Spiritual Fertility

Just read a great post from Ben Arment about preparing the ground before planting a church. Here it is:

The Stuff Legends are Made of

Church planters are notorious for thinking that a great dream + hard work + insight = a thriving church. But church planters fail all the time with this formula.

What's missing is spiritual fertility. Every area has an established degree of receptivity to the Gospel, which can make or break a chruch plant before it ever gets off the ground. I'm not saying we shouldn't plant churches in difficult areas. I'm saying that in these cases, we should change our primary activity from planting an organization to cultivating relationships.

If you've read The Purpose Driven Church, you know that Rick Warren prayed for a church to pastor for the rest of his life. You know that he scoured maps in his basement, looking for the fastest-growing areas across the country and discovered Orange County. And you know that he sent a letter to a California missions director at the same time that director sent a letter to him.

Now that's the stuff legends are made of. And it's enough to send tens of thousands of church planters charging head-long over the cliff. What we fail to consider is that before Rick planted Saddleback Commmunity Church, he attended and then taught at California Baptist University in Riverside, California for years. But get this - he preached over 100 revivals throughout the Riverside area, which is just a 30-minute drive from where the Saddleback campus currently sits.

Now do you think... that just maybe... he might have helped cultivate this area for a church plant? I'm thinking it might have been the true first base.

I write this because I have a huge heart for the struggling church planter. I think they need to know about spiritual fertility and how it impacts whether a church plant will work.

Just finished a book on this subject, which will hopefully be out by spring. More to come...

I wish I had known about this principle before we planted our last church. God was still faithful, but it reminds me of when the Sonics drafted Jermaine O'Neal. He sat the bench for several years before he was able to contribute. So it was with our church plant. It took us several years of becoming a part of the community before we began to make an impact.