When we first received the call to start to church plant we contacted Matt Hatch at Mosaic Church in Leeds if he could provide us with some recommended reading, as he runs a course for potential church planets in their church. He provided us with a list of over thirty books but there was one that he recommended we start with and that was Planting Missional Church (Planting a church that’s biblically sound and reaching people in culture) by Ed Stetzer so via good old Amazon we purchased a copy and have been reading through it for some time (I tend to have two or three books on the go at any one time).

This book covers ALL aspects of church planting starting with looking at what a church plant is, what a church planter looks like, how to identify church planters, the different types of church plant and overcoming the objections to church planting.

It then moves onto the investigating every area of a new church plant, from leadership, meeting, fund raising, pulling together the core group, worship, advertising, the first meeting, buildings, evangelism, discipleship and planting from a plant.

Stetzer has a great deal of experience having planted a number of churches himself and having trained a huge number of successful and unsuccessful church planters.

The main downside of this book is the fact that it is American based and focused, so he expects people to come to the new church after receiving a mailer about it, which would not be the expectation in the UK. So as with all American books we have to take what is good out of it and ignore that bits that do not apply to us. However there is so much in this book that even with the ‘americanisms’ taken out there is still a great deal we can learn from it. For example the view that full time elders of the church should split their 50 hours a week in

1.      Evangelism 15 hours

2.      Ministry 15 hours

3.      Administration  10 hours

4.      Study / sermon prep 10 hours

Holds true in all churches and most context, although most church leaders i know work more like a 60 hour week!

This book therefore is an excellent starting position for anyone interested in leading or joining a church plant. It pulls no punches about the fine line between success and failure and will give anyone who thinks that church planting is a breeze a reality check.

It has however fired up something inside me that wants to go and plant a church, all we are waiting for now is instruction as to where that is, so feel free to pray about it for us.