Hindrances to Church Planting on the Mission Field, part 2

Austin Gardner • June 24, 2022

No right or wrong answers! Thought questions.

From your philosophy of ministry, you will develop the principles that will guide your ministry plan. Not a right or wrong set of questions but more to help you think through what you are doing! Meditate on the following questions.


  1. Have you decided if you will serve as a missionary or as an on-the-field pastor?
  2. Are you leaving or staying?
  3. Are you preparing pastors or pastoring a church?
  4. Are you a leader training, multiple church planting missionary?

  5. Can you see how pastoring a church could hinder your church planting ministry?
  6. Getting so involved in pastoring one church is easy that you forget your priority.
  7. Pastoring can consume your life and time.
  8. It is so much more enjoyable to preach to a packed house than wondering if anyone is going to come.
  9. Pastoring a church can become an anchor around your neck if you desire to plant multiple churches because you will never have enough time to do more.

  10. Do you realize that all you know is pastoring? It is all we have seen model.
  11. Most of us have never seen multiple church planting modeled.
  12. Seldom have we had a model that could show us how to be a leader training, multiple church planting mentor, missionary.
  13. We hunger to preach the Bible. Expository, sequential Bible preaching.
  14. We get excited about pastoring and loving people. We drop our focus from the world to the needs of our congregation, which is the right thing for a pastor to do. It is great to be a pastor but is that what God called you to do

  15. Can you see how you might work differently if you were to plant a church or train pastors to plant churches?
  16. Choosing the demographic you are after might be different if you are a pastor; you want families. You want ministries for all the community.
  17. If you are training future leaders, you might want to find young men and women willing to give their lives to start new churches and pastor.
  18. I challenge you to consider reaching mainly 15 to 25-year-olds or 18 to 28-year-olds who have not decided what to do with their lives. They might surrender to carry the gospel to the world.


Hindrances to Church Planting on the Mission Field Part 1

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