Twenty Ways to Plant Churches in north America – Part 1
In the first of a two-part series on models of church planting, Dr. Phil Douglass shares from his extensive experience as a church planter and mentor of church planters, retired professor of applied theology at Covenant Seminary, and overseer of church planting efforts for the Missouri Presbytery of the PCA. To find out more about how Covenant is preparing a new generation of church planters, check out our Church Planting Track and our Church Planting Scholarship, as well as a recent grant we received from the Association of Theological Schools for the purpose of further equipping church planters.
In the spring of 1979, I had been serving as an Associate Pastor in the Washington, DC, area for almost five years. However, as I studied the book of Acts about the church planting ministry of the apostle Paul, the desire developed to give myself to the same ministry. As a result, this passion to see the entire region reached for Christ by church planting led me to make an appointment with the Presbyterian Church in America’s only pastor in the Washington area. I wanted to learn how he had planted his church two years earlier.
During that meeting, the pastor spoke about a group of seven families living on the western growth edge of the Washington region whom a sign painter had gathered for a Bible study. This man had prayed for the previous 12 years that a biblical and Reformed denomination might plant a church in his area of Manassas-Gainesville, Virginia. Together with this pastor, the Coordinator of Church Development for the PCA's Presbytery in that region had ministered to this Bible study group for the last three months. After six weeks of interviews and examinations, the Mid-Atlantic Presbytery called me to serve as the Organizing Pastor for this ministry. We conducted our first worship service at an elementary school in Gainesville, Virginia, on May 20, 1979. The church I had been serving, even though part of a mainline Presbyterian denomination, encouraged me to plant this PCA church.
They also permitted me to make the transition to half-time ministry status with them while continuing at full-time salary to plant the church. Over those months of conducting worship services, networking, and evangelism, we grew from seven to twenty families and arrived at financial self-support. The PCA's Mission to North America Committee promised to provide half support when the finances finished with my previous church, but its support proved to be unnecessary. Nevertheless, it was comforting to me and my family of five to understand that this financial “safety net” was in place if needed. This first model of a church planting ministry shows how God enjoys honoring the prayers of a faithful layman who perseveringly pleads with him for a biblical and Reformed denomination to plant a church in his area.
A second model for church planting developed after four years when our church was averaging in 260 people in attendance during Sunday morning worship. The Session of our church believed the best size for our ministry was 200 to 250 people in regular attendance. So they gave me permission to take 36 volunteers with me to plant a daughter church in an area 13 miles closer to Washington. After one year, that church grew to 85 people in average attendance. So the PCA’s Mission to North America (MNA) helped us financially to invite on our staff a full-time Assistant Pastor, whom I began training to become the pastor of this daughter church. Initially, I preached at the mother church at the 9:15 a.m. service and at the daughter church at their 11:00 a.m. service, but after a year and a half, the Assistant became the solo Pastor. This second model is an example of an existing church becoming the mother of a daughter church by the pastor preaching in a distant location until the second church is financially able to afford her own pastor.
The third model developed when the mother church was six and a half years old and the Session determined we were ready to plant another daughter. Again, with financial help from Mission to North America, the church invited on staff an Assistant Pastor to co-plant a daughter church with me. We asked for volunteers, and this time 49 people went with us to a community 12 miles further away from Washington. The Assistant Pastor and I shared the preaching and pastoral responsibilities, but the man proved to be so capable that after four months we determined he was ready to lead the church with two elders from the mother church. When the original one year of financial support from MNA had finished, that daughter church was self-supporting and self-governing. This third model shows how a church forms by a co-pastoring arrangement in which a man just out of seminary successfully yokes with an experienced church planter.
One of our PCA churches in the northeast suburbs of Washington, DC, displayed a fourth model. Rather than send out an Associate Pastor with a group of her people, the church commissioned an elder to transplant 50 members to a growing area of the region 13 miles east. This layman provided much of the preaching and organized other laypeople to shepherd the growing flock. After a year of worship services, this church plant was able to call a full-time pastor.
This same church demonstrated a fifth model several years afterward when it continued planting daughter churches but decided this time to keep the churches connected to her in a collegial association. Soon, two daughter churches met on Sunday mornings at a distance from the mother in growing areas of the region, but gathered at the mother's building on Sunday evenings. The pastors of the two daughter churches were Assistant Pastors of the mother church and the Session of the mother supervised the ministries of the two daughters.
When we were able to identify a capable and willing church planter, but had no people, we created a sixth model. The future church planter had been an Assistant Pastor for several years in a church of a sister denomination in the area, but now he sensed a calling to start a church. We spent $1100 advertising a public information meeting at a hotel in a rapidly growing part of suburban Washington; 35 people came. From that gathering the church planter was able to develop a core of six families to reach out to the area and begin worship services. This model is an example of what can happen when a church planter is available in the beginning there are no people to serve as the core group.
One of our pastors who had a passion to reach the ethnic communities of the Washington area displayed a seventh means by which we have planted churches. His concern inspired him to form the Washington Spanish outreach and raise the support to place on the field a Hispanic church planter. This pastor subsequently started two churches in the area by his evangelistic efforts.
The same Anglo pastor was instrumental in developing an eighth method when he gathered the finances and planters to start Chinese, Japanese, and Korean churches in the area. Because during their beginning years the ethnic churches often meet for worship in our existing churches, not only do we start churches to reach the nations but also there is greater efficiency in the use of existing buildings.
A ninth means by which we planted churches occurred when three of our existing churches on the western side of Washington contributed families to a mission effort in their area. We had a qualified church planter with 18 years of ministry experience, and we had the right area in which to start the church in a fast growing part of Washington. But, once again, we did not have core families. After the need became known, one of our churches contributed three families when its pastor visited potential core families in his church asking them to become involved in the mission. Another church contributed three families and our church contributed two families to provide the mission a good start with eight core families.
The tenth method of planting churches developed in 1986 when Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, called me to be the Professor of Church Planting, Growth, and Renewal. The understanding was that I would train the students in church planting as I planted churches with them in the St. Louis region. With our demographic studies, we discovered the western growth edge of the region was the best place to begin. At that same time, a lay leader in one of our existing churches had been praying for 12 years that the PCA would plant a church in his neighborhood. Unknown to him, his home was in the middle of the targeted area. He and his wife, two seminary couples, and I planted that church, and within one year it was self-governing, self-propagating, and ready to call its own full-time pastor. Because of excellent demographic studies and the man’s persevering prayer, this was a church ready to flourish. Because I was working as a full-time professor, which provided my support, the church was able to be self-supporting from its first day. This planting is a model of a “tent-making” ministry, so called because the apostle Paul made tents to support himself as he planted churches throughout the Roman Empire.
(To be continued next month.)
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Covenant Seminary is working with the PCA’s Mission to North America and other ministries as we aim to recruit, train, and send the next generation of leaders who will plant and grow more biblically sound, confessionally Reformed churches in the US and across North America. You can help to make this vison a reality by ensuring that our Church Planting Track and Church Planting Scholarship remain strong and vital. How can you do this?
Pray for us and our partners and support us financially.
Refer potential church planting students to us.
Connect us with influencers and others who can have an impact on our efforts.
We value your partnership in our ministry!
