Church planting is not about church planting.

It’s become popular and kind of in style today to see oneself as a church planter – as if it’s the pinnacle of church ministry (it’s not) and something everyone should aspire to (it’s not). It’s become a kind of niche market within Christianity wherein we have networks, conferences, etc., running all the time directed at these leaders (and that’s a good thing. I sit on the National Board of one of these networks myself!).

But the reality is in the mix we sometimes lose sight of what church planting is actually about. It’s not about planting churches, or gathering some Christians in a different spot than they were already gathered. It’s not about Launch Teams and proposals; coaching and preaching or learning how to be a ‘visionary leader.’ All those things are hugely important, but church planting isn’t about church planting as a thing itself.

Church planting is about evangelism.

It’s about reaching people who don’t know Jesus.
It’s people saying lets do a new work so people can come to Christ. It’s about a leader who has a proven track record introducing non-Christian people to Jesus and expanding that out and doing it on a different scale.

This is why C. Peter Wagner has said that “planting new churches is the single greatest evangelistic strategy under heaven.” Meaning beyond special programs, services, sermon series’ of existing churches (which are all needed and great) planting new churches is about about reaching new people that may have never have come to faith in Christ if that new work didn’t exist at all.

That is the white-hot why (to use Simon Sinek’s phrase) behind church planting. Everything else is secondary.

All of this is why it’s best if a church planter has the spiritual make up and gifting of an evangelist (Eph. 4:11-12) not just a leader, a teacher, or a shepherd. This is something rarely talked about in the conferences, networks, and books because we are all so desperate to see more churches started.

But we should not be trying to simply plant a given number of new churches – that’s not actually that hard (we have a number of people come to us monthly who want to start a new church and if we planted with all of them we would planted a lot of churches every year!). But this is not a goal. We should be looking to start effective new churches. Not just new churches.

Churches that will last. Churches that will be healthy. Churches that can effectively reach non-Christians. The make up of an evangelist and the measure of skill the leader of a new church has in this area in particular has been pushed to the margins of the church planting conversation and it’s essential we keep it in focus as we all excitedly and rightfully look to start new works across this amazing country!

Oh Lord that you would raise up evangelists among us in Canada to plant churches. People who can effectively move people, under your purposes, from unbelief to faith. For your glory Lord!