Where Have All The Church Planters Gone?

I have several friends that are faculty at seminaries/Christian colleges and some that are on staff in churches near these institutions. When I was in the position that I previously held at my former church, I would recruit out of these seminaries for more church planter candidates. Their reply to me, no matter the geographical location, was “We don’t have any.” I would reply, “Where have all the church planters gone?”. They had various theories but no one could come to anything conclusive. In my experience, there are two major issues that have led to declining numbers of church planters.

#1 — We have those who are gifted in church planting that are not engaging in that calling.

#2 — We have affirmed through assessment “pastors in waiting” to become church planters.

A pastor in waiting is not a term of derision. This is not a slight. This is one who earnestly desires the office. This is usually a person that has served in non-lead pastoral roles for years. He is looking for an opportunity to fulfill this aspect of calling to be a lead pastor and sees church planting as a means to that end. With my position in Utah, I would receive a lot of calls from prospective planters who were discerning the call to plant. Overwhelmingly, they were more wired as a pastor than a planter. They were a pastor in waiting rather than a church planter. I wouldn’t discourage them from coming but I wanted them to understand the realities of the context of Utah. Most of the time, a pastor in waiting will have to operate out of their strengths and gifting for some time to successfully plant a church. I wanted to make sure they knew that before making the sacrifice.

Knowing whether you are a church planter or a pastor in waiting should have a profound effect on the individual and their church plant. So, what are the key differences between a church planter and pastor in waiting? Why does it matter? What does it affect? What does it take to plant a church with either?

WHAT DO THEY NEED TO START?

A church planter is very comfortable at starting with little to nothing. They have a tendency and desire to start things from scratch. They only need a vision, direction, location and a pat on the back to get started. Their core team can be very small. They don’t need a whole lot of money outside of their own salary. Some church planters will even be bi-vocational in the beginning. Planters will also need more time from moving to the field until they are ready to launch. But they don’t need much time from vision casting to moving to the field.

A pastor in waiting needs to start with something numerically significant. They will want significant quantities of human, physical, and monetary resources. They need a large core team, because they are wired to pastor. They desire to pastor someone from day one. Pastors in waiting will also need more time for vision casting and core team recruitment before moving to the field. This is in the hopes that they need less time from moving to the field until they are ready to launch.

WHAT ARE THEY AIMING FOR?

A church planter is a missionary first, then a pastor second. They are more concerned with seeing the first convert and disciple, than they are the first service. They are convinced that if they reach the city, then there will be a church as a result. They are more focused on their dialogue with unbelievers than they are their monologue on Sundays. They are better at meeting new people than they are managing the people they have. They lead by doing rather than delegating. They focus on the mobilization of their core team to the city. They have an ability to equip the saints to live as missionaries because they are living as one.

A pastor in waiting is a pastor first, then a missionary second. They focus more on the first service. They are convinced that if they start the church, then they will be able to reach the city. They are more skilled in monologue formats of preaching and teaching than in conversing. They are more skilled at managing existing people than meeting new people. They lead through clear delegation. They are focused on the mobilization of the city to the gathering. They have an ability to equip the saints to serve in various avenues of ministry around the gathering, such as worship, greeters, children’s, youth, sound/tech, and setup/teardown.

WHO NEEDS TO GO WITH THEM?

There is nothing more defeating to a church plant than a lack of unity among the core team. Thus it is paramount that the planter or pastor in waiting choose the right team members to join them.

A church planter needs a small, gifted, and motivated core team of fellow missionaries. They need other people that will prioritize engaging the city like they do. A church planter is still a pastor/shepherd to the core team. No core team member is a finished product on the holiness scale. When a planter sees that his team is really engaging the city well, it leads him to focus more on pastoring the flock. That team of missionaries will have to learn to become a team of volunteer servants as they get closer to launch.

A pastor in waiting needs a large, gifted, and motivated core team of servant leaders. They need other people that are prioritizing the gathering like they do. They need a team that they can trust. When they delegate crucial items of ministry tasks, those things are done to completion and with excellence. A pastor in waiting still has to be a missionary and has to equip his core team to do likewise. That team of servants will have to learn to live like missionaries to get to their launch.

WHEN WILL IT BE HARD FOR THEM?

Church planting will be hard no matter if you are a church planter or a pastor in waiting. It is hard at a different point in the process for each type of person.

For a church planter, the beginning is the time in which they are operating within their skill set the most. It is when there is nothing in place. Everything has to be built. That is exciting for them. If the Lord moves and the church gets established, then it can get tough for the planter. They begin to operate outside of their gifting when the planter has to move into management mode. Things have to slow down. Planters don’t operate slowly. Every planter desires to see a healthy growing church planted. So if that happens, eventually, there is nothing left to start.

For pastors in waiting, the beginning will be the most difficult. This is where they are operating outside of their skill set. They are used to managing something that already exists, not building something that doesn’t exist. Also, in some contexts, the expectation of a significant gathering is met with the realities of the context’s low receptivity. This can lead to discouragement, packing up, and leaving. I have seen many pastors in waiting that wash out before 2 years of church plant pastoring. If you are a pastor in waiting, it is crucial to understand the level of receptivity of your target area before planting.

WHY DO THEY NEED EACH OTHER?

Just as Paul needed Barnabas and then, subsequently, Timothy to take on the more pastoral/shepherd roles, church planters need pastors in waiting. Paul’s mission was engaging the lost to see a church planted. Barnabas was known as the encourager. When the two split over Mark, Paul was thinking about the mission. Barnabas was trying to convince Paul that Mark was the mission. Barnabas thought and lived like a pastor. Paul thought and lived like a missionary. Once Paul and Barnabas split, Paul wisely recruited more guys to join him. This is where Timothy came into the picture and eventually stayed and pastored the church in Ephesus. In the case of the church in Corinth, I’m sure Paul was very pleased to hand over the preaching duties to a more gifted orator in Apollos.

When we were on the cusp of planting Mosaic Church, I knew I needed key leaders that were more gifted than I was in pastoring/shepherding. I needed at least one pastor in waiting. The Lord, by His grace, brought us three. This allowed me to continue to focus on engaging the city and equipping the saints to engage the city. While the saints were also being pastored and shepherded well. Needless to say, this led our church plant into many areas of spiritual health and numeric growth.

If you are a “pastor in waiting” planting a church, who on your team is the church planter?

If you are a church planter planting a church, who on your team is the pastor in waiting?

AM I A CHURCH PLANTER?

I truly believe there are many ministers of the gospel, who are uniquely gifted to plant churches, but are serving in established ministry positions.

Here some questions to consider:

When given a ministry issue within your church, do you gravitate towards killing a ministry and starting a new ministry to solve the issue?

Do you get the most joy when starting a new ministry?

Do you have the ability to successfully start something from scratch?

Do you have a track record of crafting and casting vision for something new, recruiting people to join, equipping the saints to lead, and backing away to let them take it?

Once a ministry that you started is built, do you have a tendency to hand it off to someone else and go looking for the next thing to start?

Do you feel unfulfilled in managing existing ministries?

Is it more difficult for you to figure out solutions by means of smaller, slower, changes to issues within the church?

Do you think more about your church’s impact and imprint on the city, than you do about your ministry’s impact on the congregation?

In your equipping of the saints, do you focus more on outreach and evangelism than other areas?

Would you rather spend an hour in conversation about spiritual matters with a lost person in your community over a person in your congregation?

If you are answering in the affirmative to all or the overwhelming majority of these questions, then you may be a church planter.

CHURCH PLANTERS ARE FOUND NOT MADE.

Growing up I loved basketball. My friends and I played all of the time. When I played more street ball with my buddies, I loved to rebound and play in the post. Most of them wanted to handle the ball and shoot. High school came and in tenth grade I was on the JV team. With my buddies I was the starting power forward. I was playing with my back to basket, posting up and grabbing rebounds. I loved being the workhorse in the paint. The only problem was I was 5’9”. My desire to be that kind of player on the high school team was never going to be fulfilled, because my natural abilities didn’t match up. I stuck out the year and worked hard at becoming more of a point guard but it landed me #13 out of 15 on the team. I got in during junk time, when we were either up by 20 points or down by 20 points and 90 seconds to go. No matter how hard I tried, I was never going to be 6’6” or above. It would have been a fool’s errand to try to coach up a 5’9” guy to play in the low post on a basketball team. I just wish I would have understood earlier that I was a guard and not a power forward. That year I decided not pursue organized basketball any further.

Height is a gift. You either have great height or you don’t. You can’t teach it. You can develop the skill set of someone who is tall to become a successful basketball player. Church planters are particularly gifted by the Lord for the ministry work of church planting. Just like anyone who has gifts and natural abilities, they need training to sharpen those things. They need mentors who provide wisdom and nuance in how to utilize those gifts and abilities.

The first step in solving the church planter shortage is not to turn pastors in waiting into church planters. The first step is to identify the church planters among us. We need to find them and develop them. Then, we need to pair them up and send them out with a pastor in waiting. The health and growth of church planting depends on it.