When I set out with my family to plant a church in Providence, Rhode Island, writing on this topic of church planting failures never once crossed my mind. Instead, we’d envisioned reseeding Rhode Island and southern New England with gospel-driven churches—a line that still rings in my heart from some of our early material—and we’d prayed for our church to be the first of many.
Planting a church in New England, and Providence in particular, wasn’t something we did on a whim. I began discussing possibilities with Wes Pastor of The NETS Center for Church Planting & Revitalization while an unmarried doctoral student at Southern Seminary. The conversations continued as I married Elizabeth, continued my studies, and we had our first child. In July 2007, we moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Essex Junction, Vermont to enter into the two-year residency program with NETS, which we extended another two years when I took a staff position at the church.
THE CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS
The process of planting a church from scratch was difficult and slow. We knew it would be tough, but I was perhaps more optimistic than realistic, thinking that planting a church would go a little faster for us.
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