“Why do we continue sending planters out to the field by themselves with no momentum, very little support, and the odds stacked against them?” So ask Ben Arment in his new book Church in Making: What Makes or Breaks A New Church Before it Starts. And this is the big question that many veteran church planters and there families have found themselves asking after seasons of discouragement and disillusionment. This book is written from the perspective of one who has been there and worked through what it takes to build momentum, gather support, and overcome obstacles. We may not like many of the answers. There is need for cultivation, it’s sometimes necessary to pull the plug, the best planters are locals and not big shots that parachute into town, ability to build a social network is a necessity. I hope every church planting strategists will read this book for solid ideas about prepping the ground and knowing what planters on the field are going through. For church planters, the questions for discussion after each section would be great for core development meetings. Well worth reading. Plan on keeping this book close to the desk for a few years.

You’ll also do yourself a favor by following the author’s blog.

Here’s a few of my favorite quotes:

• “Just like farming, there are two activities for church planters: cultivating and planting. If you do the right thing in the wrong season, you get zero results.”
• “If you dive headlong into planting a church on tough soil, you’ll get discouraged quickly and burn out.”
• “behind every great church is a cultivated community.”
• “there’s nothing more destructive to a church planter’s well-being than starting a church with no momentum.”
• “Buzz covers a multitude of sins.”
• “Church planting is the fine art of emptying ourselves for people who reject us and forgiving them for the sake of the gospel.”
• “As church planters we have to be careful to plant the church our community needs, not the church in our heads.”
• “The minute your congregation decides to exist for itself, the church is dead.”
• “It’s easy to sacrifice vision when the money is running low and you could generate revenue by becoming more things to more people.”
• “By putting personality ahead of purpose, we make our churches difficult to reproduce, let alone sustain.”

More than occasionally I’m asked by people interested in Church planting, “Hey, what should I be reading?” Here’s my current top ten list of favorites in no particular order. Most of these are in the category of “I wish I’d read that before I planted a church.”

1. Church in the Making: What Makes or Breaks a New Church Before It Starts by Ben Arment. Honest book about the difficulty of planting a church. Discussion questions after each section would be great for Core Group Training.
2. Deliberate Simplicity: How the Church Does More by Doing Less by Dave Browing. Great book to help with focus and vision. Here’s a brief review I wrote a few years back.
3. Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer. The textbook.
4. Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers by Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird. Great book for churches wanting to sponsor churches or plant multiple churches and campuses. Research based. Great reference guide to what’s up out there in Church Planting.
5. The Multiplying Church by Bob Roberts. From an experienced sender. The chapter on Starting a Church Planting Training Center at Your Church would be worth reading for every sponsor church pastor. My thoughts here.
6. Church 3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church by Neil Cole. Challenging questions and answers for the church going forward into the future. Can’t get this book off my desk right now.
7. Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community by Ed Stetzer and David Putman. “Don’t plant the church in your head. Plant it in the community.” One of my fav Ed Stetzer quotes. This book helps us do that.
8. It’s Not Personal: Surviving and Thriving on the Journey of Church Planting by Brian & Amy Bloye. Reading right now. Incredibly honest look at the life of the church planter.
9. Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Movement by Dave & Jon Ferguson. Great text book for starting at every level. Includes great chapters on multisite and sending out church planters, which is a core competency of the Ferguson’s church.
10. Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church by Reggie McNeal. Is it going to be about how many, how much, how often? I hope not. This book will help you get the right scorecard.

Other books that have been foundational for our current church plant: The Externally Focused Church by Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw, The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community by Steve Timmis.

What would be your recommendations?

There is a hunger among young Christian leaders for something more. Not necessarily more or bigger crowds or church buildings. But for more and deeper community. For authentic relationships in and outside of the church. For a greater impact on people that are far from God. And for a return to defining church as a WHO, not a WHAT. It will be OK with us if that results in big crowds and buildings, but not at the expense of community, authenticity, kingdom impact. Jason Dukes, in his book Live Sent: You Are A Letter, expresses what I feel so many are looking for today. As a Church Planter and network leader (check out www.reproducingchurches.com), Jason is leading a charge for the church to give ourselves away intentionally. That’s how he defines living sent. The imagery of living as a letter sent by God to the world is simple and key to understanding who we are as followers of Christ. As Jason says, “Sunday mornings cannot be viewed as just ‘fueling stations’ any longer. They must be viewed as POST OFFICES, gathering and sorting mail in order to send out those letters into daily culture.” An essential message for the 21st Century church that wants to make a deep impact in the lives of people. Great question: Is our lives and churches like the “draft” folder in our email inbox? Saved but not sent. “We must go beyond just gathering. We must gather to send.” The book outlines a great process for every Christian and leader to use to assess where they are spiritually. A few of the topics: rethinking church as a who not a what, knowing the value of every Christian to God’s mission, what hinders us from being sent, contextualizing through relationships, getting rid of our safety addiction. Also, Live Sent is filled with stories of real people doing just that. Even includes the story of a brother from my home state, Rob Wilton with Vintage Church, Uptown New Orleans. As a Church Planter or Pastor who desires to have an impact, this book will help chart the course.

Here are a few of my other favorite quotes:

• “He did not go to the cross because we were lovable. He went to the cross because He loves us, and it is His love for us that makes us lovable. It is His pursuing love that makes us valuable.”
• “The most crippling issue hindering us from ‘being the church’ is our insecurity to think we need more than what Jesus did…”
• “The health of a local church is actually not based on the number who ‘attend’ but rather the way in which people love one another and are walking relationally in life.”
• “The story of the church is far greater than what happens on Sunday mornings.”
• “Which address means more to God? The address of the church building? or the address of the world?”
• “If we are to see disciples made, we must engage people in genuine friendship. Multiplication cannot be programmed. It happens. It blossoms.”
• “church leaders must be willing to measure success not by how many they can draw and manage, but by how many they can release…”

You can follow Jason on Twitter. Also, follow Reproducing Churches the network he helps orchestrate along the Gulf Coast. Also, Jason blogs at JasonCDukes.com.

Since last fall, our family has been a part of a core group/launch team for a new church in St. Tammany Parish. The question of viability is always on the mind of an entrepreneur. How do you think this is going? How’s it going so far? What are we supposed to be doing right now? are questions that can be hard to answer. One of the most helpful and practical books on Church Planting helps with this. Steve Sjogren’s Community of Kindness is the dream book for a church planter. It answers almost every question you could have in short bursts of experience laden advice. Most chapters are less than two pages, so it is great for those who may have a deficit of attention and focus, like most in the first year of a church plant.

One of the most helpful sections of the book is part four where Sjogren outlines the focus of the planter and team at each phase of the plant. Currently, myself and several plants in our region are in the 5-50 People phase, so I share I wanted to share it here in brief. Planter and plant team members take note. 

5-5o People: Where are we now?

• Focus: Meet the people, Reproduce people 
• Sr. Leader Role: Gatherer, Philosopher
• Burning questions: Where can I find people to talk to? 
• Theme song: “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go” and “It’s gonna take a lotta love”
• Greatest Assets: Infectious smiles, enthusiastic handshakes, a great love for people.
• Greatest Needs: Belief that you will succeed with faithfulness
• Growth Strategy: Gathering, Planting seeds of kindness and generosity around the city. 
• What Steve wishes he would have done differently at this stage: Taken the difficult people less seriously and spent more time meeting a broad base f people in the community. 

Well said.