THE CHURCH PLANTING PASTOR
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You Can’t Plant a Church If You Don’t Know What a Church Is
By Nathan Knight | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.19.2017Ecclesiology can’t be assumed nor should it be considered a distraction to the church planter’s “mission.”
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Church Plants Need Pastors, Not Entrepreneurs
By Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017We often assume church planting requires more entrepreneurial skills than other pastoral contexts. Is that a fair assumption?
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The Priority of Patience, Prayer, and Preaching in Church Planting
By Josh Manley | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017As you patiently “preach and pray, love and stay,” you’ll find that your church has been planted on fertile soil that bears up good and lasting fruit.
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The Church Planter’s Second Priority: Raising Up Leaders
By Mike McKinley | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017By developing other leaders who can teach, disciple, evangelize, counsel, and shepherd the flock, you raise up others who can care for the health of all the church members.
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Personal Evangelism for the Church Planter and the Church Plant
By J. Mack Stiles | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017If evangelism is to be woven into the fabric of the life of a new church plant and its pastor, it takes some thought and planning.
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Church Planters, Make Sure Your People Know You Love Them
By Steve Jennings | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017When laying the foundation for a new plant or revitalization, there’s truly no better advice than this: “Before you do anything else, make sure your people know that you love them.”
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The Loneliness of Church Planting
By John Starke | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017An enchantment with the city isn’t the same as a biblical love for the city, and it won’t sustain you in the long run.
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The Blessings and Burdens of A Church Planter’s Wife
By Gloria Furman | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017There’s no way a finite heart can hold all the things a church planting wife will face in life and ministry. But Christ can, he does, and he will.
THE CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS
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Stop Launching Churches! Instead, Covenant Together
By Nathan Knight | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 07.17.2015I think we should stop talking about “launching” new church plants and instead refer to them “covenanting” for the first time.
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The Calculated Risks of Church Planting: Sending Your Best Members and Elders
By Juan Sanchez | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017No matter the costs and effects of church planting on the planting church, the Lord is always faithful.
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What 9Marks Purists Should Know About Church Planting
By Ed Stetzer | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017I love gospel clarity and biblical ecclesiology, but I’m concerned about the anti-practical nature we sometimes see in the 9Marks community.
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Church Planting in the Same Building
By Matthew Spandler-Davison | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017Our church was getting full, and we knew we needed to do something. So, we planted a church . . . in the same building.
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Lessons Learned from Church Planting by Peaceable Division
By Colin Clark | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017Our three-year old church had 84 members. In order to plant a church, we split in half.
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How to Do Ministry When You Don’t Have Money
By Brian Davis | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017How do you serve the Lord as a church planter while broke?
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Church Planting across Ethnic Lines
By Joel Kurz | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017When God burdens a preacher for a people group, a neighborhood, or a block, it’s right for that preacher to go and become all things to all people so that he might save some.
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Church Planters, Don’t Wait To Put Your Documents in Place!
By Joel Kurz | 9Marks Journal: Confessions, Covenants, and Constitutions: How to Organize Your Church | 03.01.2016Our church waited three years to put our church documents in order, and we suffered for it.
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Planting Churches for Pleasure, Not for Profit
By Nathan Knight | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017What’s needed to plant a church isn’t the wisdom of Jim Collins, but the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Knowing When to Say When: Reflections from a Failed Church Plant
By Derek Bass | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017I moved my family to New England, eager to plant a church. A few years later, it failed.
CHURCH MERGERS
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How to Merge Two Church Cultures
By Dave Russell | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017In a church merger, you must understand the two existing cultures and lead them to become one. Here are five ways to do that.
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Church Mergers and Tolerable Irregularities
By Brad Wheeler | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017When should two churches merge despite the differences—and when should they stay separate precisely because of their differences?
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Anatomy of a Church Merger
By John Folmar | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017Four things I learned from our successful and fruitful church merger—almost 20 years after it happened.
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What I Learned from Two Failed Church Mergers
By Matthew Cunningham | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017I’ve attempted to lead our church toward two church mergers, but neither have worked out. Here’s what I’ve learned.
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When Two Become One: Legal Considerations of a Church Merger
By Jonathan Rourke | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017This article outlines the legal considerations of a church merger. It’s not a recipe for the success of the marriage, but a roadmap for blending families. It’s not very romantic, but it’s necessary.
Audio Interviews with Pastors Who Attempted Church Mergers
By Jonathan Leeman | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017Recently, Jonathan Leeman sat down with three groups of pastors to talk to them about their experience with church mergers—whether they failed or succeeded.
PASTORS' TALK PODCAST
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Episode 19: Church Mergers and Plants
By J. Leeman, M. Dever | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017We just released a Journal on church planting and church mergers. Because neither Mark nor Jonathan wrote an article for it, we devoted this episode of Pastors’ Talk to the topic.
Book Reviews
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Book Review: Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century, by Aubrey Malphurs
Review by John Joseph | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017This perspective on what it takes to plant a church is simply overwhelming, and worse than that, it’s not biblical.
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Book Review: Proliferate: A Church Planting Strategy for Everyday Churches, by Jason Crandall
Review by John Joseph | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017As long as you’re aware of its errors, this book offers insights for the prospective church planter.
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