110 Ways to Create a Church Planting Culture in Any Church
Almost every pastor I know has a desire to lead a church planting church. This aspiration is normal for pastors in our day. What’s unusual is to see pastors who have great clarity on how to move from where their church is to where they want it to be in regard to church planting. Here are 110 simple ideas to get started. My guess, if most are already doing some of these things, I’d certainly not suggest you try to do them all at once. Consider this a huge pot-luck buffet. Pick your favorite fried chicken, homemade casserole, and dessert and enjoy! Since a list of 110 items can be overwhelming, I’ve attempted to categorize them in various areas of ministry.
PRAYER
1. Reach out to Pillar staff or your local association leaders and ask for the names and contact information for planters in your area and commit to praying for them by name.
2. Take all of the impromptu opportunities you are given to lead in prayer to appeal to church planting needs. Even as you pray for needs in your own church, add in prayers for needs that you are aware of in other congregations.
3. Use church prayer meetings to take a block of time to pray for specific planters and their needs and, if possible, invite the planters to join you for the meeting (either in person or via technology) so they can experience the blessing of having others pray for them.
4. Train yourself to use discretionary minutes (all of those little 5 minute chunks of time when we are waiting to do whatever’s next) and send a quick message to a church planter about a way you are praying for them or a Scripture that might encourage them in the work.
5. Use your internal communication tool (Slack, Basecamp, text, etc.) to pass on to the other pastors in your church any needs you are aware of regarding prayer for church planters.
6. Stop what you are doing (like leading a meeting) and voice a prayer for a planter in need as you learn of a concern.
7. Keep a running list of ways you are praying and spin back to someone you’ve prayed for and ask them for an update. Not only will this encourage you as you read of answered prayer, but it also encourages the planter that you really are invested in praying for them.
8. Use church-wide meetings to invite the church to pray for opportunities to be involved in the work of planting.
9. Call a planter once a week to check in and pray together. This works best if you set a clear time in your schedule that you train yourself to block off time each week.
10. Reach out to a church planter or two and ask them if they’d be willing to pray for you and for your church. By inviting prayer, we model that it’s not just planters that need prayer and support but that the planter has something to give to existing churches as well.
MEETINGS
11. Spend time in every staff, deacon, or pastor meeting praying for the needs of at least one church plant/church planter.
12. Invite planters to attend staff or elder meetings to observe what you do and for your staff or pastors to meet planters and hear about their work.
13. Each time your pastors meet, highlight the work of a church planter and pray for them by name.
14. Show up at annual conferences, like the Pillar Network Unite Conference, so you can meet other church planters and form relationships.
15. Connect with your local Pillar regional meeting and bring someone from your church with you to observe what God is doing through church planters.
16. Offer to host an area-wide church planting meeting.
17. Volunteer to serve on church planting committees with your state or local association.
18. Host a one-day event designed to serve planters in an area of need, such as helping them develop preaching skills.
19. Make sure that each partner church plant has a pastor who is assigned to reach out to them and report back on their health and work at pastor’s meetings.
20. Offer to pay for a planting team to attend a training event, such as a 9Marks Weekender.
PREACHING
21. Take time to connect the themes of discipleship, evangelism, and church planting so that your listeners see church planting as a natural outworking of the life of God’s people
22. Preach Acts and the Epistles regularly and highlight the relationship of church planting to the themes of each of those books.
23. Create an application grid for your sermons where you chart how you are applying the passage each week. Make sure that you are regularly illustrating the passage by pointing to the work of church planting, especially in passages that are overtly about ecclesiology or missions.
24. Highlight or illustrate sermon truths using other churches in your area who are modeling healthy work in evangelism, disciple-making, and church planting.
25. Speak well of other pastors and churches any time you can in a sermon.
26. Consider taking a sermon a year and selecting a text that highlights church planting and doing an exposition of that passage and calling people to be about the work of planting.
27. Allow church planters who you partner with to preach and use their sermon as a chance to celebrate the work God is doing through them. If you don’t partner with a planter already, reach out to a pastor that you trust and get a quality recommendation of someone who would be faithful in the pulpit.
28. Take as many Sundays as are wise to you and your elders and offer to preach at a sister church plant.
29. Read good books on missions and church planting in an effort to expand your insight into the missiological nature of Scripture.
30. Listen to a sermon from a church planter in your area and reach out to give encouragement.
SUNDAYS
31. Find ways to use church announcements to connect the events of the church to the mission of the church in terms of multiplication.
32. Create a spot in every Sunday service to highlight a specific church plant/planter. The more people connect real people to the work (use pictures), the more apt they are to become passionate about the work themselves.
33. Use whatever method you have for collecting an offering to point out how the money that is given to the church is aiding in the work of church planting around the world.
34. Take time to recognize and honor church planters who visit with you on a Sunday (for example, a church planter who is in town because his child is attending a local college). Even if you did not anticipate their attendance, make sure you honor them and their work.
35. Invite anyone preparing to plant a church to share in a Sunday school class or small group.
36. Use the post-Sunday afternoon slumber to send a text or two to church planters and encourage them to persevere, knowing that many times Sunday afternoons are times when planters can become easily discouraged.
37. When you have a free Sunday (like on vacation) visit a church plant in a nearby area and encourage your members to do the same.
38. Use any Sunday School classes or Bible studies to ask the class to adopt a church planter and pray for them and their needs each week.
39. Use your children’s ministry content to highlight church planting and design crafts or take-home pieces to show off the work of church planting so kids discuss what they learned with their parents.
40. Ask members to use a periodic Sunday (like 5th Sundays) to visit an area church plant and seek out the leaders to share words of encouragement.
FINANCES
41. Work specific church plants into your annual budget. Rather than merely giving to missions as a category, put the actual names of church plants into your budget so your church sees how their money (however small) is going to support the work of actual churches.
42. Give a set percentage to the Pillar Network and use church-wide meetings to inform the congregation on how Pillar is a catalyst for the work of planting.
43. Use extra resources to bless a planter—if you have a great budget month (or year) take some surplus money to send date night gift cards to planters or pay for them to get away for a weekend.
44. Give personal resources (i.e. from the pastor’s personal ministry fund) to support the work of church planting either through ongoing, monthly gifts, or periodic ways of supporting the work.
45. Find multiple ways to thread church planting into your budget. Not only give to plants, but consider how you might use resources to help your members take short-term trips to a church plant or how you might use your technology budget to buy a Logos subscription for another church planter.
46. Consider collecting a special offering at least once a year and using that money to fund church plants and church planting organizations.
47. Provide resources for a planter to attend the Unite Conference who otherwise could not.
48. Ask specific groups (like small groups or Sunday School classes) to adopt a church planter and send them a care package on big days. In particular, pay attention to kid’s birthdays and wedding anniversaries and ask for specific gifts that might show personal care.
49. Encourage church members to pursue practical ways of blessing church planters and team members, like sending cards/gift cards around the holidays.
50. Speak with members who are known to be generous and encourage them to invest in the work of planting by linking them directly to partners.
CARE
51. Form a mentorship relationship with one church planter. Attempt to meet in person at least once a month to hear about the work. Think less about coaching them in their work and more about listening and friendship.
52. When you form a partnership with a planter, find a key couple or group in the church who will agree to hold the rope for that planting couple by checking in with them at least once a month and relaying their needs to the pastors.
53. Reach out to planters at big moments – remember birthdays (it’s easy to put those in your calendar) or the launch day of their church and reach out to them to let them to celebrate.
54. Find a planter and his wife and set up a double date with them and you and your wife. Go to dinner, with a focus to build connections between the wives that could result in genuine friendships.
55. Open your home – if planters are in the area or if they visit your area, have them over for dinner or open a spare bedroom and let them stay for a night (or more). If you don’t have room, reach out to church members and ask them to host planters who are passing through.
56. Set a day and time each month where you carve out 2 hours to call a few church planters, ask them how they are doing, and pray for them on the call.
57. For planters in your area, offer to take them with you to area meetings or events where you might be able to advocate for them with existing pastors in the area.
58. Any time you learn of suffering, reach out to the planter directly and rally the church to love and support the way you would hurting church members.
59. When you outgrow supplies (children’s equipment, sound system, etc.), consider handing down those items to church plants.
60. Purchase equipment (like a trailer or back up sound system or bounce houses for kids events) that you loan to church plants for an event or for a season.
MEMBERSHIP
61. Connect former members – anytime you have a member move to a new location, make sure you ask about good church plants in the area and encourage them to consider joining them. Since these people will still have relationships with people in your church, these stories of planting will trickle back into the church at large.
62. Actively invite, even ask, current church members to join a church plant in the area if you sense they would be an asset to the plant or if they live in the area near the plant or even if you think they may benefit spiritually from the fresh start and new service that would come through a church plant.
63. Offer to help a church planter think through critical membership matters, especially regarding delicate shepherding issues or church discipline. Many times planters are walking through this for the first time and could really use an extra set of eyes and ears.
64. Consider sending a team to help a church plant for a pre-determined period of time (think loaner members) in order to create some critical mass and energy for a new church.
65. Talk to faithful pastors in the area of the church plant in order to advocate for the planter and position him as a friend to the churches in the area.
66. Send workers who can do simple, physical projects that will help the plant like loading and unloading a trailer or setting up the children’s ministry or wiring a sound system.
67. Give away new members materials and other core documents that planters could use to design their own internal tools (see also the Pillar Network Resource page for many of these materials).
68. Attend a church planting membership class and give the planter feedback on the ways he presents the vision and values of the church.
69. Celebrate key milestones in the life of a church plant, such as when they first covenant together as members.
70. Meet with a church planter following and/or during their first practice of church discipline to help him externally process what went well and what he would do differently (since this practice is one of the early acts that solidifies the health of the church).
TECHNOLOGY
71. Tell stories - As you begin to partner, even if it’s super small ways that you engage, make sure the church hears about how you were involved in planting and what God did through that investment.
72. Connect faces, names, and plants – people are more apt to pray, give, and serve church plants if they know people and hear actual stories of their work.
73. Leverage digital technology - each pastor/church will have different convictions here, but if you have web or social media presence as a church, make sure you use those to highlight the work of planters and the connection your church has to the work.
74. Put trusted plants in the area on your church website as a way of encouraging members to consider these plants if they live close to the planting location.
75. If your church is a recent plant, post a video on the church website tracing the history of the plant from inception to present so that new people can connect the church they are presently experiencing to the outworking of church planting.
76. Take any tools that you develop and pass them on to planters so they aren’t starting from scratch in developing resources they might need.
77. If you, as a pastor, use social media, make it a priority to brag on the work of good church planters around the world.
78. Make it easy for people to give online and designate support for your church’s mission offering and/or church planting partners.
79. Pick a set time each day to set an alarm and stop to pray for planting work. A common model of this is paired with Luke 10:2 and the need for laborers for the harvest field, so leaders set an alarm at 10:02am each day and pray.
80. Use Zoom or Facetime to call a planter during a staff meeting or pastor’s meeting and chat with a planter personally. There’s something to seeing the face of someone live that better connects you to them and their work.
FACILITIES
81. Use the walls of your church building to highlight the work and needs of church plants.
82. Help a church planter think through meeting locations for the plant since this is likely one of the biggest pressure points planters face. Where possible, leverage your influence in the city to open doors for planters to secure a meeting space.
83. Take one Sunday to highlight church planting by bringing in a church planter and having him preach for you.
84. Use your church building to provide an office or meeting space for a church plant in your area (consider doing this even with churches that are not exact matches to yours in terms of ecclesiology).
85. Host a joint Sunday service with a church plant in your area.
86. Take a special day, like Good Friday, and partner with a plant to provide a space for worship and prayer for both churches.
87. If you outgrow your space or consider selling your building, think about how you might give your space to a planter.
88. Consider how facilities stabilize a plant, and consider budgeting additional resources to help a planter purchase a building than providing smaller amounts of support spread out over many months.
89. If a planter inherits an old building (which is common), create service days to tackle projects that would take the planting team months to accomplish.
90. Allow church plants to hold weekly services in your building at another time than when your church gathers, or even at the same time in another part of the building.
INTERNSHIPS / RESIDENCIES / STAFF
91. Allocate money for a church planting resident who needs a short on-ramp to planting. Providing a 12-month salary at your church could allow him to help your church in an area of ministry, get acclimated to your city, and build a team for planting.
92. Consider creating a staff role (like youth ministry) that you know is going to be a 2-3 year person who will plant at the end of that time.
93. Develop a clear 1-2 year residency plan that you can make available to planters in your area, even if they are not members of your church.
94. Add a church planter to your staff team and consider them a missionary extension of the existing staff for the sake of community and connection.
95. Offer small seminars designed to connect with young leaders who feel compelled/called to the work of church planting.
96. Assess current pastoral staff to see if someone in an associate role should be encouraged to consider church planting.
97. Provide summer internships (like Summerlink) designed to give students some exposure to the work.
98. Utilize the Pillar Network cohorts to provide structure to internship or residency models.
99. Put together a bibliography of the books that you would want a church planter to read and have those readily available to give to planters.
100. Connect with sister churches who might have more access to future leaders and let them know of internships or residencies that your church has available.
Short-Term Trips
101. Create a manageable rhythm of visiting church planting partners at least once every three years.
102. Design trips such that they are more about encouraging planters than adding work to them in terms of creating work for teams to do or managing large groups in travel/logistics.
103. Consider how to get pastors to visit plants since many feel high value when a pastor takes time to visit and this allows time for the planter and existing pastor to talk more about the work.
104. If your church sends a new church plant/planter, always try to get someone on the ground to visit them within the first year on the field.
105. Use whatever your church/pastors do well (such as marriage conferences or VBS/soccer camp) to bless church planters. In other words, take something you’ve done well at your church and put it on the road in another place.
106. Incentivize younger members going on short-term trips with the prayer that God would call them into the work as they are exposed to planting.
107. Diversify the types of trips that you plan so you give people exposure to work domestically and internationally and in various contexts.
108. Invite planters to take a short-term trip to your church to help you in some area of the work.
109. Both in-person and online, share the stories of the fruit of church planting trips to the broader church and invite them to consider trips in the future.
110. Take pictures and videos while on short-term trips and share those while away and save those files to use in the future to promote upcoming trips.
