The state of church planting in the SBC

At the North American Mission Board luncheon prior to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Phoenix, I shared some important statistics about the state of SBC church planting. Let me share more here.

LifeWay Research, in its Viral Churches research, examined church planting strategies and the effectiveness of all Protestant denominations. Leadership Network invested heavily (more than $100,000) in the research. As you can imagine, it was an enormous project.

While doing the research, which was at first a private report, I listed the denominations and groups that were strongest and those that were struggling in church planting. Later, Warren Bird -- the director of research and intellectual capital at Leadership Network -- and I published the research project in the book "Viral Churches."

We discovered and subsequently reported that the SBC is not one of the leading denominations in church planting. Facts are our friends, but some people in the SBC mistook my honesty for disloyalty.

Well, NAMB has now publicly stated that it is planting at a rate "under" 2 percent. Maybe facts really can be our friends. The reality is that our numbers tell us that we are not particularly effective at church planting.

To read more. click here.

To visit the Church Multiplication Network web site and to learn more about how Assemblies of God is planting new churches, click here.

To visit the Baptist General Conference web site and to learn more about how Converge Worldwide is planting new churches, click here.