Hindrances to Church Planting on the Mission Field

You have presented your call to the ministry to all who will listen. You are a church-planting missionary called to reach and impact a country. Unless you are very careful, you will fall short of your expectation. This study will help you succeed at what God called you to do. Ask yourself the following questions in this post and those to follow. Discuss them with your peers. Be sure that you are doing exactly what you set out to do.

1. Have you developed a Philosophy of Ministry?

2. You need to know where you are going and what you will do before starting the first church.

3. Is your philosophy to pastor a church or train pastors to pastor churches?

4. Are you a church planter or a church pastor?

5. Your philosophy will govern all that you do in your ministry and who your target audience is.

6. Where you start.

7. Who you reach.

8. What your goals are.

9. Will you make training your priority ministry?

10. Jesus did. He pastored, but His goal was to spend time with some before He sent them out to do ministry, Mark 3:14, Acts 4:13

11. Jesus trained men with the purpose of them doing "greater ministry" than He had ever done. John 14:12

12. Paul did. He said his ministry was to train and perfect people to do the work of the ministry. Ephesians 4:11-16

13. According to Bible scholars, Paul's entire ministry spanned no more than 40 years. In that time, he started a minimum of 14 churches personally and possibly up to 20 churches. That means new churches every 2 to 3 years, even counting furlough.

14. Paul knew he didn't get all he wanted done, so he trained men to go in and finish what he had started. Titus 1:5

15. How many times have you stated that you will be starting indigenous churches?

16. Remember, indigenous is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating or reproducing.

17. Planting indigenous churches is a very tall order. To get a church from none saved to be able to fulfill all that you feel God has called you to do.

18. You must train all, from the lay member to all church leadership, if you are to accomplish what you have set as your God-given goal.

Austin Gardner