“We just don’t have enough church planters.”
I have heard some variation of this concern from church leaders throughout the Western world. In the last six months, I have met with hundreds of church leaders in Australia, Europe and the United States. I have spoken with ministry leaders from almost every denomination and network, and the No. 1 concern I hear repeatedly is this: “Our pipeline of potential church planters has dried up.”
As these leaders try to figure out the reason for the drought of potential church planters, they offer these kinds of explanations:
• “Gen Z won’t settle for low-paying church planting jobs.”
• “Young adults have been burned by the church, and they want nothing to do with church planting.”
• “We recruited all the youth pastors to be church planters and that well has dried up.”
The problem in the Western church is clear: There is a serious lack of church planters. So, what is the solution?
A Lesson From Lyle
This problem got me thinking about a conversation I had with Lyle Schaller more than 15 years ago. Though he passed in 2015, at the time Schaller was known as “the dean of church consultants” according to Christianity Today, and I was a church planter. My problem was not a lack of church planters, but a lack of financial resources. The church we planted, COMMUNITY, was focused on reaching people far from God, and we were struggling to meet our budget.
I explained to my mentor that since we were reaching unchurched people, it was harder for us to raise the needed funds compared to most churches. I told him that many of our attendees were deep in debt and that generosity was a foreign concept.
Lyle smiled—no, he didn’t smile, he smirked—and said, “You know who gets the money, Dave?” It was a rhetorical question. Then he answered his own question by saying, “Whoever asks for the money.”
I was thinking he didn’t get it, so I explained again that we were reaching unchurched people who didn’t have a habit of tithing. Again, I got the smirk and he said, “Dave, you can make up whatever excuse you want, but it is this simple: Whoever asks for the money gets the money.”
I have a hunch that if he were still here and I were to explain to him the lack of church planters, he would say, “Dave, you know who gets the church planters? Whoever asks for church planters.”
I think a big reason we don’t have enough church planters is this simple: We don’t ask people to plant churches.
Why Don’t We Ask?
Every time Exponential hosts a conference, we make sure that the fifth and final session is designed to challenge and ask people to commit to planting a new church. We ask people to come forward if they are ready to make that commitment or lead a reproducing church that raises up church planters.
As people respond, we have leaders there to pray for them, anoint them and commission them to go with our blessing. I would estimate that every time we make this “ask,” we see 15–20% of the people respond. Some are coming for prayer, and others to hear from God about next steps, but hundreds make a commitment to plant a church right then.
Over the years, notable church planters like Ryan Kwon, Joby Martin, Derwin Gray and hundreds more have made commitments in that kind of moment to plant new churches. You know why? In part, simply because we asked.
As I think about the Western context and specifically, the church in North America, my hunch is that:
• We have deprioritized asking emerging leaders to be in a disciple-making relationship to be future church planters.
• We have significantly reduced or halted our funding, training and collaboration efforts aimed at catalyzing new church starts.
• We no longer use summer camp to challenge students to full-time ministry.
• We no longer ask people in our churches to commit to vocational ministry or church planting.
Let’s admit that there are not many places or spaces where we clearly challenge and ask people to plant new churches.
We see this borne out in our research at Exponential. Our latest findings show us over 93% of churches in the United States are not involved in reproducing another church. To put this into perspective, imagine the devastating impact if 93% of adults never had children. The first church we planted at COMMUNITY was 1,000 miles away in Colorado, and we had 35 laypeople move from Chicago to Denver to help plant that new church. They sold their homes and got new jobs to be a part of that church plant. Others transferred colleges to be in the Denver area so they could help plant this church. What caused these 35 people to take that kind of action? We asked them.
“Level 3” (growing) churches are good, but we must strive for the “greater things” mentioned in John 14:12. This means pursuing a movement of “Level 4” (reproducing) churches and “Level 5” (multiplying) churches to ignite a movement for Jesus.
We need to start asking people who show up on Sunday to plant new churches. We need to ask our middle schoolers and high schoolers to consider church planting as a calling. We should ask at camps, in our student gatherings, in our small groups and in our worship services.
We have to start asking.