Recent research reveals that greater care must be taken when training church planters for the field. Often church planters attend a one week/three day seminar. But is it enough?
God has not called us to be foolish about our preparation for the work he has commissioned us to do. Any denomination that takes church planting seriously should focus on the issue of training. That training should be specifically designed to prepare a church planter for work on the field.
Sixteen years of ministry in an established church did not prepare me for the difficulties involved in church-planting. Most of what I learned I gained through reading and mentoring from outside my own denomination. I was lacking a broad base of knowledge required to be an effective church planter. A proper training, specifically designed for church planters, would have given me a greater level of success.
This realization that specialized training is a necessary part of good church-planting has grown over the last decade. Bob Logan was one of the first to offer a “boot camp” for church planters. The success of those boot camps has led to the development of others. Now, dozens of parachurch organizations that offer the training needed to prepare planters more adequately for the process.
While many church and parachurch organizations have recognized the need for this type of training, few have researched the impact of training on church-planting. An analysis completed by the North American Mission Board, on the church-planting process of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2003, shows that training made a major impact on the effectiveness of their church-planting efforts. Worship attendance of churches whose pastor had received specialized training was three times higher than those who received no training. Church-planting training has become a key component of the church-planting process.
The research studied the difference between struggling church plants and fast-growing church plants. A total of 21 difference were discovered between these two groups. One of the findings revealed that more training may be need to prepare a church planter than has been typically offered.
Planters leading fast-growing church plants indicated they received significantly more church plating training than did leaders of struggling church plants. A majority of struggling church plants (76.5 percent) received less than a week of training. By contrast, a majority of fast-growing church planters (74.4 percent) received one week or more of training more than two weeks of training.
