The Start-Up Funnel: How to Use Church-Planting Insights to Expand Your Circle of Influence

Consider this workable model that can be universally applied by any church desiring to increase their evangelistic effectiveness.

Starting new churches and growing existing ones are complementary activities that can bring synergistic benefits. They have the same goal, but start at a different place. We must do both and we must do both well. The goal of every church, whether just starting or having been around for a long time, is to be a healthy congregation that multiplies disciples, ministries, and churches.

Since new churches often depend on existing churches as their primary source of launch teams and finances, many believe that church plants are a necessary burden on existing churches with no visible return. Actually, church planting benefits existing churches because church planters perfectly position themselves to learn new ways to reach people outside of Christ. They have little to lose and can attempt previously untried evangelism methods without risking a lot. More established churches tend to be more risk averse, because the longer a church lives, the more history and resources it tends to accumulate. The good news for existing churches is they can learn from the experiments of younger churches before attempting new ministry methodologies for themselves. Over time, the lessons learned by start-ups become a significant benefit to existing churches. Read more