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3 Shifts to Help Students Get Unstuck

Paul Worcester

If your church plant is located near a college campus, you’ve probably noticed that, more than ever, the average student steps onto campus wrestling with identity issues, anxiety, compromise with sin, shame, isolation, doubt, distraction, and burnout. These issues keep this generation of students stuck in the mud and...
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5 Areas to Preach Grace to Yourself

Jon Kelly

This year marks 10 years since we planted Chicago West Bible Church on the West Side of Chicago. Over the past decade, there have been many lessons learned, many things I’d do differently, and many ways that we’ve grown. But if there is one truth that I wish I could...
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Men’s Ministry and Leadership Development

Barnabas Piper

One of the priorities of every church, and especially every church plant, that wants to maintain long-term health should be developing leaders.   Church plants often launch with a lead pastor and a core team but without elders or mature leaders, so it is particularly...
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4 Challenges for New Churches to Navigate

Noah Oldham

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...
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Why You Shouldn’t Be a Covocational Pastor

Phil Thompson

Pastoring is full of thrilling highs and depressing lows. One of those lows came as my phone vibrated one evening.   Looking into the glow of my device, I read the email of a member who was stepping away from our church at...
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3 Ways to Be an Upside-Down Leader

Ronnie Martin

We rightly make much of the “upside-down” nature of God’s kingdom. Based on the Sermon on the Mount, this speaks to the self-glorifying power and pride that characterize the kingdom of the world, as opposed to the humble, servant-oriented ways...
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3 Principles for Meaningful Men’s Ministry

Barnabas Piper

Men’s ministry, especially when starting out in a church plant, needs a clear trajectory and culture.   It needs to have an objective: what is this ministry for? If the objective is to draw men nearer to Jesus and closer to one another (as...
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Church Branding Isn’t Church Planting

Mason Ballard

When we started church planting, we were taught to differentiate ourselves from other churches. Every church has the Great Commandment and the Great Commission—why does your church need to exist? We were taught to craft a vision statement to highlight the uniqueness of the church we were planting.   I’m going...
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Mid-Life Planting: Staying Faithful When the Honeymoon Is Over

Dan Steel

Over the last decade, I’ve wrestled a few times with what it means to serve faithfully in our midlife. I turn fifty (fifty!?) next year, and I’ve been in paid ministry for over twenty years—long enough to have watched people...
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7 Organizational Leadership Questions for Church Planters

Jon Kelly

As a church grows numerically, more organizational leadership skills are required. Most church planters think like missionaries and love the flock as faithful pastors. But beyond preaching and shepherding, there is a need for the planter to think more broadly, strategically, and organizationally.  In the early...
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The Gospel vs. Legalism in Men’s Ministry

Barnabas Piper

Every good pastor and church planter wants to see men grow–grow in their faith, grow in character, grow in discipline, grow in maturity. We want to see them grow as husbands, or in readiness to be husbands. We want to...
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How to Design a Sunday Morning Service

Mason Ballard

When we started planting our church, I intuitively knew what the worship service would look like. We’ll sing, we’ll preach, and we’ll pray. What else would we do? We just had to figure out how many songs, what type of songs, when to do an offering, and how to transition from one thing to...
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Planter, Get Low Before the Lord

Noah Oldham

There are several things in life that have a way of exposing what is really in you. Church planting might be at the top of that list.   Even if you’re really good at masking the truth, striking out on the path to plant a...
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When Culture Trumps Strategy

Dan Steel

I can think of too many people—good, sincere, kind, sacrificial core team members—who didn’t just leave a church plant, but eventually seemed to walk away from the faith altogether. Not because they stopped believing the gospel intellectually, but because of...
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Your Church Should Be Stronger Than You

Will Basham

One of the most common questions I get asked at the church I lead in Appalachia is, “Why do you have so many pastors?” I usually jovially answer, “Because of my incompetence.” (The benefit of elder plurality is another article for another day.) That...
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What Is Covocational Church Planting?

A covocational church planter is one whose primary vocation is in the marketplace and who is also called to start a church. Rather than viewing work outside the church as secondary or provisional, covocational leaders understand their marketplace vocation as an essential part of...
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Evangelism as Discipline

Paul Worcester

When I started to grasp the urgency of our need to share the gospel, I began attempting to share Christ, but I only did so sporadically. I would read a book on evangelism, get all fired up, and go share with a bunch of...
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The Planter Without a Platform

Dan Steel

There is an unwritten rule in our church-planting culture: find the right person, and the church will follow. The “right” person?   The right person is winsome, visionary, a gifted communicator—an all-round leader who more than capably reads Scripture, the room,...