By their fruits you shall know them.
Y’shua bar Yoseph
(Matthew 7:16-20).
Church planting isn’t always a good idea.
I know that may be a shock to some of my church planting friends and colleagues, especially those who believe that church planting is a “silver bullet” for growing the church.
But it’s true. Sometimes planting a new church is a bad idea.
And I say this as a person who loves starting congregations, who has started two congregations and consulted with dozens of others.
I’ve come to this realization over time. In part, it evolved over 25 years of studying church growth and church meta-demographic trends. But it crystallized during a discussion with a congregant at my last church who was a certified Master Gardener, while he was planting a flower garden at the church.
He told me that perhaps the most common and most detrimental mistake made by new gardeners is over planting: too many plants, too close together. The thinking is “how can there be such a thing as too many flowers?” But according to this former congregant, apparently there is such a thing. [Read more…]