Leading Your Church in Church Planting: Overcoming Objections

In this sixth and final post in my series on leading your church in church planting, I wish to bring to your attention a few of the most common objections toward church planting. One thing I learned when pastoring established churches was that objections will come. In light of this reality, pastors need to be proactive in responding to them.

You can find the previous posts in this series listed at the end of this post.

By far, the best resource I have found containing information on overcoming objections is The Dynamic Daughter Church Planting Handbook (DCPI, 1999) by Paul Becker, Mark Williams, and Jim Carpenter. These men address and respond to numerous objections to church planting. I cite from their work when I address this topic in my book Discovering Church Planting. Here is also an excellent paper from Grady Smith on Addressing Objections to Church Planting. Grady wrote this paper for me for a doctoral colloquium I was teaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Pastors, be prepared to respond to the following objections before casting your vision for church planting:

Why do we need to plant churches?
There are already enough churches here.
We need to concentrate on revitalization instead of planting other churches.
It will cost too much.
We will lose our fellowship.
We’re too small to plant churches.
We will plant churches when we reach _____ members.
We do not have the leaders.
Our growth momentum will slow down.
We already support missions in other ways.
If the lost want to attend a church, then they are welcome to meet with us.
If we plant another church in this community, we’ll be competing against each other.

Can you think of other concerns that your congregation will mention? How will you respond to these concerns? Make certain that your responses are thoroughly biblical and built upon healthy missiology. Be gracious and humble in your responses. Remember, the writer of Proverbs wrote: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly” (Proverbs 15:1-2, ESV).

Again, as noted in a previous post, the Lord has extended to you a great deal of thought and time to church planting. You have probably been praying over this matter for months, maybe even years. You have been eating, sleeping, and breathing church planting. Remember, just as the Lord has been gracious to you in moving you toward deeper convictions toward such missionary activity, please extend such grace to your people. If their involvement in missions has been limited to sending money overseas, then they will likely need some time to study the Scriptures and pray through the process. Be a leader. Take them by the hand. Pray for them. Pray for yourself. And guide them in being involved in seeing missionary teams regularly sent from the church.

Previous Posts in the Series:

Part 5: 5 Steps for Casting a Vision for Multiplication

Part 4: Avoiding the Nestea Plunge

Part 3: Some Resources to Get You Started

Part 2: 7 Reasons for Leading Your Church in Church Planting

Part 1: The Other Wing of the Airplane