I’ve got a wonderful job. I get to talk about church planting with individuals, with rectors and with people who are thinking about planting. I love the responsibility entrusted to me. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is when I meet with people and talk about church planting, there’s often a lot of confusion about what church planting actually is. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. I want to bring a little bit of clarity about what church planting is, because when we understand that, we can back it up to make it really practical.
Church planting is not something you decide to do. Church planting is not another ministry of the church. It’s not an initiative you take on.
Church planting is primarily an act of submission. It’s less about starting something new and more about fulfilling who God has called every follower of Jesus Christ to be. So new churches are not the result of someone doing new practices. New churches are the result of people living with a new posture.
The number one question I get when we talk about planting is, “How?” How do you plant new churches? How do you pay for it? How do you find a location? How do you find another organist? (We’ve had a hard enough time finding the one we have!)
When people begin with “how,” they’re actually confusing church planting with church replication. What I mean is — we have a church in mind (typically the church we go to) and our default is to ask, “How can we replicate what we’re doing here in a different location?”
What I want to suggest is that church planting is very different because it begins with a different question.
It’s not “how?” It’s “why?”
Why do we do this? Does anyone reading this have a loved one in your life who does not know Jesus? Someone you have a burden for – wanting them to know Christ? If you do, you know what I mean.
That burden is why we plant churches.
We don’t plant churches to have more churches. We don’t plant churches to have a bigger Diocese. We plant churches because it’s the most effective way of reaching nonbelievers with the gospel message. That has to be our motivation.
Church planting is not about my preferences. One of the things I do in my role as the Diocesan Canon for Church Planting is assess other people who feel they might be called to church planting.
One of the biggest traps someone may fall into when they think they’re called to planting is that they get to create the church they’ve always wanted. They get to pull the “greatest hits” of every church experience they’ve ever had in the past, put it together, and then lead that church.
What I want to suggest is that church planting is not about preferences. It’s just the opposite. Church planting is mostly about sacrifice. Church planting is about giving up what I currently experience in my home church and walking away from it for someone who does not yet know Jesus.
Yes, on some level, it is exciting, but there’s trepidation, there’s fear and an incredible amount of sacrifice. Because of that, church planting doesn’t begin in the Diocesan office. It doesn’t begin with a church’s mission or outreach committee.
Instead, church planting begins with every single individual who understands that the great commission is not just a banner to be placed on the church website. It’s what has been entrusted to every single follower of Jesus. “Go, therefore. Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”
As far as I can tell, God’s heart, his strategy for advancing the knowledge of him and what we would call the gospel, his strategy has always been about establishing outposts of the kingdom.
If you have that conviction and a heart for those who do not YET know Jesus, let’s talk.
By The Rev. Canon Todd Simonis, ADOSC Canon for Church Planting
This article was originally published in the Fall 2025 Jubilate Deo.
