Why is My Church Not Planting New Churches?

By Stan Granberg - Orginally published 10/06/2016
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Is that a bold question to ask? Why do I think I know so much that I can assume your church is not planting new churches? I do it with 97% certainty.

Before I answer the question here's a quiz for you to take:

•   How many established churches close each year?
•   How many new churches start each year?
•   How many established churches does it take to start a new church?

Over the past eleven years Our Kairos team has talked to hundreds of churches in our fellowship of the Churches of Christ. The good news is that across those eleven years over 160 churches have contributed in some way toward planting new churches through Kairos Church Planting.

That's 1.3% of our current 12,260 congregations.

The bad news is that we are losing far more churches than we are planting and we can only expect the rate of decline to accelerate. Thus the question,

Why is my church not planting new churches? Here are five common answers we hear.

Our church isn't growing, how could we start something new?
For over twenty years now the general research is that 80% of American churches are declining or plateaued. The result is that when a church is not growing, it's difficult to imagine that growth of any kind is possible. Planting new churches is our research and development. New churches can help us learn how to grow again.

It's not a good time for us.
I've heard this reason many times. When I've followed it up with "When would be a good time?" the typical answer is 10 years. But what will be different 10 years from now if we do not make the decisions to change?

Can we control a new church?
What we mean by this statement is we want to make sure a new church will look, act, and think just like us. Yet, can we defend the idea that our existing churches are perfect? Have we truly made a perfect church?

New churches are engaged in a deeply creative process to engage our dynamic culture in faith. The best control we can offer is the trust that those we have raised in faith will pursue their task with humble obedience to God's word.

We don't know how.
Twenty years ago our knowledge of church planting was limited and individualized. Today, however, there is a great deal of information available.

Kairos has identified three seasons of planting, each with five critical tasks that will help a new church successfully come into being. Our challenge is not really knowing what to do, it is learning how to execute what we need to do. Contact Kairos for your first steps.

We can't afford it.
Individually, few churches can afford the cost of planting new churches (approximately $250,000 over three to five years). Yet God has not left us without resources.

First, what if we worked together with several churches forming a support group? By distributing the costs it becomes much more affordable. Second, we need to faithfully close many older, dying churches that have finished their course in order to plow those resources back into the future.