Have you ever been a part of a successful church plant? Ever been a part of an unsuccessful one?

Here’s how Ben Arment sees the progression of failure for church planters:

Church planters rarely fail in the first year, and they rarely fail because of money. They hardly ever fail in the second or even the third year. Most church planters fail in year five when their churches have drifted into obscurity, when the luster has worn off, and no one is paying attention to them anymore.

By this time, the church planter is a mess. He’s defeated and discouraged, possibly depressed. And he’s formed all sorts of new conclusions about God that hinder his future walk with God. What’s worse is that the planter, for the life of him, cannot pinpoint what went wrong.

He blames himself – maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a pastor. He blames his circumstances – there simply wasn’t a good meeting location. He blames a bad decision – he shouldn’t have launched so soon. Or he blames the people – there was a deceiving family out to turn everyone against him.

But what he almost never sees is the need for cultivated soil. He showed up with a bag full of seeds to plant, but all he found were dirt clods. It never dawned him that he needed a hoe.

Thoughts?

HT: Jonathan Brink