GlocalNet

Part of my job is staying on top of what churches are planting churches, what organizations are resourcing church planters, who’s training and coaching church planters, who is writing books on church planting, and the list goes on.  Here’s what I’ve found - church planting is big business today!  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited to be living in such a time where new churches are being started on a daily basis!  Things, for the most part, are going well for church planting!  We are pre-assessing potential planters in record numbers, we have planters signing up for our Turbo Trainings (next one is March 5 & 6, by the way, registration is open now), and we have planters looking for coaches and mentors.  By the look of things, church planting is exploding!  But when we dig deeper, we see that the numbers just aren’t enough.
In his book, ”The American Church in Crisis”, David Olson paints a reality picture of what we need here in N. America as far as church planting goes.  As great as it seems to be in church planting, things need to be better.  We need more churches planting churches (remember, organizations and denominations don’t plant churches; churches plant churches).  But, it’s like Bob once told me, “It’s not about planting churches, it’s all about making disciples.” He’s absolutely right, it’s not about churches, it’s about the disciple.  But great disciple-making leads to great church planting.
In a survivability report I recently read by Ed Stetzer and Phillip Connor (2007), new church plants with a strong disciple-making program have a greater rate of survivability.  It’s not a great Sunday event, it’s about how well you and your people are making disciples.  One of the first questions I ask a potential planter is, “When was the last time you shared Christ with someone?” Sadly, I hear, “Uhm… well… I think it was...” Wrong answer.  If you’ve done it in the last week, you’d remember it.  If you’ve done it the past 24 hours, you remember it.  Making disciples starts with relationships.  Know your neighbors, know their hurts, their struggles, and pray for them and with them.  Make disciples.

One more thing regarding church planting.  It’s a team endeavor.  It takes both the husband and the wife to make it work.  We are very blessed to have Amy Colon writing the Church Planting Wives blog here on Glocal.net!  If you haven’t read her blog yet, do it now!  It’ll rock your world, I guarantee it!  http://www.glocal.net/cpw