Tips for Church Planting

Patrick and Debbie O'Connor

Dr. Patrick O’Connor shares tips for church planting below:

  • As you start new flocks, be sure to follow the Spirit and His Word in obedience, using His Spirit-given gifts to start your church.
  • Let church organization develop not from a preconceived ideology or structure, but from relationships as they grow with God’s help.
  • Show your disciples what to do (1 Cor 11:1; Phil. 3:7). Do not simply tell them.
  • Ask the Lord for heads of households with whom to share God’s love, so as to reach entire families. Jesus let Zacchaeus and Levi gather their friends at once in order to let the gospel flow to many. Likewise, the apostles always went at once to seekers’ families.
  • Do not simply hold public meetings. Avoid preaching points or missions that are not real churches. Sometimes outside workers merely preach weekly without forming a congregation that obeys Jesus’ commands.
  • Baptize repentant believers without delaying because of man-made requirements and celebrate communion.
  • Train local leaders from the beginning to gather and shepherd their family and their own flock. Training local leaders in their context should be the goal of every church planter (Tit 1:5, Acts 14:23). Hold regular public worship meetings only when local leaders can lead them.
  • Remember to name mature adults as leaders (Acts. 14.23). Give these men the responsibility for further growth and edification of the group.
  • Cheer on the new flocks to establish daughter churches without delay. Do not wait! As soon as a flock is born, church planters should help it reproduce new flocks nearby. Do not let their enthusiasm cool.
  • Start a cluster of new flocks or cells together instead of just one at a time. The apostles in Jerusalem had their flocks meet in homes to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and to embrace the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42, 46). Such clusters can also be seen in Acts 13–14 and in Galatians 1:2. In Galatia, the apostles started several flocks at once. Isolated flocks can become ingrown and defensive, lacking identity with a larger body.