WHY DO CHURCH PLANTS FAIL

A few years ago, my good friends Bill Easum and Jim Griffith wrote a book of the Top Ten Reasons why some church plants go belly up.  This past week, I was asked this question, and I decided to respond with my own list of ten reasons.  It echoes their list, but it differs in a few ways.

10.  The business plan was inappropriate to the project.

In other words, it was financially unrealistic. With a less cash-intensive budget, many plants that we have to close would be able to make it!!

9.  The business plan for the project was great, but they did not work the plan. 

(For example, with missional plants that depend on a business to provide some of the support - such as a coffee shop, you had better know what you are doing in terms of opening a food/beverage establishment and work your plan.)

8.  The church planter's family and life situation/experience/gifts were not right for this challenge at this time.  They may have assessed well as a planter, but there were too many special variables at this moment of time, including a steep learning/adjustment curve with the mission field.  (Lifeway has a planter risk assessment that can help discern these kind of issues.)  One planter I coached failed miserably at her church plant and then led the next church she served to double and then some.  She was fine - but the planting project was NOT A MATCH for her gifts.  

7.  The assessment of the planter (prior to commencement of the planting project) was incomplete or did not happen at all.  The assessment should look for experiences in the planter's past in which he or she aced the kinds of challenges that are a part of this plant.  NEVER assume that a planter who has planted well in the past can plant anywhere and with any planting strategy!! 

(For example, a planter who planted well with a $400k grant may not be able to do it again if they have to raise the seed money.)  

6.  Too much conference money was spent too fast.  The project was making slow but steady progress building its leadership base and growing its constituency, but the budget was basically blown in the first two years. 

Better to apply funding like a speed bump, a little at first, higher in the middle, and taper off at the end.

5. Too little connectional money was thrown in.  Recall Jesus' admonition about thinking through the cost of building the tower prior to breaking ground.  While I am a fan of low-budget new churches (in the spirit of those places where the church is growing fast around the world), pastors must be paid in most cases if they do not have another day job.  When pastors' families bear too much financial sacrifice too long, those pastors may wear out on the project before its time for them to move on to their next ministry endeavor! 

4. The church that was emerging was outside the vision of the denominational investors, and so they decide to pull their investment. 

This is not necessarily an issue of the new church failing, but of a lack of communication and understanding between the church and its benefactors/investors.  

3.  It just wasn't going anywhere.  In the west and northeast USA, a plant will remain small until a leader team of 10-14 highly committed people are passionate about the planting of the new church.  It may take three or four years to find and develop these people.  After that the church may grow very rapidly, if the team has been developed with a vision of explosive, multiplying growth.  But if, after a couple years, there really are no high-capacity leaders developing or attaching to the project - it may be time to call it "a learning experience" and stop.  

2. There was too little prayer and spiritual intensity at the heart of the project.  Very few church plants go far without a deep spiritual component imbedded in the lives of the lead team.   

1. We failed to dance with the mission field.  Great ideas that may have worked somewhere else simply did not fit the people and community where we were planting.  It is always best for a project to grow in response to real and widespread conversation with the people in the zone where we are planting.   And sometimes, for a plant to make it, we will shift strategies in response to the local people.