If you pay any attention to the land of church planting, you’ll quickly begin to wonder if business mogul Jim Collins has taken control of its command center. Phrases like “customer-to-owner,” “church launch,” “preview services,” and “entrepreneurial” have become ubiquitous, whereas those wonderfully powerful phrases we hear from Paul—“ambition to preach the gospel,” “shepherd the flock of God among you,” “preach the Word!”—seem to have been forgotten.
This is unfortunate because what’s needed to plant a church isn’t the wisdom of Jim Collins, but the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word that testifies to that gospel. A cheap shot, I know, but listen—if we’re going to enjoy the pleasure of God in planting a church, then we need to forget about the practices of men which promise to gather crowds quickly and instead mine the depths of God’s Word in order to build a people intentionally.
Below I offer three principles we should all consider so that we might plant churches for the infinite pleasure of God’s glory over and against our own profit.
Bible, Not Business
God’s Word is sufficient, even for church planting. Whatever practices we need to give ourselves to are right there in the Bible,
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