Contact info: Jerry and Crystal Miller

303 S Louise Ave

Worthing, SD 57077

605-372-0060

Southtownchurch.com

Sending Church:

Faith Baptist Church Albert Lea, MN

Continental Baptist Missions

11650 Northland Drive NE
Rockford, MI 49341

(616) 863-2226

JD, thanks for your insights. As someone who is interested in doing a bi-vocational church plant in the future it was helpful.

If I read you right you are in a town with no church. You meet on Mondays with 13 people with a Bible study. Why don’t you just start the church and stop messing around? Just do it. I am not judging, just asking. Do it man. What you waiting for?

Mark, good question. There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors and one of the themes I have heard over and over again from those with much more experience than I have in church planting is to not be in too much of a hurry to launch the church plant. Consider a visitor walking into a Bible study with 13 adults and 5 children (that is what we had last Monday). Their response would be, “wow, this is a good sized Bible study.” Now imagine that same visitor walking into church on Sunday morning and only seeing ten people total (realize everyone will not be there every week). Their response would likely be to question if this is really a viable church that is here for the long term. The numbers that I keep hearing are that a church plant is much more successful if it can start with 30-40 people. That does not mean that churches that are currently under that number should give up, it just means that if you can start there, it is usually a great advantage.

Further, just because someone comes to a Bible study does not mean that they are committed to being a part of a church plant. The Bible study phase gives people time to grow in their faith and to learn what the church believes before they commit. Our February prayer letter actually dealt with your very question. I do not want to share all my prayer letters, but I think this pertains, so here it is:

Jerry and Crystal Miller Worthing, SD

February 2015 Prayer Letter

Our world has changed over the past several decades and so has church planting. In past years church planters would show up in a community, start holding services, and pray that people would come. They would often start church with just their own families and then grow from there. That model seldom works today.

Today churches typically grow out of Bible studies. This gives the church planter time to let the people know the direction the church will be going before it even starts and it gives the people time to know it they are really committed to the new church plant and the beliefs that the new church will hold. This often takes years, rather than months.

Jerry has been leading Bible studies here in Worthing, and there were 20 people attending this last week. This was a record attendance, since we have had about 13 adults who regularly attend and not everyone is there every week. Further, even the regular attenders are still sorting out how committed they would be to the new church plant.

We still have not promoted the church plant on a wide scale in Worthing (no mailings literature distribution, etc). The reason we have not done this yet is because we have been traveling on deputation to raise financial support. We were gone most weekends and during the week, time was spent working a “secular” job, setting up future meetings, and preparing for Bible study. That does not leave much time to follow up on contacts we would make through mass mailings etc.

If all our promised support comes in, we should be around 31.5%. Once we reach 40% we plan to stop deputation and tentmake (carpentry) for the other 60%. (We are praying that tentmaking provides great contacts in the community as well.) That would then free up time to start actively promoting the church plant in Worthing. That does not mean, however, that we would plan to start church at that time. It simply means that we would more aggressively promote the Bible studies with the purpose of starting a church and that we would use these Bible studies as a venue to seek out those who are really committed to seeing Southtown Baptist Church established in Worthing, SD.

On a more personal note, Crystal’s health has greatly improved. We are thankful for all who have been praying for her and are especially thankful for God’s grace in allowing her to feel so much better.

[JD Miller]

Mark, good question. There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors and one of the themes I have heard over and over again from those with much more experience than I have in church planting is to not be in too much of a hurry to launch the church plant. Consider a visitor walking into a Bible study with 13 adults and 5 children (that is what we had last Monday). Their response would be, “wow, this is a good sized Bible study.” Now imagine that same visitor walking into church on Sunday morning and only seeing ten people total (realize everyone will not be there every week). Their response would likely be to question if this is really a viable church that is here for the long term. The numbers that I keep hearing are that a church plant is much more successful if it can start with 30-40 people. That does not mean that churches that are currently under that number should give up, it just means that if you can start there, it is usually a great advantage.

I don’t agree with that notion. The church should be planted as soon as you have a few people willing to commit to a church planting ministry. A Bible study is unlikely to grow much beyond 13 or so people the nature of the meeting is that once the group starts getting any bigger than that, the “Bible study” informality and small group feel is lost.

As for people wonder if you are there for the long term, they will wonder that until you have your own building. And even then… we had a couple visit once after we had moved into our building. They had a couple of small children and at that point the youngsters we had were all in their teens. They asked me what sort of ministry we had for young children. I replied, “Well, if you were to start attending, we’d start one.” I thought it was an honest answer, but they didn’t come back.

We are now blessed with some little ones, which is a great blessing, but if we had waited till we had 30-40 people to start the church, we would have waited twenty years.

So my advice, start already (as long as you have some seriously committed people to start with.)

Don wrote:

A Bible study is unlikely to grow much beyond 13 or so people the nature of the meeting is that once the group starts getting any bigger than that, the “Bible study” informality and small group feel is lost.

That is why we want to do multiple Bible studies. Multiple church planting agencies have given the same advice. If a church has not grown to 30 people in 20 years, that does not necessarily mean it could not have gotten to that number in the beginning. Understand that this is opinion based on some of the latest church planting research, but many believe that some churches actually stay small because they started small and that once a church reaches the 30-40 threshold, then they are positioned to grow and have a greater impact on their community. Of course demographics of a specific location should be considered and not every situation is the same.

Consider the Jewish synagogue. They were not allowed to organize a synagogue until they had 10 wage earning males. If you add in the wives and children of these men and then consider that there will likely be retired folks and others who are not wage earners, then you will likely be around that 30-40 people.

In our specific town, a Church of God pastor tried to establish a work with just a few people. He still has a sign in his front yard and a newspaper add advertising his church, but I have talked to him and he is basically just doing chaplaincy work in local hospitals and is really not doing much with the church. I do not know of anyone who even goes there for church, so I do not consider them an established church even though they have been trying for years.

One of the things I have heard over and over from other church planters is that what works in one place may not work in another. I hope I did not give the impression that the way we are doing it is the only way, but I also hope this helps others to better understand the reasons for our approach.

Regarding the 10 family rule for a synagogue, that allows (with tithing) the pastor of such a church to live at about the standard of living of the congregants if there is not a huge capital (building) expense. It’s a model that I’m told has worked well for house churches in Japan.

[JD Miller]

That is why we want to do multiple Bible studies.

Good, but then you must merge that into a collective group - only way to do that is hold regular services and fellowship gatherings (some would call this “church”!!)

[JD Miller]

Multiple church planting agencies have given the same advice. If a church has not grown to 30 people in 20 years, that does not necessarily mean it could not have gotten to that number in the beginning. Understand that this is opinion based on some of the latest church planting research, but many believe that some churches actually stay small because they started small and that once a church reaches the 30-40 threshold, then they are positioned to grow and have a greater impact on their community. Of course demographics of a specific location should be considered and not every situation is the same.

I don’t believe this. Doesn’t sound like the New Testament to me. A pox on researchers!

Your example of the CoG guy doesn’t really hold. He is doing nothing, ergo, nothing happens.

But even in a group less than 40, you need to have accountability and a discipline structure. Very difficult to do that with ad hoc Bible studies. What you need is for people to commit to a local church, submit to its discipline, and keep pushing forward.

I’ve been involved in 2 urban church plants. The first one established the church with about 10-12 people in a store front back in 1989. The church has grown to about 60 people and still isn’t self supported. The second church began with a core group of 40-50 people after about 5 years of laying a foundation with relationship-building in the community and multiple Bible studies. They officially launched 4 years ago last Easter and now the church if fully self-supporting with about 130-150 people.

Both churches were established in impoverished urban communities, yet one laid a stronger foundation before it officially became a church. Keep it up JD! You’re on the right track!

Anecdotal evidence wins again!

Not to be too sarcastic, but, quite frankly, this proves nothing. The bottom line to me is that Scripture doesn’t seem to be on your side (not that this is a critical issue like the virgin birth!!, etc). People need the accountability of a church. I don’t see how you can actually minister to them properly while denying that accountability.

Don,

The first five years when we were laying the foundation, the majority of people that we were building relationships and doing bilbe study with were not Christians. They weren’t ready to be part of a church because they weren’t believers. I would say that Scripture is on my side, unless you take a position where the members of the church can be made up of non-Christians.

Perhaps JD could enlighten us on the makeup of his Bible Study group. Obviously if it is mostly unbelievers, then you can’t form a church from them. However, as soon as you win some folks to Christ, or have Christians participating, they have spiritual needs that can only be filled as a function of a local church. So they ought to form a local church and submit to its discipline.

Thanks Joel. Not only do we desire to reach unbelievers, but we desire to reach the under discipled. I do not want to limit the potential members to those who just believe everything I tell them after meeting them just a few times or to people who already know what they believe. I want Bereans, but in order to be Bereans, they first need to be taught the scripture and how to study the scriptures. This way we get a core group who have already been taught. Consider the New Testament and the Apostle Paul’s ministry. As I read the book of Acts, we see that churches were eventually established, but we do not necessarily see that elders were appointed right away, so it is reading the white area between the lines to assume that churches were established in every location where the gospel was preached and people believed. Further many of the churches seem to have grown out of the already established synagogues as the Jewish believers of those assemblies realized Christ was the long awaited Messiah.

Don wrote in response to multiple Bible studies:

Good, but then you must merge that into a collective group - only way to do that is hold regular services and fellowship gatherings (some would call this “church”!!)

Exactly! That is what we eventually plan to do, but there are steps along that road. Part of the challenge however is to define when the group is actually a church. I believe that a big part of that is being organized with committed members. The big question of this thread seems to be, “at what point do we say we have enough people committed to take that next step forward.” Don would obviously do it much differently than I would. I praise the Lord for those who faithfully serve our great God and do things a bit differently than I would, but I do take issue with those who claim Biblical authority for their position when that authority does not exist.

As far as the question about the makeup of the Bible study- we have had Bible studies with both believers and unbelievers, but we also must take into account that until a believer is discipled, he will not understand the need to be under the accountablility of a local church. Further we are ministering to a generation that is quite mistrustful of those around them and are resistant to commit to anything too quickly. We could argue until we are blue in the face that this generation should be different, or we can patiently minister to them and bring them to maturity through careful teaching.

A final question for Don. Would it be wrong for a member of your church to hold Bible studies with his neighbors if those neighbors were not members of your church and were not yet ready to join?

First, to answer JD’s last:

Would it be wrong for a member of your church to hold Bible studies with his neighbors if those neighbors were not members of your church and were not yet ready to join?

No, of course not, I would be happy for them to do so. However those won to faith in such a study should be steered into a local church as a key step of discipleship. You couldn’t just continue on blithely with some professed convert who refused to join. The suspicion of our culture might be real, but it must be confronted and overcome by the patient teaching of the Scripture and personal challenge to the individual.

Say someone is converted in such a Bible study, or at least professes to be. They continue on, happy to be part of a Bible study, but refuse to be baptized and/or join the church, and perhaps even refuse to attend regularly. What then? Do you just carry on without calling them to account? Accept their profession when they refuse to obey the Scriptures?

I don’t actually see much of a gap between church planting and organization in the book of Acts. See the first missionary journey, for example. On the homeward bound leg, they appointed elders in every place. The first plays they did that (Lystra, Derbe) would be barely a few weeks old.

However, the bottom line to me is that the assumption that you wait until you have 40 committed members is a) doing those people a disservice in the meantime and b) not according to NT practice. I will concede that we can read the NT somewhat differently on point b, but I don’t think a lengthy delay is appropriate.

As I said above, I don’t think this is a matter of fundamental doctrine, so we don’t need unanimity here, but I am ready to state my views on it as we have done here. Don’t need to add too much to this, unless there are other questions…

One thing that kind of popped out to me from this exchange is that some churches, particularly in small towns, like here in the north east, may never grow large enough to support the kind of infrastructure that we typically think of - building, pews, hymnals, etc. I’ve been in a few places where that was the case.

Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 28 was to go make disciples. I don’t think that it means, though, that making disciples will result in a formal church organization. You can still conduct baptize and church discipline (in line with Matthew 18) without a building, and as long as you aren’t moving your study from place to place every week, people will know where to go.
Don asked:

Say someone is converted in such a Bible study, or at least professes to be. They continue on, happy to be part of a Bible study, but refuse to be baptized and/or join the church, and perhaps even refuse to attend regularly. What then? Do you just carry on without calling them to account? Accept their profession when they refuse to obey the Scriptures?

I think you treat them as a nonbeliever and move on, in keeping with Matthew 13:1-8, 24-30, and 47-50. Not everyone who comes and is interested in the gospel. Just keep working with the people who hear Jesus’ voice and come to Him (John 10:24-30).

If I can make one suggestion to JD and other planters, I would encourage you to create a Facebook page for your church plant. We’re getting our church FB page off the ground now, and I’m seeing some really good results from that only two months into the project. We have a formal, public page for the world and then a private group for members and attendees - you can PM me if you want some help with that. It’s pretty easy to do, and that might help you find some more missionary support because you will have something to ‘show’ instead of just a mileage log. People will get more excited about your work when they see what you are doing and the results.