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Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network. Get A. I'm Scott Sanders. I'm Derek Hanna. Welcome to the one thing a podcast is on to give you one solid practical tip for gospel send ministry. Every week the one thing is proudly brought to you by the Geneva Push, the Australian Church Planning Network. We're also part of the

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Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network. We'd encourage you to check out our network page on iTunes to see a whole bunch of great Christian podcasts. So I was listening to the guys talk about should pastors have friends in church? Really helpful discussion. Talk about really practical about the pros and cons of having friends in your church. So check out the S podcast on iTunes or your nearest podcast app. But for now you press play on another episode of the one thing. Grow big or plant.

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Derek we got this question from I reckon a long time listener. Let's just assume they're a long time listener. It was anonymous. They've asked this. I'm curious to know what the latest research is on the effectiveness of church planting versus growing big, particularly in a city context. Obviously want to plant churches in places where there are none. But is this done more effectively out of a large church context or out of a church plan as a city church what should we be aiming for? Derek

[1:39]
let's sort of set the scene paint the picture. There's lots of things rolling around in this question. As we move towards this question how do we reach Australia or you know if you're outside how do you reach the community you're in the US, New Zealand wherever it is. There is a tension here between we know that planting research white we know that planting is missionally effective more effective than established churches are. So five to six times more people within a church plan have no

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background in Christianity. You haven't been to church been last five years than they're in a established church. So we know statistically that church plants are more effective missionally. But he's the tension that we're trying to navigate in here. That church planting is incredibly costly on a whole number of ways. Financial it's costly it's expensive to plant new church. It's costly in terms of the building to find new building to maintain new building. The uncertainty of actually meeting somewhere finding leaders for a church plan is incredibly hard.

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Church planning leaders and so there's and the relationships that happen that are broken down and the impact on the sending church of that is incredibly costly as well. So the tension with the nearest we know that church plants are missionally more effective. But at what point do you pull that trigger and say we're going to plan given how much cost there is. That's a tension. Yeah so that's really helpful. Sending out a church plan recognises that you will see greater evangelistic fruit more generally than the established church. But I guess I want to

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sort of push back it. It's a bit of a both. It's a bit of a both end isn't it? What we want to see is we do want to see churches sending out new congregations, churches sending out new plants or new sites and reaching into existing areas, reaching into new areas to start new gatherings of people who are wanting to reach out to the local communities. We also though need churches to be healthier. We need existing churches to have that evangelistic and that mission heat as well. We need both and we need to be working on both and in some senses it's kind of like

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a chicken and a chicken and an egg. We need actually healthy churches that are being evangelistically effective and are reaching out so that they can have a growth dynamic that then pushes out with the sending of new church plants. I guess I want to, it's interesting. Straight away Derek you went to missionally effective. How do we measure effectiveness? You've gone straight to sort of mission. So I'm assuming you're thinking that's conversions, that's reaching people have never made a decision for Christ but it's also reaching the

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prodigals, reaching those people who have returned to church. Is that your only, is that kind of your only measure of effectiveness in this sort of discussion, mission? No, no, it's not. Not just a one trick pony. I'm only about evangelism. I'm a two trick pony. No, there's obviously more to it which is what makes the question so challenging because the question isn't for most people should I plan or not. The question is when, like you're leading a church, when do I plan? What are the

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conditions under which I pull this trigger? Because everyone wants to reach the last, they want to care for the people who are there but there are also other aspects of a church. Like there's leadership pipelines within the church in order to raise leaders up to send them out to a whole bunch of other contexts as well which if you plan to, really sometimes you could break. There's other systems within church that you could break as well if you pull the trigger too early. So the question isn't should I, should I plan or not? It's at what point under what conditions do I plan? Now, you know, there's, you want to think strategically into this and so you don't want to

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say when we've spoken to churches and you talk particularly around multi-site contexts, you're saying you want to probably send 10% of people off to plan and if you can't sustain that 10% going, so say you're in a church of 100 to send 10 off is probably too small. You want to spend 40 off, send 40 off which means you need to be 400 in order to send, getting to 400 is a significant. So do you only ever plan when you get to 400? So no, probably not, that's just best practice

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but you do need to weigh up the impact of sending out that many people. Now, the reality is the data does say that a healthy church that regularly sends, so let's say every 18 months to 24 months is regularly sending out a group of people. The data says that very quickly in some contexts, you rebuild, rebuild back those people. There's an energy that comes from sending out. There is a grief as you've already mentioned at the start of the podcast. There's the loss of leaders, but that allows other people to step up. That allows you to start being more intentional

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about raising up leaders because you've actually got the impetus. We're sending out a group of 40, we actually need to backfill and raise them up. So I think this is a person in a city context. They've got a healthy front door and they're seeing new come as regularly coming. Then by actually being intentional with their discipleship pathway and really working to follow up in that existing church, I think you can be quite effective at sending out the church plant and

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then actually seeing growth in that big church. In some sense, you are like an Antioch church in Acts which becomes a sending base for a whole region. In some sense, that's I think the mentality that we need to be having in every church around Australia that I need to be thinking not just about their suburb, but I need to be thinking about their region, thinking about how they might reach out into that region. I think we need to recognise that at any point in time, there are churches that are declining, there are churches that are plateauing, there are churches

[7:47]
that are growing. That's a natural part of the life cycle of the church. Church planting can be used as a way to re-energise a church, but the reality is as a leader, you've got to constantly be challenging the status quo and constantly pushing into. We want to be healthy, we want to be growing. I think that's not a big dynamic or a small dynamic or a medium-sized. I think every church, it's an imperative that comes out of the great commission, that we ought to be reaching the

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lost and growing. The gospel just keeps mushrooming out and our churches need to be doing that. I would say in this, we need to be careful not to think that church planting will solve the problems that we have. We have to plant out of health. It can re-energise if your church is healthy and you feel like you've hit a ceiling and you can't grow because of the building or these other churches. Church planting can certainly do that, but it can also significantly damage the

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sending church if they're not planting out of a place of health. If there's no growth dynamic, if there's no energy, if there's no vision in the sending church, that will only be exposed if you plant early. Planting will not fix that problem. You have to plant out of health. So you have to fix the sending, you have to grow a healthy sending church because the DNA will be transplanted generally unless you have a kind of pioneer plant that's planting completely independent of your church. The DNA will be transplanted. You do not want a transplant unhealthy DNA.

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And so if you're thinking when do I plant, should I grow here or should I plant? I think the first question you're asking is my church healthy? Are people growing in maturity and love for Christ? Are we seeing the last one? Is all our growth just from people moving in and joining us and they're already going to do it? No, that's not bad necessarily. If that's the only way you grow, planting won't make you evangelistic. It will only take people out of your congregation and create

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another congregation generally that is as lacking in evangelistic zeal as you are because there's no kind of appetite for it. So as you're, yeah, that's really helpful. Is your church healthy? As you then are thinking about a church plant, I like a phrase that I got just got off of Wade Bennett, a good friend of ours. You know, you need four else. You need a leader, you need a location, you need a launch team, and you need lots of money. So you need to be thinking into those areas.

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But the reality is a big church can do this by themselves. Also, a number of churches in a region you can also think about sending a group of people. It's obviously a lot more difficult, relationally harder because you're dealing with sometimes different ecclesiologies if it's different denominations that are sending out someone or you might be within the one regional press battery, one mission area, and so collectively working out. It is hard to give kind of free

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rain to a church plant that come into my church and take people. But a beautiful picture of gospel generosity saying, hey, we're happy for you to come in. We want to resource you with money. We're also happy for you to come in and we'll pray for you, but you can actually have some people. And I think cultivating that regional picture is really helpful. Again, press battery structures really ease them, allow for that to happen. The other thing is high quality relationships in a local city or a local region, I think, really precipitate that and allow that to happen and function

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well. So I love, I mean, Derek, you know, I love sharing this story, but I love the story of snug church with Dan and Georgia Headley. These guys were, they're in a church plant from a larger church Kingston, CRC. They were in one way. They were sent out by that church. They planted an independent FIC church in an Anglican building that was gifted by another local Anglican church. Here you actually see a number of churches who really want to send a gospel going out into an

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area that was less reached and less resourced and it was a beautiful partnership. And you saw revitalization and energy growth in the sending church as well. You know, Graham tells this great story of this older couple who come to him and say, hey, we just heard Dan and Georgia talk about door knocking and taking a gospel. Is it okay if we do that at our church? I just think there is a beautiful example of a partnership, a beautiful example of people capturing, you know, that

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you know, that urgency to take the gospel out. And we need to be seeing more of that. So can I push into that again? Because again, you've pushed on, there's a health question there isn't there. There's an energy question. There's a conviction question about reaching. There's a vision, there's a vision question as well. Do we even have this as a vision in our church? That's right. And so the statistics we throw around and the size question is so often tied to that because I can think of examples like Foster, you see, they planted in, that's ended up just recently

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planting a man in Bible church. The numbers are different there to if you would grow a suburban church much larger as a hub in order to do it. The numbers are quite different but the question you're really pushing to is you can, you can be flexible on the numbers if the health of the church is there. You still want to be wise. You still want to think about how to grow a church in such a way that you can replicate multiple times. It's not just once and kill the goose that lays a golden egg. But it has to be healthy and that will shape everything else. Derek, what's your one thing on

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growing big or planting? It's not a one size fits all for doing it but the heart of it needs to be having a healthy sending church. Multiplication out of health has to be the key. You need to grow big healthy in order to multiply and replicate healthy. The stats around that but health is the key for me. What's your one thing? I would encourage pastors to have a vision that is bigger than their church. So I think regionally and then you'll always be thinking about how to either plant or grow

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bigger. All right Scott, what do you got in the toolbox for us today? Well, just some links to the Genev push website. Genev push is a fantastic network wanting to see hundreds of new churches evangelised into existence across Australia. So there's some links in the show notes. Why plant churches? I think that's a great one. Some helpful discussion about why. We want you wanted research. So in 2016 we did some research into Australian church planning.

[14:58]
You'll see growth data there. And also I think MAC are really helpful discussion. I think all the way back in 2012. Why do we need more churches? As he was thinking about heading up to the Northern Territory and planting a new church up there. And then I mentioned Wade Bennett. He did a great seminar for us a few years ago on multi site where he talked about those four L's and compared church planning to bring a multi church. So church one church in more than one place. And so that's got some helpful ideas and thoughts and principles on this as well.

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Well if you've enjoyed what you've heard today we would appreciate just take a moment to write the show on iTunes and leave a comment off because of question. And we got from our brothers and sisters in Tasmania today. We're happy to take questions from all over the world. Anyway thanks for joining us for another episode of the one thing. I'm Scott Sanders. I'm Derek Anna. Chatsat!