Church Plant Day 2

For all who are interested...Here's some more processing from this seminar. (It is called INTENSIVE for a reason...My brain hurts.)

*Most Church Plants that fail, fail because of a lack of financial backing...(Go figure in the 21st Century global empire of North America where spending money is our greatest talent, we can't sustain a church start.)
*If a denomination is not annually planting 3 % of its total number of churches, it is guaranteed to decline. (If it plants 2% it will likely remain plateaued.) Keep in mind that this 3% is successful church plants only...It does not count the attempted plants that fail (as we learned yesterday, 60% will fail.)
*If an existing church of 400 sends 100 of its people to start another church, the average return of investment is to end up with 200 newcomers. This must be something about reaping and sowing...didn't Jesus talk about that somewhere...I could've sworn he did.
*The average number of hours that a church planter must invest in the first 3 years of a new church plant will be around 75-80 per week. Even then, the success rate is solely determined by God.

We need to be in prayer for church planters and we need to seek to be in partnership with them, to encourage them, support them and bless them.

Thought for the day...Does God desire us to grow in numbers and build to accomodate these numbers or does God seek to cultivate Church Multiplication (a sort of divide and conquer approach?).