Church Planting Entrepreneurs

As mentioned in my previous post, the MTS Challenge Conference had a session run by Phillip Jensen on “Church Planting Entrepreneurs”. Church planting is a bit of a hot topic since Driscoll has been in town, and Reimer asked me to give a little bit more info.

Below are my summarised notes:

First point – a church planter leads a church – therefore he must be a man and be a biblical leader.

Questions:

1. What is church? A gathering of God’s people to hear the word of God
2. Why church planting? We need more churches and new churches if we are going to fit in all the people we plan to evangelise. New, small churches are the best way forward. We need big churches, but we need MORE churches.
3. What is an entrepreneur? A risk-taker who starts up and runs a new business. Start with yourself, read a bible with a few others, start a bible study, grow to a small church service. Starting with 50 people from another congregation is NOT entrepreneurial church planting. It is stealing other churches members.
4. Where do I get the money from? You work! Make tents! If you are starting small, you don’t need to be full-time at first. Build-up.
5. How do I know if I am an entrepreneur? Do you take initiative? Do you start things? Are you willing to have a go? Are you afraid to fail? Flexible? Risk taker? Are you wealing to sacrifice and scavenge to make it work? If you spend all your time asking, “how do I do this?” or “we don’t have enough resources for this” then chances are you’re not an entrepreneur.
6. Am I allowed to plant a church? Entrepreneurs don’t ask this question! Just do it!
7. A point – Entrepreneurial Church Planters need to be Heightened Evangelistic Tentmakers. We have enough churches for the people who are already Christian! We need to get out in the pagan mission field.
8. Denominated or Independent? Denominated – there are benefits that outweigh the costs. For instance, when you are gone, how do you find the next minister? Who owns any property the church acquires, continuation, etc. Which denomination? Doesn’t matter! Phillip can introduce you to all the relevant people!
9. Are you going to pastor this congregation, or are you going to be a church planter? It’s one or the other. Will you move on in 5 years and start again. An effective church planter could plant a dozen churches in their lifetime.

Start now! Be a missionary in your local area. Tell people the gospel! Do it with MTS and you can make sure you do it properly. Go see Phillip and he will get you started!

What do you think?