Finding Space For A New Generation

Are you planting a church this fall? If so, spring is the season when the hunt for a facility kicks into high gear. While you might be tempted to look for a traditional building tucked away on a quiet street, there is a massive shift happening in our culture right now that should directly influence where you choose to host your public worship gatherings.

Believe it or not, Gen Z is currently attending church more frequently than their parents. After years of digital saturation, younger demographics are actively seeking out physical, embodied community. In his groundbreaking book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt exposes just how deeply our young people are suffering from a lack of in-person interaction, having traded the real world for a virtual one. The data is clear: they are not craving more online church options. They are desperate for face-to-face interaction, authentic relationships, and physical spaces where they can genuinely connect with God and each other.

This presents an incredible opportunity for church planters. Reaching Gen Z and Millennials is not ultimately about finding the trendiest venue. It is about choosing a setting that lowers barriers, feels accessible, and helps people take a first step toward community. For many planters, that means meeting in a local high school, community center, or theater located right in the flow of everyday life.

As you look for your fall launch facility, don’t just ask, “Where can we fit?” Ask, “How can this space help us connect with a generation that is desperately searching for connection?” This month’s newsletter is dedicated to helping you find, secure, and equip the right facility for your church plant. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Go Portable First

Why wait for the perfect permanent building when you can launch faster and more strategically in a portable facility? Going portable isn’t just a steppingstone; for many church plants, it is a massive strategic advantage. Renting a school or a theater significantly reduces your overhead, allowing you to invest more of your budget directly into ministry, outreach, and staffing. It also keeps your church agile, deeply embedded in the community, and creates hundreds of volunteer opportunities for your launch team to take ownership of the mission every single Sunday.

If you are debating whether to wait for a permanent space or to launch portable this fall, check out this article: Go Portable First: Why Would You Wait? by Portable Church Industries. It breaks down exactly why launching in a temporary, rented facility might be the best decision you can make for the future health and growth of your church plant.

Don’t Forget The Cables

Figuring out exactly what you need to transform an empty gymnasium or a dark movie theater into a welcoming, engaging worship environment can feel overwhelming. You don’t want to overspend on gear you don’t need, but you also can’t afford to forget crucial items on opening day. From the right audio cables and pipe-and-drape to children’s ministry check-in stations and directional signs, the sheer volume of logistics is staggering. That is why we have done the heavy lifting for you!

Passion for Planting has created a comprehensive, field-tested Downloadable Church Plant Equipment List. This resource outlines the typical equipment we see in a portable church system, broken down by ministry area. Whether you are building your budget or finalizing your purchasing timeline, this free tool will save you hours of research. Download the list today from our website and take the guesswork out of going portable!

Merging For A Mission

While going portable is a fantastic option, some church planters actually end up acquiring a facility by merging with an older, declining church. Across the country, there are dying churches sitting in paid-off buildings with very few people left in the pews. Instead of closing their doors forever, many of these aging congregations are choosing to merge with vibrant new church plants, exchanging their building to let you infuse their location with your life-giving DNA. It can be a beautiful “win-win” scenario, but it is also a complex process that requires extreme wisdom, humility, and clear leadership.

Before you go down this route, we highly recommend you listen to Revitalize My Church podcast episode featuring Jim Tomberlin, or read Better Together, the book Jim and Warren Bird co-authored to help churches join forces for the Kingdom. These resources will help you navigate the tricky waters of church mergers.

From God-Given Dream To Reality

If God has placed a dream in your heart to plant a church, you probably already know the excitement that comes with the vision. But you likely also feel the overwhelming weight of the practical questions: Where do I start? What am I missing? How do I take this dream and turn it into something real?

At Passion for Planting, we believe that calling requires equipping. Our Church Planting Residency Cohort is designed specifically to bridge the intimidating gap between having a vision and turning that vision into reality. But don’t just take our word for it; listen to the voices of those who have walked this path before you. For many residents, the cohort is the turning point where abstract concepts become concrete action. Kevin McNeil of Canvas Church describes the residency as the place…continue reading

Photos by Ismael Paramo, Adrianna Geo, Adam Winger, and Mizanur Rahman on Unsplash

The post Newsletter April 2026 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

One Thing Leaders Can’t Ignore

If we examine the life and ministry of Jesus, we notice a counter-intuitive strategy. While He preached to the multitudes, healed the crowds, and feed the masses, He spent the vast majority of His time pouring His life into a select group of disciples. He knew that for the mission to survive and expand beyond His earthly ministry, He couldn’t just attract followers; He had to reproduce disciples. He didn’t measure success by the size of the crowd on the hillside, but by the capacity of the disciples in the boat and on mission with Him.

As church planters and ministry leaders, we often find ourselves caught in the “tyranny of the urgent.” Sunday is always coming. There are sermons to write, logistics to manage, and relational fires to put out. In the midst of this whirlwind, leadership development often gets pushed to the back burner, viewed as a luxury we will get to “someday” when things slow down. But the hard truth is – things never slow down. If we wait for the perfect time to develop leaders, we will never do it.

When a leader fails to develop others, they inevitably become the lid of the organization. The church can only grow as wide as the leader’s personal capacity to care and manage. This is the “Hero Trap”—where the pastor does the work of the ministry while the congregation watches. But Ephesians 4 paints a different picture: leaders are called to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Developing leaders isn’t about filling volunteer slots or getting tasks done; it’s a form of discipleship. It champions multiplication over addition. When you lead a follower, you add one person to the Kingdom. When you develop a leader, you multiply your influence and create a legacy that outlasts you. This month, we want to challenge you to shift your focus from gathering a crowd to building a core. The resources below are designed to help you build a culture where leadership development is not an event, but the very oxygen your church breathes. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Mastering The Art of Leadership Development

If you are looking for a guide on how to build a leadership pipeline from scratch, look no further than Mac Lake. Mac is a leading voice in church leadership development, having helped hundreds of churches build systems that multiply healthy leaders. His book, The Multiplication Effect, is a must-read for any planter, but his online resources – not the least of which being his YouTube Channel – are equally valuable. He breaks down the complexity of “leadership development” into actionable steps, helping you move people from volunteers to leaders to multipliers.

• Check out his resources: Mac Lake Online

Leadership Multiplication Strategy Template

One of the biggest hurdles when developing leaders is knowing where to start. Too often, we rely on a “hope strategy”—hoping that if we run good programs, leaders will magically emerge. But hope is not a strategy. To build a culture of multiplication, you need a plan that is intentional, reproducible, and specific to your context.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Passion for Planting has developed a comprehensive Leadership Multiplication Strategy template available for free. This isn’t just a generic form; it is a strategic tool designed to help you wrestle with critical questions about identifying, inviting, training, and coaching growing leaders.

This resource helps you move from accidental leadership placement to intentional development, covering every stage of the pipeline. Download it today, customize it for your church, and stop leaving your legacy to chance.

• Download it here: Template & Sample

Developing Leaders in Your Church

If you have thirty minutes this week, we highly recommend digesting the content of this video podcast on Developing Leaders in Your Church. It is all too easy to view leadership development as just another program to run—a mechanical process of filling holes in a roster. However, true development is organic, relational, and intentional.

In this episode of the Grow Leader Podcast, you will find practical insights on how to shift your primary identity from being a “doer” of ministry to a “developer” of people. We suggest watching this together with your staff or key volunteer team. Use it as a catalyst to discuss how you can move away from transactional recruiting and toward transformational discipleship. The long-term health of your church isn’t just determined by how many people attend, but by how many are being empowered to lead.

• Watch the video: Developing Leaders in Your Church

 Residency Spotlight: Chris Flathers & Connect Church

We love seeing our residency alumni thriving! Chris Flathers, a participant in our 2018-2019 cohort, planted Connect Church in Lone Tree, CO, with a DNA of multiplication. Chris doesn’t just lead his church; he actively coaches other leaders to build their own leadership pipelines with the Multiply Group. He has even integrated this training directly into the Connect Church App, where he shares training modules that you can use to develop your own team. It’s a fantastic example of a planter giving back to the Kingdom.

• Get the App & Learn More: Connect Church Website

Assessment & Boot Camp

Healthy, reproducing churches don’t happen by accident; they are planted by healthy, reproducing leaders. The DNA of the leader determines the DNA of the church. If you want a movement that lasts, you can’t afford to guess about readiness or strategy. At Passion for Planting, we are obsessed with getting the “Who” right before we worry about the “How.”

Assess Calling and Readiness: Is the leader ready? Is their calling clear? Our Church Planter Assessment (May 4-6) provides a prayerful, rigorous evaluation to answer those questions and offer them practical next steps to take as they prepare to plant.  

Equip the Mission: Is the leader’s vision clear? Is their strategy scalable? Our Church Planter Boot Camp (May 14-16) moves beyond theory. It introduces planters to the essential “how-to” systems and strategies needed to plant. And they come away with the entire P4P playbook.

Don’t just start a service. Start a legacy of reproduction.

Photos by  Jack Sharp and Small Group Network on Unsplash

The post Newsletter March 2026 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

The Gospel in Their Language

Before you can effectively plant the gospel in a new community, you must love your community enough to understand it. In our eagerness to start a much-needed church, it is tempting to rush into a new area with preconceived notions and pre-packaged strategies, assuming what worked elsewhere will work here.

We often try to “cut and paste” ministry models that worked for us in the past, assuming they will automatically thrive in our new context. But treating a unique community like a generic target is usually a recipe for irrelevance. Effective ministry isn’t imported; it’s grown locally. This requires deep, intentional contextualization—a willingness to slow down and listen before we speak.

We see this modeled perfectly by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17. When he arrived in Athens, a city renowned for its intellect and saturated with idols, his spirit was grieved by what he saw. Yet, his reaction wasn’t frantic condemnation. He didn’t immediately jump on a soapbox with a generic, one-size-fits-all sermon. Instead, scripture tells us he walked around, carefully observing their objects of worship.

Paul became a humble student of the city. He didn’t just see their statues; he studied their values, their fears, and their deeply rooted longings. He listened to their debates and even familiarized himself with their poets. He waited long enough to identify the “unknown god” they were yearning for. When he finally spoke at the Areopagus, he didn’t compromise the gospel, but translated it using their cultural language to build a bridge to Jesus Christ, rather than erecting an unnecessary barrier.

If Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, took the time to deeply study a pagan culture before engaging it, how much more should we? To reach your community effectively, you need to know its unique heartbeat, its hidden pains, and its celebrated assets. You must love the context before you try to change it, because listening is an act of love. That’s why in this month’s newsletter we’re pointing you to resources to help you becoming a student of your city. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Numbers Don’t Lie

You can’t fully love a community you don’t truly know. While walking the streets and meeting people is indispensable, you also need hard data to understand who actually lives there. Are you basing your launch strategy on anecdotal evidence or facts? What are the real demographics regarding things like age, income, family structures, and ethnicity in your target area?

Passion for Planting wants to equip you with the objective data you need to better understand who calls your community home. That’s why we offer free Demographic Reports for your specific target area. This isn’t just census data; it’s a window into the lives of the people God has called you to serve. Stop guessing and start strategizing with real numbers. Request your free report today and take the first step toward truly understanding the landscape of your community.

Are You Building Bridges or Barriers?

As a church planter, you live in the high-stakes tension between the timeless truths of Scripture and the shifting cultural landscape of your new community. You know the gospel has the power to save, but the critical question is: are your neighbors actually hearing it? Or are they getting hung up on unnecessary cultural barriers you didn’t even realize you were erecting?

True contextualization isn’t about watering down the hard truths of the Bible to make them palatable; it is the missionary discipline of translation to make them understandable. In Contextualization in the Late-Modern West, Michael Keller defines the task as “translating the timeless message of the gospel into the timely language of a particular culture, without over- or under-adapting the message.”

If you want to ensure you are addressing the specific idols and deepest longings of your community with the clarity of the cross, rather than just imposing your own cultural preferences, read this article. It will help you proclaim that gospel in a way that is both faithful to God and intelligible to your neighbors.

A Strategy for Meeting Influencers

Every church planter has good intentions of being out in the community, but schedules fill up quickly, and without a plan, networking gets choked out by other priorities. To help you move from intention to strategic action, we’ve developed the Community Networking Strategy Template.

This tool will challenge you to meet more community leaders and influencers, helping you lay foundations for ongoing relationships. The template encourages you to approach every meeting with the ‘posture of a student’, genuinely seeking to learn about your community’s strengths and real needs. More than that, it helps you set a realistic pace, ensuring you don’t just network before launch, but continue meeting leaders after Launch Sunday as well. Download the Community Networking Strategy Template to organize how you will build bridges with key leaders in your area.

Faithful Steps 

Several years ago, Jacob McKlarney sensed that God was calling him to plant a church. However, after much prayer he sensed that God wasn’t calling him to start a church, but to spark a movement of new churches along the Interstate 81 corridor in Southwest Virginia.

Together with his wife Haileah, Jacob started to dream and pray about what that meant and what it would take to start a movement that multiplied disciples and churches in his region. As he began to dream, he realized he would need help and support to clarify his vision, and even more help to turn this vision into reality. That’s when he connected with us.

To help him prepare to plant a reproducing church, Jacob participated in our Distance Residency Cohort last year. This intense season of training helped him refine the church’s strategy for equipping qualified leaders and launching decentralized house churches. God has been faithful to their preparation! We are thrilled to report that Blacksburg Church just launched their first two house churches last month along with their weekly Sunday morning worship gatherings. The movement is just getting started, but we’re thrilled to hear how it’s gaining momentum. Read the full story on how their faithful steps are already bearing fruit.

Photos by Constantinos Kollias, Gayatri Malhotra, Adrien CÉSARD, Cytonn Photography, on Unsplash

The post Newsletter February 2026 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Building the Engine: How To Build A Launch Team From Scratch

Are you ready for the abstract dreams of last year to collide with the concrete realities of January 2026? This month marks a pivotal, defining moment for many leaders across our networks who are gearing up for fall launches. While the rest of the world makes casual resolutions, these planters are right now beginning to gather, develop, and train launch teams, moving squarely past the dreaming phase and into the doing phase.

This is the critical season where abstract vision must start transforming into tangible reality. Planters are making the significant shift from saying “I have an idea for a new church” to declaring “We are now building this community together.” This process involves countless coffee conversations, vulnerable vision-casting events, and the courageous act of asking others to join a mission that doesn’t fully exist yet.

It is exhilarating, but it can also feel daunting to build something from nothing. Take courage in knowing you are following a biblical pattern. When the Apostle Paul set out to plant the church in Philippi, as recorded in Acts 16, he didn’t arrive with a pre-packaged crowd. He simply went to a riverside prayer gathering on the Sabbath and shared the good news. God opened the heart of a businesswoman named Lydia, and her household became the foundational core—the first launch team—of that vibrant church.

Like Paul, many of you are currently looking for your “Lydias”—those key individuals whose hearts God is opening to help establish this new work. At Passion for Planting, we deeply understand the unique, high-stakes dynamics of this phase. You are not building alone. Whether you are currently praying for your very first committed families or hosting your initial interest meetings, this newsletter is designed to equip you with the practical tools, strategic insights, and spiritual encouragement needed to build a strong foundation for the journey ahead. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Launch Team Development Strategy

Planting a church is not a solo endeavor; it requires a dedicated team sharing your vision. However, gathering that team shouldn’t be haphazard. Stop hoping for the right people to just show up and start strategically building the foundation your new church needs right now.

Our Launch Team Development Strategy Template is designed to take the guesswork out of this critical phase. This tool guides you step-by-step through defining your vision, setting concrete recruitment goals, crafting your recruitment strategy, and structuring an effective onboarding process. It even helps you plan how to build a healthy team culture from day one. Don’t let the task of team building stall your momentum. Download this template today (or use our beta interactive AI version) to turn your vision into an actionable plan and assemble the team God has for your plant.

Launch Team Expectations

Before you ask anyone to commit, you need to have clear expectations of what it means to join. Written Launch Team Expectations are a simple, powerful tool that clarifies the commitment level (time, giving, service), the relational expectations, and the spiritual health standards required of your first team members. It removes ambiguity and ensures everyone is entering the mission with their eyes wide open.

Expectations are your first and best tool for filtering those who are merely interested from those who are truly committed. Download our Sample Launch Team Expectations and start crafting clear expectations for your launch team. This can also double as or evolve into a church membership covenant.

How To Train Your Launch Team

Your launch team isn’t just your initial volunteer corps or setup crew; they are the carriers of your new church’s culture. If you don’t intentionally train them, you risk launching with a crowd rather than a unified force.

The article How To Train Your Launch Team from New Churches is essential reading because it provides a practical, multi-week framework for embedding your church’s specific DNA into your core group before day one. It moves beyond mere logistics, guiding planters through teaching essential spiritual disciplines, fostering deep unity, and helping members discover their gifts for service. Don’t leave your church’s culture to chance. Read this to learn how to transform willing volunteers into a spiritually grounded team ready for mission.

Developing A Unifying Launch Strategy 

Once your core team is initiated, you need to invite them into the plan. Your Launch Strategy is the blueprint that clarifies where you are going and how you will get there. It gives your team the confidence that you have a vision worth following and a plan that can sustain it. This document should cover everything from vision and values to your financial and discipleship goals.

If you don’t have one, or if yours needs refinement, there is no time like the present. It can be the unifying document that gets everyone “shooting at the same target.” Download our Launch Strategy Template to prayerfully put together your own unique strategy.

Photos by Andrew Moca, Small Group Network, and Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

The post Newsletter January 2026 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

The Shepherds’ Strategy: Moving from Witness to Missionary

As we roll into December, many people lean into the sentimentality of the Christmas season. We see the manger, the star, the angels, and we feel warm fuzzies. That’s good, but here at Passion for Planting, we also want to focus on the execution—the why and the how behind the Incarnation. We need to look at the shepherds not just as characters in a nativity scene, but as the first documented evangelistic initiative that extended the peace and joy of Christ to the ends of the earth.

Look at Luke 2:8-17. These shepherds, the low-tech, low-profile guys on the fringe, receive the highest-stakes message possible: the Messiah is born! They didn’t have a marketing plan or a five-year strategy. They simply did two things: they witnessed the event, and then they immediately shared about it.

Luke 2:17 gets straight to the point: “When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.” These blue-collar shepherds didn’t keep the good news to themselves; they executed the mission on the spot, turning their personal encounter into public testimony. They leveraged their proximity—their friends, their neighbors, their fellow workers in the fields—the entire “Bethlehem area” became their first mission field.

This type of evangelistic fervor must be ingrained in the DNA of every church plant. Even if you’re leading an established church, it’s your job to train your congregation to take the transformative experience of the Gospel and share it with others in a way that’s true, understandable, and contagious. This month, as usual, we’re not focusing on theory, but highlighting practical and tactical resources to help you develop disciple makers and church planters. We’ll explore key principles and practices for sharing the good news and mobilizing your congregation to view their daily environment as their primary mission field. It’s time to more than admire the story and live it out ourselves. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Amplify Your Mission

Do you want your church to move from having a mission statement to living the mission every single day?

This month, we urge you to tune into the Everyday Missionaries Podcast—your tactical training ground for empowering your people. Just like the shepherds who immediately shared the good news in their community, this podcast equips your congregation to become witnesses right where they live, work, and play.

Each episode breaks down the barriers to personal evangelism, offering practical, reproducible tactics for sharing the Gospel with friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Start using this podcast to train your volunteers and leaders. It’s designed to help you create a church culture where everyone is confident and competent in sharing their faith, turning every member into an Everyday Missionary.

Listen today and multiply your mission: Everyday Missionaries Podcast.

A Digital Toolbox for Spiritual Conversations

The GodTools App by Cru removes the anxiety from sharing your faith and makes every conversation an opportunity. This free digital toolbox puts powerful evangelism strategies like the Four Spiritual Laws and Knowing God Personally right on your phone.

Whether you’re talking to a neighbor, a family member, or a total stranger, the app provides simple, guided outlines and visuals to communicate the Gospel clearly and confidently.

But the true game-changer is its global reach: GodTools supports over 100 languages, featuring a unique parallel language function. This allows you to present the Gospel in the native tongue of the person you’re speaking with, instantly breaking down language barriers and ensuring the good news is received in their heart language. Stop letting fear or language hold you back—download GodTools and equip yourself for every conversation, everywhere!

Mobilizing Missionaries

Want to equip everyone in your church to share the Gospel effectively and see immediate life change?

We highly recommend the videos at Movements.net. This page provides fast-paced, high-impact training designed to equip your people with a simple, memorable method for explaining the Gospel and inviting a response. These resources focus on reproducibility—ensuring anyone can learn and teach the method to others, multiplying your church’s missional capacity.

Use these short videos in your small groups or leadership training to move your members from passive hearers to active harvesters. This is the tactical blueprint for creating a congregation of everyday missionaries, just like the shepherds in Luke 2. Get the training that creates movements!

Leveraging Testimony

Sharing your faith often starts not with doctrine, but with a story. That’s why we highly recommend the resources at I Am Second, a powerful movement that uses unscripted, impactful video testimonies to share the Gospel.

Their famous white chair films, featuring celebrities, athletes, and everyday people, are a unique tool for evangelism. These short YouTube videos bypass debate and dive straight into the universal human search for hope and purpose, showing how a relationship with Jesus Christ changes everything.

Explore their video library with a story that you think would resonate with someone in your life who’s searching for hope this Christmas. Then send it to them and ask them what they think. Sometimes, the most powerful bridge to the Gospel is hearing how God is bringing healing and redemption to people’s lives today.

Photos by Rod Long, Karthik Balakrishnan, Priscilla Du Preez ?? , and Richard Bell on Unsplash

The post Newsletter December 2025 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Seasons of Sowing: Trusting God in the Waiting

If you’ve ever tried to grow your own vegetables, you know there’s a stretch of time that feels like nothing is happening. You water. You wait. You check the soil. You wait some more.

Church planting often feels the same way. You pour your heart into relationships, preaching, prayer, and community outreach — yet weeks or months can pass before you see visible fruit. The waiting can test your faith. But it’s in that quiet season, when the soil seems still, that God is doing His deepest work.

In Galatians 6:9, Paul writes, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” The “proper time” isn’t always the time we’d choose, but it’s always the time God knows is best.

This November, as farmers bring in their harvest and the fields grow quiet, we’re reminded that there are seasons to sow, and seasons to wait. The sower’s job is faithfulness — not control over the outcome. God calls us to plant seeds of the gospel, nurture relationships, and water with prayer and good deeds. He promises to bring growth in His time (1 Corinthians 3:6–7).

At Passion for Planting, we’ve seen it time and time again. Church planters who labored for years with little visible progress suddenly experience breakthrough. Teams who prayed through dry seasons discover that God was preparing hearts all along. The fruit comes not because of our strategy, but because of God’s faithfulness.

So as you enter this season of Thanksgiving, thank God not only for the harvest you’ve seen, but also for the seeds still in the soil. The waiting season is not wasted — it’s sacred.

Keep sowing. Keep praying. Keep trusting. The harvest is coming. 

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Faithfulness Over Flash

In a world that measures success by speed and visibility, church planting reminds us that faithfulness often happens in the shadows. God’s greatest work grows slowly—like roots spreading underground.

When your efforts seem small or unnoticed, remember: every prayer, every invite, every message is a seed. Your job is to plant faithfully; God’s job is to bring the fruit.

Take heart—your calling isn’t to be impressive, it’s to be obedient. The early church didn’t explode overnight; it multiplied through consistent, unseen acts of obedience.

If you need a fresh reminder that God is the one who brings growth, read Brett Andrews’ free eBook Give God Some Credit. It’s a powerful look at how God builds His church when we stay faithful to the mission He’s given us.

Reinvigorating Vision

One of the main reasons church planters grow weary—or even consider quitting—is because their vision starts to fade. The dream that once burned brightly becomes clouded by exhaustion, slow progress, or discouraging results. When vision dies, so does motivation.

That’s why it’s crucial to keep your eyes on the horizon. As Helen Keller once remarked, “The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight but no vision.” That’s certainly true for church planters. Without a clear picture of the preferred future, we lose our sense of purpose in the present.

The Horizon Storyline tool can help you rediscover that picture. It guides leaders to articulate a vivid, Spirit-led vision of what God could do through their church in the coming years. When you can see what you’re working toward, hope returns, and endurance grows.

If your vision feels foggy, take some time this month to revisit it. Sketch the horizon. Pray through it. Share it with your team. A renewed vision might be exactly what God uses to give you strength for the next season of sowing.

Small Seeds, Big Impact

Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed—tiny, almost invisible, yet destined for surprising growth. Every church plant starts that way.

Don’t despise small beginnings. That living room Bible study, that coffee with a skeptic, that first volunteer training—each is a seed with eternal potential. God delights in multiplying the small and unseen.

When you need encouragement that your “small” faithfulness matters, read 5 Lessons for New Church Planters from The Gospel Coalition— 5 lessons from a church planter who’s learning how to persevere through roadblocks and seasons of waiting.

The Work in the Waiting

Every farmer knows: you can’t rush the rain. You prepare the soil, plant the seed, water faithfully—and then you wait. Waiting isn’t idleness; it’s trust in motion.

Church planting is full of “not yet” seasons. You’ve prayed, preached, discipled, and planned—but nothing seems to grow. Take heart. The waiting is where God deepens your roots.

When the results seem distant, revisit Galatians 6:9: “At the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

To see how other planters have persevered through dry seasons, check out Prayer, Perseverance, and Small-Town Church Planting from Rural Ministry Network—real stories of God’s faithfulness through patient endurance.

The waiting is holy ground. God is working under the surface.

Photos by Maddy Baker, Vince Veras, and Warren on Unsplash

The post Newsletter November 2025 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Building Strong Disciples, One Conversation at a Time

Frederick Douglass once said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” That timeless truth captures why family discipleship matters so much for the mission of the church. If we want to raise up resilient, faith-filled disciples, the best place to begin is in the home.

When most of us think about church planting, our minds go to launch teams, sermons, and outreach events. But one of the most powerful disciple-making engines God has already designed is the family. Scripture calls parents to be the primary disciplers of their children. From Deuteronomy’s call to “impress these words on your children” (Deut. 6:6–7) to Paul’s reminder for fathers to “bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), the biblical pattern is clear: discipleship begins at home.

The reality is that many Christian parents feel ill-equipped for this task. They may faithfully bring their kids to church but struggle to know how to talk about faith around the dinner table, at bedtime, or while driving to school. Too often, churches unintentionally reinforce the idea that discipleship happens only in the building rather than around the kitchen table.

As church planters, we have a chance to shift that narrative. By equipping parents to weave faith into everyday life, we multiply disciples far beyond Sunday mornings. When families embrace their calling as everyday disciple-makers, the ripple effects can transform not only their homes, but entire communities for generations.

This month, we want to encourage and resource you to help families in your church plant embrace their calling as everyday disciple-makers. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Equipping Parents

Equipping parents to disciple their children is one of the greatest opportunities—and challenges—facing church leaders today. Many parents feel ill-equipped, unsure how to talk about faith at home beyond attending Sunday services. D6 HomePointe helps bridge that gap by providing churches with a customizable, turn-key resource center designed to inspire and equip families. With HomePointe, churches don’t need to reinvent the wheel; they gain access to practical guides, conversation starters, and age-appropriate resources that empower parents to lead spiritually in the home.

What makes HomePointe especially valuable is its simplicity. It’s not about adding another heavy program to the church calendar—it’s about creating natural, sustainable ways for families to integrate faith into everyday life. Whether it’s mealtime discussions, bedtime prayers, or car-ride conversations, HomePointe equips parents with tools to disciple their kids in real-life moments. For church planters, this means multiplying disciple-making families from day one, ensuring the mission of the church begins where it matters most: at home.

Inspiring Voices on Family Discipleship

Want to dive deeper into how churches can equip parents to disciple their kids? Check out these two excellent podcast episodes:

• Intentional Family Discipleship in Your Church (The Disciple Maker’s Podcast) – Jay Austin unpacks how churches can empower parents to be the primary spiritual influencers in their homes, building intentional rhythms that last.
• Making Family Discipleship Work (Influence Magazine Podcast) – Dr. Brian Dembowczyk explains why many parents struggle with discipleship and how churches can practically equip and encourage them.

These episodes provide both biblical perspective and practical ideas you can put to work in your church plant.

Tools for Parents: Conversation Guides & Blueprints

Parents are often eager to disciple their children but feel unsure about where to begin. That’s why resources that make family discipleship simple and practical can be such a gift. Two tools from Renew.org are especially helpful for church planters who want to equip families for everyday disciple-making. Real Life Theology Conversations provides parents with a guide to essential theological questions, offering simple explanations and conversation prompts that spark meaningful discussions about faith in the home. Renew is also offering free resources to help you launch a family discipleship campaign at your church. Download your free launch packet today!

Alongside RLTC, Family Discipleship Blueprint offers a clear, year-by-year roadmap that helps parents intentionally disciple their kids at every stage of growth. Together, these resources give families confidence and structure for weaving faith into daily rhythms. For church planters, they provide a ready-made way to put disciple-making in the hands of parents, multiplying the impact of the church far beyond Sunday mornings.

Simple Family Discipleship Ideas

Family discipleship doesn’t have to be complicated—it’s about weaving faith into the everyday moments of life. The Navigators define it as the intentional and ongoing process of leading your family to know, love, and follow Jesus together at home. To help parents step into this role, they’ve created a library of free resources designed to make discipleship practical and doable for families of all ages and stages.

From conversation guides and Scripture memory tools to practical ideas for praying and reading the Bible as a family, these resources equip parents to model faith and invite their kids into spiritual practices in ways that feel natural and sustainable. Whether you’re a church planter looking to resource parents or a parent wanting fresh ideas for your own home, the Navigators’ free discipleship tools are a great place to start.

Explore them here: Navigators Family Discipleship Resources

Photos by Ben White, Nienke Burgers, C D-X, CDC, and Alexander Dummer on Unsplash

The post Newsletter October 2025 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

What Is a Church?

When you hear “church planting,” what image pops into your mind? Maybe it’s a launch team unloading chairs and sound equipment into a rented auditorium. Or a handful of people gathered in a living room, sharing a meal and opening Scripture. Or a missionary quietly building relationships in a neighborhood until a faith community forms.

At its core, a church is not a building, a program, or a music style. A biblical church is a spiritual family of believers who make disciples, live on mission together, gather regularly to worship God and hear His Word taught, practice baptism and communion, all under biblical leadership. When those essentials are present, the form can adapt to fit the culture and context.

This flexibility matters because healthy churches reproduce. Just as living things reproduce in nature, churches are meant to multiply spiritually. And the simpler the church model, the easier it is to reproduce. Across the world, some of the fastest-growing movements are made up of churches meeting in homes, under trees, or in borrowed spaces. They’re lean, simple, and laser-focused on the mission.

If the Church in the US locks itself into just one model—such as a large, program-heavy weekly gathering—we risk slowing or limiting multiplication. That model can still be effective, and it’s not the only one God uses. By embracing a variety of models—house churches, missional communities, microchurch networks, or launch-large approaches—the Church can create more opportunities for the gospel to take root in more places.

This month, we’re exploring different church planting models to help you imagine what’s possible. We’ll revisit what makes a church a church, highlight why reproduction is vital, and show how simplicity fuels multiplication. Plus, we’ll point you to practical tools—like our Church Multiplication Strategy Template—to help your church reproduce and multiply.

God’s mission is for every tribe, tongue, and neighborhood to hear and respond to the gospel. Let’s be open to every biblical model available to make that vision a reality. Enjoy this month’s newsletter!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Simple and Solid Ecclesiology

Defining the church isn’t just theory—it shapes how you plant one. The Bible describes the church as a gathered community of believers devoted to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer (Acts 2:42). In the New Testament, we see churches practicing baptism, sharing communion, making disciples, living on mission together, and installing biblical leadership.

When these core elements are present, you have a church—whether meeting in a cathedral, a living room, or under a tree. This clarity frees planters from feeling tied to one format or tradition. Instead, you can plant biblical churches that fit your culture and context.

A simple tool to help determine if a spiritual community has become a church is the Church Circle exercise. It clarifies whether the biblical essentials are in place. This understanding helps avoid two extremes: calling something a church that lacks those essentials, or adding extra requirements that make planting harder. Staying focused on the core keeps your church healthy, reproducible, and on mission.

Leading Great House Churches

The video Leading Great House Churches is an invaluable resource for church planters exploring simple, reproducible models of church. In the video Jason Shepperd from Church Project in Woodland, TX, outlines their expectations for thriving house church gatherings and demonstrates how strategically networked small communities can powerfully shape followers of Jesus.

Why watch? First, it clearly illustrates how house churches serve as entry points for intentional spiritual growth—far more than casual small groups, these gatherings foster holistic discipleship that nurtures leaders, encourages intimacy, and equips members for mission.

Second, the video underscores the role of house churches in forming disciple-making pipelines: they build spiritual maturity, multiply leaders, and stay responsive to the Spirit in ways traditional models often struggle to replicate.

For planters, this teaching offers practical vision. Whether you’re starting a church in a new context or leading established gatherings, this video will help you think differently—not just about growing a church, but about nurturing a multiplying movement of healthy, connected faith communities.

Church Multiplication Strategy Template

Planning for multiplication requires intentionality. That’s why Passion for Planting created the Church Multiplication Strategy Template—a free resource to help you design a plan for reproducing churches.

This tool guides you through questions like:

• What’s our multiplication vision?
• What church planting models fit our context?
• How will we identify, train, and send new planters?
• What systems and supports will make multiplication sustainable?

By working through the template, you’ll clarify your multiplication strategy and create an actionable plan. It’s not about forcing one model, but about finding approaches that align with your theology, context, and resources.

You can download the template here: Church Multiplication Strategy Template, or try our beta interactive GPT. Use it with your leadership team, board, or launch team to dream about reproducing not just once, but over and over again.

Church Planter Boot Camp

Feeling called to plant a church? The Passion for Planting Boot Camp will help you move from vision to a clear, actionable launch plan.

This hybrid training begins with six self-paced online lessons to help you craft essential strategy documents. Then join us November 6–8, 2025, at the nZone in Chantilly, VA for hands-on coaching, peer feedback, and focused workshops.

You’ll walk away with strategies for community profiling, disciple making, fundraising, leadership multiplication, launch team development, and more. Whether you’re preparing to plant soon or simply exploring, you’ll gain practical tools and clarity to guide your next steps.

Don’t just dream about planting—get equipped to launch a healthy, reproducing church.
Learn more & register here.

Photos by Markus Spiske, S. H. Gue, Breno Assis, and Small Groups Network on Unsplash

The post Newsletter September 2025 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

How Will They Hear? Marketing Tips For Church Planters

Are you planting a church that plans to launch public worship gatherings this fall? If you are, you’re likely knee-deep in training your team, searching for a facility, purchasing equipment, and building a website. But there’s one essential question you can’t afford to leave unanswered: How will your community know you exist and that you are for them?

A compelling vision, a solid team, and a Spirit-led mission are all critical, but without intentional efforts to get the word out, your church may remain the best-kept secret in town. Marketing isn’t just a business buzzword—it’s part of your mission. It’s about extending an invitation to people who are searching for hope, connection, and purpose. It’s not self-promotion; it’s invitation.

Strategic marketing and outreach efforts can build momentum that carries into your Grand Opening and beyond. This includes everything from yard signs and mailers to social media strategy, community events, and personal invites. The goal? Saturate your community with awareness and anticipation.

This month, we’re highlighting tools and insights to help you effectively engage your community. These resources are designed to help you steward your message well, maximize your visibility, and make sure no one in your target area heads into fall without knowing your church is launching, too.

As Mark Batterson puts it, “The greatest message deserves the greatest marketing.” Enjoy this month’s newsletter!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

Marketing Strategy Template

If you didn’t graduate with a marketing degree, creating a promotional plan for your new church can feel overwhelming. But effective outreach doesn’t have to be complicated. That’s why we created the Church Marketing Strategy Template—a free, step-by-step resource designed specifically for church planters.

This downloadable template helps you:

• Clarify your message so it resonates with your local community
• Choose the best outreach methods, from digital ads to community events
• Schedule your campaigns for maximum visibility and engagement

Whether you’re exploring grassroots tactics like yard signs and door hangers or digital strategies like social media and email marketing, this guide equips you to plan your church launch communication with clarity and purpose.

You can even plug the template into your favorite AI content tools to accelerate your message development. Need a sample prompt to get started? Just email us, and we’ll send you one.

Don’t let your new church be the best-kept secret in town. Share your story. Create anticipation. Connect with people who are searching for hope, purpose, and community. Your message might be the very thing God uses to change someone’s life forever.

Download your free Church Marketing Strategy Template now and start spreading the word about your church plant with confidence.

Outreach Strategy Template

Thinking about investing in a church marketing campaign—whether through digital ads, direct mail, signage, or social media? Before spending your budget, make sure you’ve done the foundational work of building brand recognition through local outreach.

Effective church marketing doesn’t start with a postcard—it starts with serving your community.

People are far more likely to respond to your marketing materials if they’ve already had a positive interaction with your church. Imagine this: someone receives a flyer in the mail and recognizes your logo. They say, “Oh, that’s the church that hosted the free diaper-changing station at the community festival.” That familiarity creates trust—and trust increases engagement.

Now imagine the opposite. If your church’s first impression is a cold, impersonal mailer with no context or prior connection, it will likely quickly end up in the trash.

That’s why we strongly encourage church planters to pair their Church Marketing Strategy with a Church Outreach Strategy. These strategies work hand-in-hand: outreach builds relational equity, and marketing amplifies your visibility.

To help you get started, we’ve created a free Outreach Strategy Template—a practical tool that guides you through planning community service events, partnerships, and touchpoints that create goodwill and build awareness.

Download your free Church Outreach Strategy Template today and lay the groundwork for effective church marketing.

When people recognize your church as one that genuinely loves and serves the community, they’re far more likely to listen to your invitation—and maybe even show up.

Marketing Ideas  

Struggling to come up with church marketing ideas to help get the word out about your new church? You’re not alone—and we’re here to help. We’ve compiled a list of creative church marketing methods designed specifically for church planters looking to reach their communities with clarity and purpose.

From postcards and door hangers to social media ads and YouTube campaigns, this curated list will inspire your outreach strategy and help you discover the tools that best fit your context and budget.

Whether you’re preparing for a church launch, planning a seasonal campaign, or simply want to increase engagement in your neighborhood, these ideas will help you:

• Spark interest in your church
• Maximize your local reach
• Choose marketing tools that align with your goals

Once you’ve brainstormed your list, take the next step by reading Effective Church Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Church Today by Devon Leeds. This practical article offers key insights for church planters who want to build a smart, sustainable church marketing strategy that increases visibility and drives engagement—especially during high-impact seasons like summer and fall.

Download the Church Marketing Ideas now
Then, read Devon Leeds’ article to take your strategy from ideas to implementation.

When it comes to church growth, awareness is the first step. Let’s make sure your community knows your church exists—and that it’s here for them.

Marketing Message

If you want your church marketing strategy to make an impact, enthusiasm isn’t enough—you need clarity and consistency. One of the most effective tools in your communication toolkit is a short, memorable, and repeated marketing message. Why? Because repetition builds recognition—and recognition opens the door to relationship.

When your launch team, volunteers, printed materials, and online platforms all communicate the same message, your community begins to remember who you are and what you’re about. A consistent message builds trust and makes your church more approachable to first-time guests and spiritually curious neighbors.

Even more, a clear one-sentence message creates internal alignment. It equips your staff and volunteers to confidently communicate your church’s vision in everyday conversations. Whether it’s:

• “No Perfect People Allowed”
• “A Church for the Rest of Us”
• “Done with church, but not with God?”

…a compelling, repeatable message helps your vision stick—and spread.

In a noisy culture full of competing messages, your church must offer a simple, hopeful, and authentic invitation that cuts through the clutter. Consistency doesn’t just enhance your brand—it invites people to take a next step toward connection and community.

Want to learn how to craft a marketing message that resonates?

Read A Message That Sticks by Sean Cronin to discover how a one-sentence message can become the foundation of your entire church communication strategy.

Church Planting Residency – New $5,000 Grant!

As a church, you want to equip the next generation of church planters with the tools, structure, and support they need to thrive. You know the value of strong training—both for the planter and the churches they’ll plant.

We know planting a church is hard enough. The thought of starting a residency program from scratch can feel overwhelming.

• Where do you start?
• Who will lead the program?
• How do you create the curriculum?
• Who will coordinate the logistics and manage the timeline?
• How can you afford it without taking away from other ministry priorities?

At Passion for Planting, we’ve already done the hard work of creating a comprehensive residency program. We offer a turnkey Distance Church Planter Residency that helps you train future planters without the hassle of building your own program from scratch. And they don’t even have to move across the country!

• No Need to Reinvent the Wheel – Skip the time and cost of designing a residency program
• Ownership Without the Overhead – Offer a residency that’s “Powered by Passion for Planting” but feels like your own
• Focus on What Matters Most – We’ll handle the logistics and training, so you can stay focused on local ministry and disciple-making

Whether you’re an established church or a church plant in progress that wants to ‘plant pregnant’, we can help you offer a residency to your planters. We’re now accepting applications for our 2025-2026 distance residency cohort, which starts in September. All US planters who complete the residency will be eligible for a $5,000 cash grant for their church plant. Contact us today about setting up a church planting residency at your church!

Photos by Adam Jang, Campaign Creators, Nina Strehl, Marija Zaric , and Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

The post Newsletter July 2025 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Church Facilities That Further The Mission

Not long after World War II, Winston Churchill stood in front of the English Parliament and said something that still sticks with us today: “We shape our buildings, and afterward our buildings shape us.” He was talking about rebuilding the House of Commons, which had been destroyed in the war—but his point goes way beyond architecture. Churchill knew that the design of a space affects how people think, feel, and live. And if that’s true for government buildings, it’s certainly true for the places where the church gathers.

We believe the spaces where churches meet have a big impact on their ministry. That’s why it’s important to make sure your meeting space fits the mission God’s given you.

A lot of church planters feel pressure to find a building of their own. Maybe it’s because having a permanent space seems to legitimize what they’re doing in the eyes of the community. Or maybe they’re just tired of the weekly grind of setting up and tearing down. And while those feelings are totally understandable, we often remind them: the early church didn’t have buildings for 300 years and the movement didn’t slow down one bit. They stayed laser-focused on making disciples, not property maintenance.

Of course, owning a building can be a blessing—but it’s not without its headaches. That’s why it’s so important to think through how your space is helping (or hurting) your mission. The right space can open doors to your neighborhood. But the wrong setup or mindset can just as easily close you off from the community you’re trying to reach.

What if your church’s gatherings weren’t limited to a sanctuary or living room? What if worship and Bible studies happened in subway stations, coffee shops, or other places people already hang out? Just imagine the visibility. And the impact.

The truth is, all over the world, churches are growing in places where they don’t own a single building—places like China, India, and Iran. For too long, the Western church has been known more for its buildings than its people. It’s time to flip that script.

This newsletter is full of ideas and resources to help you think outside the box when it comes to your church’s physical space. We hope it encourages you to get creative and stay focused on the mission. Let’s lead the way. Enjoy!

-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations

10 Popular Portable Church Venues

One common complaint we hear from church planters on a regular basis centers on the lack of public gathering spaces in their community. They drive around their city and struggle to find spaces that align with their vision and fit their budget. However, we’ve found that by looking a little harder, thinking a little bit more creatively, and getting help from friends who work in real estate, our church planters end up finding multiple potential gathering space options that they didn’t know about.

To help you find portable church gathering space in your community, read 10 Popular Portable Church Venues: Pros and Cons For Reproducing Churches by Sean Cronin, our very own P4P Training Lead.  

A Better Way To Utilize Your Space

If your church has a building, are you dreaming about how to be the best steward of it? If you are, one possible option is turning the space into a public coworking space like Shoal Creek Community Church and Oak Leaf Church have done. Shoal Creek Community Church transformed its underutilized space into The CO-OP at Shoal Creek, a coworking facility offering private offices, shared workspaces, and meeting rooms. This initiative not only maximized the use of the church building, but also fostered a vibrant community of entrepreneurs and remote workers. The collaboration between the church and the coworking space has led to a shared revenue model and has attracted various businesses, including a private school and a music/art studio.

In Canton, GA, The Oak House operates within the premises of Oak Leaf Church, providing coworking spaces to the local community. This setup allows the church to engage with professionals during the week, creating opportunities for ministry and community building in a non-traditional setting.

Could utilizing your church building as a coworking space be a blessing to your community and help fund your ministry?

Reimagining Church Real Estate  

Many church plants start gathering in homes following the example of the church in Acts. Talk to any church planter, or read church planting books, and plenty tell stories of how their church started with a handful of people meeting in someone’s living room. Eventually though, most of those church planters sense the need to move their church gatherings to bigger, more public spaces to help them reach more people. That’s been the common paradigm in the United States over the last several decades.

But is that always the best path forward? Could we also imagine a future where some planters follow that path while others are sent out specifically to spark networks of house churches? Or where entrepreneurial leaders team up with business-minded believers to co-own spaces that serve the community all week long, not just on Sundays? The Church in the US could embrace the genius of “both/and”.

And overall, we think it’s time to stretch our imaginations when it comes to where churches gather and how we steward space. Buying or building facilities that sit mostly empty during the week can quietly siphon off resources that might otherwise fuel disciple-making and church multiplication. But that doesn’t mean buildings are bad—it just means we need to ask better questions about how they’re used.

There’s room for a variety of models. The opportunity is to align each one with the mission. So let’s stay curious. Let’s keep innovating. Let’s agree that it’s going to take all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.

If you’re ready to dig deeper into this conversation, check out Reimagining The Future of Church Real Estate by Nick Bonner.  

Facility Tour Checklist

Renting worship space in the community can open doors to incredible ministry opportunities. It allows church planters to stay flexible, keep costs down, and focus resources on people rather than property. Plus, being in a shared or public space often creates natural connections with the neighborhood. For instance, when a church meets in a school, it has built-in community service and outreach opportunities with that school. Also, meeting in a familiar, public space like a movie theater or school can be less intimidating for people who haven’t attended a church service in a long time. Or ever.

If you’re considering where to gather for worship, weigh the pros and cons of each potential space. Put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re trying to reach. Ask how meeting in those spaces might affect your ability to connect with them. Ruthlessly ask yourself whether the facility aligns with your church’s vision. Use our Facility Tour Checklist to help you evaluate each space. Throughout the process, pray for God to lead you to the right space and grant you favor with the people managing the facility. 

Church Planting Residency – New $5,000 Grant!

As a church, you want to equip the next generation of church planters with the tools, structure, and support they need to thrive. You know the value of strong training—both for the planter and the churches they’ll plant.

We know planting a church is hard enough. The thought of starting a residency program from scratch can feel overwhelming.

• Where do you start?
• Who will lead the program?
• How do you create the curriculum?
• Who will coordinate the logistics and manage the timeline?
• How can you afford it without taking away from other ministry priorities?

At Passion for Planting, we’ve already done the hard work of creating a comprehensive residency program. We offer a turnkey Distance Church Planter Residency that helps you train future planters without the hassle of building your own program from scratch. And they don’t even have to move across the country!

• No Need to Reinvent the Wheel – Skip the time and cost of designing a residency program
• Ownership Without the Overhead – Offer a residency that’s “Powered by Passion for Planting” but feels like your own
• Focus on What Matters Most – We’ll handle the logistics and training, so you can stay focused on local ministry and disciple-making

Whether you’re an established church or a church plant in progress that wants to ‘plant pregnant’, we can help you offer a residency to your planters. We’re now accepting applications for our 2025-2026 distance residency cohort, which starts in September. All US planters who complete the residency will be eligible for a $5,000 cash grant for their church plant. Contact us today about setting up a church planting residency at your church!

Photos by Karen Chew, Jakob Dalbjörn, Shridhar Gupta, Daniel Tseng, and Glenn Carstens-Peters  on Unsplash

The post Newsletter June 2025 appeared first on Passion for Planting.