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A church plant is a lot like a boulder on a barren mountainside. You’ve seen this same rock in many adventure movies. Perhaps in the adventure movie you’ve seen, two nondescript cowboys desperately prying the bottom of the rock loose, and it slowly begins to roll. It quickly begins to speed up, knocking other smaller rocks loose. Rocks smash against other rocks, breaking them from their resting places. All at once, a clamorous noise ensues, dust rises, and suddenly the entire mountainside is alive with the violent motion of falling boulders and debris. This is what the cowboys were hoping for, and they whoop and holler at their success. A successful church plant is a lot like this picture. 

Research reveals that church plants must generate enough speed and momentum to reach an average weekly attendance of 200 within the first three years of public launch. I could have used any number, but conventional wisdom among most church growth experts is that this barrier, like the avalanche, is a significant momentum shifter in the life of a church. Steve Sjogren, an expert among church planters writes, “With fewer than 200 people, a church will need to fight just to stay alive. With fewer than that number of people, you will not have hit your stride. It is inevitable that your attention will be focused upon trying to maintain the basics of church survival”.  According to Peter C. Wagner, a church plant should “expect to pass through the 200 barrier within about 12 months after going public. If you are not through it in two years, something is going wrong and your chances of ever doing it are greatly diminished”.  A church plant that hits this mark quickly will be thrust forward with momentum and will have a greater possibility of retaining a growth pattern.

So, just how quickly should a church plant expect to reach 200? Some say it should happen in the first year, others believe you should reach it within the first 18 months. What I discovered was that both times are valid, but the “magic” cut-off time, if you can call it that, was closer to twenty-four months.

According to the data, 77 percent of the fast-growing church plants involved in this study reached an average weekly attendance of 200 by the twenty-four month mark. Only 23 percent of these fast-growing churches broke the 200 barrier after that time. It is statistically significant to understand that if a church plant has not broken this barrier within the first two years, it is unlikely that it ever will.
The graph above shows that only 15 percent of these fast-growing plants reached 200 within the first six months, 20 percent reached 200 by the end of the first year, an additional 15 percent reached 200 by the end of eighteen months. This bears revealing because it is widely believed, among some in the church planting world is if a church plant doesn’t reach 200 within the first eighteen months, it probably never will. Statistically, only 50 percent of these plants reached 200 within that time frame.