I have been thinking a lot about the myths surrounding church planting and thought I would tackle a few of them this week. A lot of these myths are simply excuses, planters use to justify why they aren’t reaching people (but that is another story for another day).

By far, the biggest myth I see in the world of church planting is the myth that says YOU HAVE TO HAVE A BUILDING TO GROW.

Nothing could be further from the truth. While buildings are awesome tools and I look forward to the day when God allows us to have one, you do not have to have a building to grow. I don’t care where you live and I don’t care how much you have convinced yourself that in your area people “don’t view  you as legit until you get a building.” The fact of the matter is you can grow without a building.

If you are truly trying to reach unchurched people with everything that is in you, it doesn’t matter if you have a building or not. Unchurched people do NOT care about buildings, they care about the fact that they had their lives changed.

I’ve heard the argument that people burn out being portabe. The truth is that church planters burn out being portable and therefore their people follow the leadership and they burn out on being portable. If your people are burning out on being portable than you have a vision issue. When people understand the vision and buy into the vision, they don’t mind being portable as long as the vision is being fulfilled.

I will even venture to say that those who were NOT growing before moving into a building that started growing after moving into a building are simply experiencing “church hopper” growth. Those that were growing before moving into a building will continue to grow in a building but they would have grown no matter what.

• West Ridge Church ran 3,000 portable
• Palm Valley Church runs 2,000 being portable
• New Spring was popping 4,000 being portable
• Elevation is over 2,000 being portable
• Oak Leaf is popping 800 being portable

Buildings are great and one day we will have one BUT never believe that it takes a building to grow. That is a huge myth.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Church Planting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.