6. Relying Too Heavily on Outside Funding
The church I helped plant in 2011 was 93 percent self-supporting on our first Sunday. I don’t recommend that. It was out of necessity for us, but hardly ideal.
Alternatively, some church plants get used to outside funding and don’t plan ahead enough for when those funds dry up. Be proactive. If the funding supports your church at the 75 percent level at launch, budget for it to cover 60 percent and stretch yourself to gain that 15 percent gap in offerings. Always budget in a forward-thinking way ahead of your projections so that you’re not caught flat-footed when the outside funding goes away.
7. Neglecting Solid Assimilation Plans
Church plants are exciting. People come because they want to check out something new and different. They may even stick around long-term because of the newness. But at some point, your church will cross that mysterious threshold where people stop coming just because it’s new. At this point, you’ll suffer consequence number seven of the deadly church planting mistakes: not having a solid assimilation plan. When excitement wears off, strategies begin to matter. Be intentional about this on the front end by clarifying your guest follow-up process.
8. Installing Local Governance Too Quickly
Church plants are magnets for toxic people or leaders from toxic situations. In any case, church plants must be cautious about installing local leaders too quickly. The governance of your church should be outside of the local congregation for three to five years. This gives ample time to identify and grow leaders organically who believe in the mission, values and vision of your church rather than people who are looking to import their own. This is one of the church planting mistakes that people often resist and think it is being unbiblical to have non-local governance.
Church planters want to trust their local leaders, but many church plants have suffered the consequences of relinquishing too much control to local lay leaders before the church was ready. This is not an excuse to have no accountability. Instead, this is an exhortation to fully empower experienced, trusted leaders that govern from without until those within are ready to lead in a healthy and godly way.
9. Waiting Too Long to Implement a Leadership Pipeline
On the flip side of the previous mistake is completely disregarding the leadership development process for months or years. From the very beginning, church plants should have a leadership development process in place. Identify the leadership levels, the corresponding competencies, a process for taking leaders from one level to the next and a system for identifying, assessing and launching leaders. This is a difficult process to develop mid-stroke, so do the planning for your leadership pipeline in the pre-launch phase. If you’re curious about how to develop a leadership pipeline, you can chat with us about your specific context or get more familiar with the general concepts by reading the book Building Leaders or one of our recent resources about leadership pipeline development.
10. Neglecting the Process of Strategic Planning
Church plants often fall victim to this final mistake. Church plants assume that because they had to strategically plan their launch that they don’t need to do strategic planning post-launch. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If it was done well, your mission and values shouldn’t need to shift after a few years.
However, there’s a massive difference between a three-year-old church and a three-month-old church. It’s the process of shifting from church plant to church planted. Strategic planning is critical to long-term success and making this transition well. Too many church plants assume that they can continue to use the “we’re new” excuse for things that are dysfunctional. That excuse is valid, but has an expiration date. Don’t wait for a church plateau or decline before you engage in strategic planning. It comes more quickly than you would think. I recommend a thorough strategic planning process 18 months after launch.
Don’t fall victim to the consequences of any one of these 10 deadly church planting mistakes. They are avoidable. By being intentional about navigating around these church planting mistakes, planters give their new church the best chance at beating the statistics, and more importantly seeing a movement of the gospel arise in their community.
Scott Ball is a consultant with The Malphurs Group, and organization that provides consulting services for churches, non-profits and marketplace organizations to help them successfully overcome their greatest challenges. This article was originally published on the blog at MalphursGroup.com.
