Article
4 Challenges for New Churches to Navigate
Wise preparation and wise sequencing can keep these challenges from controlling the mission.
A recent survey asked more than 700 church planters in years one through four to identify their greatest ministry challenge.
Four needs rose to the top:
- Finding and affording adequate meeting space
- Developing committed leaders
- Achieving financial sustainability
- Reaching the community through evangelism and outreach
Together, these four areas accounted for nearly two-thirds of the valid challenges submitted.
At first glance, these might seem like four different problems. But they’re more connected than we sometimes realize.
A planter secures a facility before developing a strong outreach strategy. The rent creates more financial pressure. Producing a weekly gathering consumes the planter’s time and energy. Because leaders haven’t been developed, the planter carries most of the responsibility. Eventually, outreach suffers, the leadership pipeline stays empty, and the financial pressure keeps growing.
One challenge compounds another.
Church planters probably can’t avoid these pressures completely. There are real challenges that come with planting a church. But wise preparation and wise sequencing can keep these challenges from controlling the mission.
Here are four things I’d encourage every planter to consider.
1. Don’t Overemphasize a Sunday Gathering Too Early
I’m not suggesting that Sunday worship isn’t important. The gathered church matters deeply.
The question isn’t whether the church should gather. The question is what that gathering needs to accomplish in the earliest days of a church plant.
If you don’t yet have a robust outreach and evangelism plan, if you don’t have a discipleship pathway that moves people from onlooker to learner to leader, and if you don’t have a surplus of money, why pay significant rental fees just to put on an event for your “home folk”?
Let your earliest gathering times focus on the good, necessary, and best practices of the missionary task. Worship together. Pray together. Plan together. Prepare together to engage your community with the gospel and make disciples.
In the earliest days of our church plant, we met in a home. Yes, our core team was small enough to do that. For a good while!
We sang. I taught Scripture. We shared a fellowship meal. We prayed. We planned our upcoming outreach efforts. We prepared materials to send to our prayer and financial partners. We worked on resources we’d use as we engaged people in the community.
When we outgrew my living room, we started meeting in a classroom at our sending church.
The building wasn’t in the neighborhood we believed God had called us to reach, but that didn’t matter yet. Sunday wasn’t primarily our opportunity to establish a public presence in the community. Not yet.
Sunday was for worship, prayer, planning, preparation, and the unity of our team.
Then, throughout the week and on Saturdays, we descended on our target community as missionaries.
We weren’t waiting for the church to begin. We were doing the work of planting a church.
A permanent or highly visible gathering space can eventually become a valuable ministry tool. But a facility isn’t the mission, and signing a lease doesn’t create a church.
Facilities should serve the missionary task. They shouldn’t consume the resources and energy required to accomplish it.
2. Don’t Underemphasize Small Groups Until It’s Too Late
Small group ministry isn’t something you add after your Sunday attendance reaches a certain number.
In the earliest stages of planting, small group ministry is your church.
Your core team is a small group. Having lost people in your home for a meal and a gospel conversation is a small group. Gathering prospective team members to cast vision is a small group. Teaching a discipleship class is a small group. Training future leaders is a small group.
If the missionary task is to engage the city with the gospel and make disciples, then small groups must become a priority before the first public launch.
In fact, if you don’t have a clear plan for making disciples through smaller relational environments, I’d encourage you to press pause.
Build the pathway. Test it. Start executing it. Then decide the best timing for a full public launch.
Too many planters make small groups too complicated. I often describe a small group as an experiment in biblical community. When I teach it, I draw something that looks like a science experiment. The solid truth of God’s Word is introduced into the liquid realities of everyday life. But every experiment needs something to hold those elements together. It needs a container or a beaker.
That container is the context of friendship and real relationships. There are other parts to the illustration, but the central idea is simple:
Create space for people to encounter God’s Word in the context of real relationships.
That kind of environment can accomplish several things at once. It can create opportunities for evangelism. It can help new people develop meaningful relationships. It can provide a natural pathway for discipleship. It can reveal emerging leaders. It can help people move from watching the church to participating in the church and eventually leading in the church.
You don’t need to wait until you have a facility to begin building the church.
You need the Word of God, the people of God, real relationships, and a commitment to the mission of God.
3. Don’t Wait Until You Need Leaders to Develop Them
When I planted, I planted alongside two close friends.
We received a surprising amount of pushback. Some people warned us that planting with close friends would eventually end badly. They believed our relationships would complicate the leadership of the church.
Several years later, not only had our friendships survived, but some of the same people were encouraging planters to follow a similar model. Suddenly, people were saying, “You have to plant with a team.”
There’s legitimate wisdom in being careful about leadership structures. Too many competing voices can confuse the vision. Too many cooks can spoil the broth, or something like that. But the best restaurants in the world aren’t operated by one cook working alone. They’re filled with chefs, sous-chefs, servers, hosts, bussers, and all kinds of other people who understand their responsibilities and work together toward a shared outcome.
The more capable leaders you have, the more ministry you can faithfully carry.
“More leaders” doesn’t have to mean more competing visions. With clear direction, shared convictions, and healthy relationships, “more leaders” creates greater capacity.
Too many planters begin without a team. Eager to get moving on what they believe God has called them to do, they strike out alone. In most situations, that’s a terrible move.
The ability to gather a core team requires a gift in a church planter that is manifested in so many different ways. He has to raise funds. He has to invite lost people to explore Jesus. He has to build relationships and partnerships. He has to invite people into shared, meaningful responsibility. He has to teach the Bible clearly. He has to help people understand not only what the church will do, but why the work matters. All of this comes down to one gift: the ability to cast a compelling vision.
If a prospective planter can’t gather a handful of mature believers around the vision God has given him, that should be treated as diagnostic. It doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t called to plant.
It might mean he isn’t ready to act on that calling.
He might need additional training. He might need more experience discipling people. He might need opportunities to lead teams, resolve conflict, communicate vision, and develop others.
By God’s grace, you’re going to reach people.
Those people will need to be discipled. As they mature, they’ll need to discover their gifts and be released to serve the Lord through them.
If you haven’t practiced developing mature believers into leaders, how will you do it with new or immature believers while carrying all the other responsibilities of planting?
Don’t wait until you’re overwhelmed to decide you need leaders.
Start developing them now.
4. Don’t Allow Fixed Costs to Choke the Mission
Financial pressure is one of the most common challenges facing church planters, but the financial challenge isn’t simply about raising more money.
It’s also about sequencing expenses wisely.
Facilities, equipment, signage, children’s ministry resources, technology, and weekly programming can all be legitimate expenses. But every recurring expense increases the amount of money required just to maintain what you’ve built.
Planters need to understand their financial runway, their monthly burn rate, and the difference between expenses that advance the mission and expenses that simply maintain an appearance.
Don’t spend tomorrow’s mission on today’s image.
A church plant doesn’t need to look established before it has established a consistent pattern of evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, and generosity. There is no point in making your church plant “Instagram-ready” if no one shows up. Then you’ll spend too much time trying to find ways to take and post pictures with the angle that hides the empty seats!
Keep fixed costs as low as reasonably possible during the earliest stages. Raise financial partners around a compelling missionary vision, not merely around the need to fund a Sunday service. Teach biblical generosity from the beginning. Build financial margin when possible. Direct resources toward the places where gospel engagement and disciple-making are actually happening.
Financial restraint isn’t necessarily evidence of a small vision.
It can be evidence of wise stewardship.
There may come a moment when renting or purchasing space is the right decision. The ministry may have legitimately outgrown its current environment. (I pray that happens for everyone reading this!) Children’s ministry may be restricted. A stable location may allow the congregation to serve its community more effectively.
But the facility should solve a real ministry limitation.
It shouldn’t become a substitute for outreach, discipleship, leadership development, or spiritual vitality.
A building can’t compensate for the absence of a missionary strategy.
Let the Challenges Prepare You
These four challenges are real.
Finding affordable space can be difficult. Developing leaders requires patience. Financial sustainability takes discipline and partnership. Evangelism is hard work that involves spiritual opposition, cultural barriers, and frequent disappointment.
There aren’t simplistic solutions. But these findings can help us prepare.
Let them reshape your current moment in church planting. Look honestly at whether your schedule, budget, leadership structure, and ministry strategy are centered on engaging people with the gospel and making disciples.
Or, if you haven’t planted yet, let these findings become a sign of things to come. Let them steer you toward the preparation you need before these challenges become your challenges.
Before signing the lease, build a missionary rhythm.
Before launching the service, build a discipleship pathway.
Before you desperately need leaders, begin developing them.
Before your expenses increase, protect the financial margin needed for the mission.
The goal isn’t simply to establish a weekly gathering.
The goal is to engage your community with the gospel, make disciples, develop leaders, and establish a church that can join and multiply God’s mission for years to come.
