In September our church did something crazy: we planted a church on the other side of our city.
Or maybe that doesn’t sound crazy. But hold on. We planted by literally dividing our church in half, and we did this as a relatively small and young church.
We didn’t grow to 800 and send out thirty. Our three-year-old church had 84 members before the plant, and 45 after. Our financial giving was reduced by more than fifty percent. Pre-plant, there were four families in my apartment complex; post-plant, only my family remained.
That very same week, there was an article here at 9Marks called “Church Planting by Peaceable Division.” To call it timely would be a massive understatement. The article highlights the historical prevalence of churches intentionally and amicably splitting for the proclamation of the gospel and the glory of God.
This is what we did, and I offer six lessons we learned from the process.
(1) God leads even young, small churches to plant; it’s not a mission merely for large, established churches.
Even as we were walking through our decision, there was something in me that fought back against it. Why? Well, our church hadn’t had time to
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