Resources in this category support a church planter's walk with God.
J.A. Medders
Faithful and effective church planters must be men of prayer. You can only be faithful and effective when you pray to the Faithful One, to the Effector of gospel ministry. Charles Spurgeon taught his students in his Pastors’ College to...
Noah Oldham
Church planting demands vision and perseverance. As planters work toward the dream of a thriving church, they must also labor in the trenches of ministry. The Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 5, provides invaluable exhortations for pastors and planters in...
Barnabas Piper
As a pastor, it is hard not to constantly critique ministry. Whether we are a lead pastor, a solo pastor, or on a large pastoral team, when we enter a church service, we are nearly always “on”—observing, evaluating, anticipating what...
Kevin Spratt
Great leadership is never a one-size-fits-all formula. This eBook explores the complexities of pastoral leadership through the lens of church planters and revitalizers, uncovering the key competencies that define success in different ministry contexts. Based on a survey of 129...
Ronnie Martin
You were not born a pastor, you were born a person. As Charles Dickens once said, “This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Without receiving yourself as a person,...
Few hurts hurt like church hurt. People join churches expecting a place of love, grace, and safety–a place that looks and feels like the heart of Jesus. Sadly, the reality of sin often messes that up, and people get hurt....
Dan Steel
Appropriate church planting metrics are a thorny topic that many of us struggle with. How do you know if it’s going well? How can you tell? Is it simply a matter of counting? And if so, what do we count?...
I was in the middle of small group when I received a barrage of text messages. People from different spaces in my life were desperately trying to reach me. Their pastor had been fired for a moral failure. They felt...
“You can be impressive, or you can be known, but not both.” — Ray Ortlund Jr. The first time I heard these words, I had an epiphany. The dichotomy presented was the very tension I had so long lived in...
One problem in the church-planting world is that the stories we hear, the books we read, and the people we admire are often anomalies. They are the outliers. The rare success stories capture our hearts, help us dream, and inspire...
The “9 Essentials of a Faithful and Effective Church Planter” is a framework for assessment, training, coaching, and resourcing church planters. Here is a quick overview. Every sport has metrics for what makes an ideal athlete. Speed, wingspan, IQ, mechanics,...
Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods stood alone in their fields as cutthroat geniuses. General Stanley McChrystal, Jocko Willink, James Stockdale and other fine military men offer lessons on leadership in extreme circumstances. Winston Churchill was the Last Lion....
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb Starting a church often feels like something of an adventure. There’s early energy, vision, anticipation, and a belief that God will...
John Piper warned us years ago, “Brothers, we are not professionals.” The leadership-guru-ization of pastoral ministry is a corrosive danger. Piper’s warning isn’t a call to abandon excellence and diligence. It’s a siren, a lighthouse, a bulletin to not approach...
As hard as it is to believe, New Year’s resolutions are about to ramp up again, and to be honest, I’m here for it. The reason why I happen to be pro-New Year’s resolutions is because I like a blank...
There’s an infamous rumor that church planting is a lonely journey. Since 2020, one of my responsibilities has been to oversee Church Planter and Spouse Care for the largest church planting network in North America. For the previous nine years,...
Recently one of our elders, as we were milling about waiting for our monthly meeting to start, looked me in the eye and said, “You know you’re our pastor, right? Like, a real pastor.” Some discernment in him recognized in...
Mark Lee
In 1991, doctors at Stanford University Medical Center removed a 300-pound tumor from the stomach of a 34-year-old woman. The tumor was twice the size of her natural body weight! Reporters asked her the obvious question, “Why did you wait...
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