Before Your Church Plants, Ask How

Days before our first baby arrived, I had one job left on my list: assemble the crib. I knew I needed to. I knew why. But when I opened the box to find 40 wooden dowels, a tiny Allen wrench, and an instruction manual with more stick figures than words, I had one problem: I didn’t know how.

Why is the essential question in any task. Before planting a church, we must know why. But it’s not the only question; we also have to ask how. Thankfully, God’s Word is sufficient for both. No stick figures required.

Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13–14) shows us, in nine principles under three headings: We send. We plant. We partner.

We Send

Through the church. Notice how Paul and Barnabas were sent. They weren’t self-declared or self-sent. They weren’t sent by a seminary or a denomination. They were sent through the church: “There were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers . . .” (Acts 13:1). And notice that the church was “worshiping the Lord and fasting” (v. 2)—normal, healthy church stuff.

Churches are welcome to use sending organizations, denominations, and associations to help them. But sending is fundamentally the job of the local church.

By the Spirit. In that context—a healthy church glorifying God—the Spirit spoke: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (v. 2). Church planting is supernatural work. We can’t make it happen.

Church planting is supernatural work. We can’t make it happen.

It’s good to have plans, but it’s foolish to rely on anything made by man. At their best, church-planting plans are like sails: helpful, even as they need adjusting. But they’ll get us nowhere unless the wind blows.

So the church in Antioch prayed. And when the Spirit called, they laid hands on their two best leaders and sent them off. Church planting is costly.

In teams. Barnabas and Saul were sent as a team, and they later added John Mark to assist them. It might sound heroic to be a solo church planter, but that’s not the biblical pattern (Luke 10:1, Acts 17:15, Acts 8:14).

Entrepreneurs can start their own companies. YouTubers can start their own channels. But church planting is a team sport.

We Plant

With the Word. Luke frames the whole journey as a ministry of the Word. Just before it began, pompous King Herod was struck down because “he did not give God the glory” (12:23), and one verse later, “the word of God increased and multiplied” (v. 24). Herod was dead, but the Word was alive.

At their first stop, Paul and Barnabas “proclaimed the word of God” (13:5). In Pisidian Antioch, “almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord” (v. 44), until “the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region” (v. 49).

If churches plant churches with leaders, with members, with a budget, with a building, with a website, with branding—and yet without the Word—that’s no real church planting at all.

Through affliction. Planting with the Word comes with affliction. When the Word is rightly preached, nobody is left neutral. As the Word multiplied, disciples multiplied—but so did afflictions.

Paul and Barnabas were opposed by a magician (v. 8), by jealous leaders (v. 45), by angry crowds (v. 50). In Lystra, Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city, presumed dead (14:19). And what did he do? He got up, went to the next city, and kept preaching the Word (vv. 20–21).

The world has no problem with Word-less churches: moral lessons and feel-good stories. But pulpits that proclaim the exclusivity of Christ will face opposition. So will evangelism that calls for repentance. So we must plant not around affliction but through it: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (v. 22).

Autonomous churches. The task wasn’t finished until they’d raised leaders and released authority: “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed” (v. 23).

Each plant had its own membership and leadership. The sending church in Antioch didn’t add to its rolls; it multiplied.

Here is the missionary task: a local church sending a team to cross barriers to the gospel, proclaim the Word, make disciples, establish churches, raise up leaders, and release authority. Whether we cross borders to another country or districts within a city, the task is the same. We plant autonomous churches.

We Partner

In the work. Luke brackets the journey from “the work to which [the Spirit] called them” (13:2) to “the work that they had fulfilled” (14:26). He shows sending, planting, and partnering as one unit.

Even after that, the work wasn’t done. On the next journey, Antioch sent Paul back: “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are” (15:36). That verse is hard to fit into a spreadsheet—but easy to imagine happening around a dinner table. Church planting isn’t merely church-birthing; it’s church-nurturing too. 

Partnership isn’t one-sided. The young plants partnered right back, sending Timothy to serve with Paul (16:1–3) and, later, relief to Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1). They multiplied.

With joy. When Paul and Barnabas returned, “they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27). Not what they had done—what God had done.

As the Word multiplied, disciples multiplied—but so did afflictions.

When we put God’s glory at the center of church planting, it makes us more humble, because God must do this work. And it makes us more joyful, because we know he can. Partnership in church planting is fueled by God-centered joy.

Over time. Luke closes the journey with an unhurried note: “They remained no little time with the disciples” (v. 28).

Healthy churches multiply by partnering together, and gospel partnership deepens over time. This isn’t the work of a few years. It’s the task of a lifetime.

What This Looks Like Today

Fourteen years ago, in a city in East Asia, a church was born. A small group of believers, with their Bibles and folding chairs, met in a living room. They were small, but they were healthy. As the Word increased and multiplied, so did their church, moving through a series of larger meeting spaces. Before long, it was time to multiply.

So they sent out several of their elders and a core team of members to plant another church. Both churches kept growing. In time, they planted another. These healthy churches have continued to multiply, and today there are more than a dozen. They share resources to help young plants get off the ground, collaborate in pastoral training, and gather for conferences to “strengthen [their] souls” and “see how they are” (14:22; 15:36).

I called one of their pastors recently to make sure I had my facts straight. He told me plainly that they’re no more special than the rest of us. They’ve just been doing normal, healthy church stuff: worshiping Jesus and proclaiming the Word. In several of these plants, affliction forced them to multiply. But they were ready for it, because this has been in their DNA from the beginning.

They send. They plant. They partner. That’s how churches plant churches: through the local church. It’s what we see in Acts. It’s what we see in East Asia. And by God’s grace, we hope to see much more of it in Singapore: churches planting churches planting churches. Because healthy churches multiply.