“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”— Matthew 9:37

A Church Planter is a:

1. Discipler: A church planter is someone marked by a sense of mission to lead others to follow Jesus. He is a disciple-making disciple.

2. Pastor: A church planter is also a pastor and must fulfill the biblical requirements for character and teaching. He is a gifted preacher and qualified elder.

3. Missionary: A church planter will think and live like a missionary, with a heart for a particular place and people, and discernment to proclaim the gospel effectively. He is a Spirit-called missionary.

4. Equipper: A church planter must equip and position others to participate in the work of ministry. He is a contagious leader and equipper.

5. Churchman: A church planter will display a heart and skill for building the local church. He is a churchman and community builder.

6. Pioneer: A church planter must be able to bring into reality something that doesn’t exist yet. He is a visionary architect.

7. Optimist: A church planter maintains a hope-filled faith in God through the ups and downs of church planting. He is a God-centered optimist.

Get Help in Assessing Your Call to Church Planting

The 7-Traits of a Church Planter assessment tool is aimed at guiding and identifying those the Lord of the harvest is preparing to be sent into the harvest. It’s the result of bringing together biblical principles, practical wisdom, and lessons learned in planting churches for over 30 years as a family of churches in Sovereign Grace. This tool is meant to be profitable for self-assessment, but it is also designed to be part of a larger conversation with your pastors and those around you.

Regardless of what particular role each disciple plays in advancing the mission (as a church planter, pastor, small group leader, etc.) every disciple is part of Jesus’s mission. May this assessment serve to stir your desire to be a faithful disciple of Jesus for the glory of God.

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Ephesians 3:10 - “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known…”

Redeemer Fellowship celebrated our five-year anniversary on September 9 this year. God has been very good to us as a young church family in Newark, Delaware. As I think about the past five years and all that God has done, I can’t help but pause and celebrate the gift that church planting is and how powerfully God uses it for his glory. 

I don’t even mean to celebrate a particular way of church planting (though I wouldn’t want to do it with any other denomination than Sovereign Grace!). But rather, I want to celebrate the act of church planting in any form. Whether in perceived ‘strength’ or ‘weakness’; whether with 30 or 300; whether near or far; the planting of new Gospel preaching churches is a primary and powerful way that God continues to do his good work in this world and in our lives. 

Church planting multiplies the manifold wisdom of God. 

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Joel Shorey is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship, Newark, Delaware, USA.

This post originally appeared on September 24, 2023 on the Sovereign Grace Missions blog.

Sunday August 20, 2023 was a historic day for our growing family of churches in Mexico. It had been over 10 years since we had sent out a team to plant a church, but on this Sunday in an unprecedented event we prayed and commissioned two men to plant two churches. Through God's initiation four years ago, he sovereignly sent us 2 men from different parts of the country to be discipled and trained in order to go back to their respective cities to plant churches.

As part of their training, both men went through and participated in all of the ministries of our church in Juárez. They also covered much theological study and preaching workshops as well as participation in a year-long Leadership Discipleship group.

Keep reading to learn more about the church plants in Huajuapan, Oaxaca and Reynosa, Tamaulipa, including photos and more details on the men and their families on the Sovereign Grace Missions blog.

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Carlos Contreras is lead pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and key leader for Sovereign Grace Mexico.

The post Church Planting in Mexico first appeared on Aug. 28, 2023 on the Sovereign Grace Missions blog.

Recently on the podcast, Ben and I talked about 1 Corinthians 3: 5-9 with truths that can stir our faith for church planting. Here are some excerpts from the transcript, with the full podcast linked below.

Paul writes in verse 5, "What then is Apollos, what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God gives the growth. He who plants, he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field and God's building."

So just a couple of thoughts; one, in the text he says twice, that it is God that gives the growth. And, we have to have a component of faith to our church planting. That we believe our God will give the growth when we plant churches. And, when we talk about church planting there’s lot about methodology and that's really good and really helpful. So we should study those things and even put some of those methods into practice because we want to plant strong churches, but we also want to believe that God will give the growth.

Second, we are called God's fellow workers. That's stunning to me. That God would involve us in the work of his mission, but then to be called fellow workers with God, is amazing. And so when we church plant, we are laboring with God in his field, planting and watering, knowing that he will give the growth. And so church planting is a privilege because we are laboring with God. We are fellow workers with God. So, just a couple of thoughts from a text that I hope stirs us to think about church planting more and pray about church planting, and the Lord may just lead you to plant a church in the coming year or two, believing that he will give the growth.

In a recent podcast, Mark Prater gave an update on strategic global leaders in Sovereign Grace, and in an Emerging Nations post, he highlighted God’s generous provision for global expansion:

“God is giving us good, strategic, theologically discerning leaders throughout the world. Carlos Contreras is obviously one of them. Manolo Quintal is one of them. Hellman Avila is one of them in Latin America. As well as Joselo Mercado.

But in the Philippines we have Jeffrey Jo, and in west Africa with Dyonah Thomas, and Michael Granger in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Christian Wegert in Hamburg, Germany, Nathan Smith in Bristol, England. These are all men who are important leaders for us to help us steward any global opportunities the Lord gives us. They're not Americans. They're doing ministry in their culture and in their nation or part of the world. And I think that's just going to strengthen and shape Sovereign Grace in the years to come. So we want to be investing into those men which is why I'm taking this trip. And to that end Dave Taylor and I have put together a global leadership development plan. Many of those names, I just mentioned, we hope to pull together in 2022 after Dave can get out of Australia to just do some leadership development with them because we think they're important part of our future.

God is also giving us people who are giving generously to financially support our global expansion. In other words, God is faithfully providing for the God-given opportunities to partner with churches globally through the sacrificial giving of faithful saints, most of whom are members of Sovereign Grace churches.”

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Mark Prater is the Executive Director for Sovereign Grace Churches and serves as an elder at Covenant Fellowship Church.

Dave Taylor is Director of Emerging Nations for Sovereign Grace Churches and serves as the lead pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Sydney.

The Mark Prater podcast Strategic Global Leaders was posted on Aug 2, 2021. The full post God’s Faithful Provision for Global Opportunities originally appeared on the Emerging Nations blog on Aug. 1, 2021.

We are thrilled to announce the following Sovereign Grace Candidate Churches, who have formally begun the ordination and adoption process:

La Vina Escazu - Costa Rica

Igreja Nova Vida - Brazil

Casa Vida Playa Azul Church (CVPA) - Costa Rica

Sublime Gracia Church - Santa Marta, Colombia

It is our great joy to share more about these churches from Mark Prater, Bert Turner, and Joselo Mercado:

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Dave Taylor is Director of Emerging Nations for Sovereign Grace Churches and serves as the lead pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Sydney. He resides in Australia with his wife Emma and their five children.

The full post Four Global Churches Pursuing Adoption originally appeared on the Emerging Nations blog on February 25, 2021. Emerging Nations exists to serve the pioneering work of Sovereign Grace Churches around the world.

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