Church Planting: Cake or Frosting?

Most of us have heard the phrase “that’s just icing on the cake,” referring to something that would be nice to have, but in the final analysis is not really necessary at all.  

That’s probably true of cake, since you don’t really need icing to have cake. In fact my son Stephen will only eat cake if there is no frosting. My wife Dianne only eats cake to get the frosting.

When it comes to the life of the church we all have various ideas about what is essential and what is not.  

For most of us church planting (starting new churches) is in the frosting category.  We are not against church planting, we may admire churches that engage in actively planting other churches, but we would not choose a church based on whether or not it was a church planting church.  Church planting “is icing on the cake” – nice if you can do it, but not a priority and if it doesn’t happen it doesn’t make much of a difference to my daily life or to the life of my church.

I want to challenge that idea and suggest a few things that can make church planting an essential part of the life of any church:

1. Establish a Church Multiplication Team in Your Church.
   • Develop a small team of visionary leaders who will commit to dream, pray and prepare the congregation for its part in starting new churches.
   • Keep it small and keep it simple.  You are not making a commitment to any particular project or plan at this moment, but you are demonstrating your openness to the Spirit’s leading and provision.
2. Establish a Church Multiplication Fund in Your Church.
   • This establishes a value for church planting.  This is equivalent to saving up for your children’s and grandchildren’s future.
   • Just a small fund begins to establish the value and develop the investment of the congregation in the idea of churches planting churches.  You will be surprised how this fund will grow and over time prepare your congregation for a future of multiplication.
3. Take the Becoming 5 Survey on the Multiplication Potential of Your Church.
   • This quick survey will give you and your leadership a baseline understanding of where your church is at in terms of readiness to start a new church.
   • Click the link above to get started!
4. Develop an Acts 1:8 mentality by investing time, talent, prayer, and resources on four levels (Click here to see my previous post on this):
   • Local
   • Regional
   • Cross-cultural
   • Global

Let’s insist that all of our churches become multiplying churches.  Big or small, rural or urban, struggling or thriving, we can all take part in the gospel imperative of making sure that every child, every family, every group and every nation has a church.