Rich Kao

I recently shared our 20 year plan for 5 Stones Church.  That's right, 20 years!   Two statistics helped forge my thinking on this.

#1 - Studies have shown church planters overestimate what they can accomplish in 5 years, and underestimate what they can accomplish in 20 years.  

We love to see instant, explosive growth, and that's what we celebrate, and we should.  Most magazine covers are about these stories.  But realiistically, statistically, and historically, this is not the trajectory of most church plants.  So, pray for explosion, but plan for incremental scenarios.

#2 - Most pastors exhibit their greatest years of fruitfulness after their 7th year. 

With so many church plants folding within five years, this is a shame, because if they could hang in there just a bit longer, traction could really take place and the planters ministry could really take off.  This is also true of pastors taking over a church, and leaving "too soon."

Put these two stats together, and you have a compelling reason to look at and plan differently for church plants.  At 5 Stones, we've divided our 20 year plan into four, five-year chunks. 

1st phase (first five years) = start-up phase (establish core values, vision, team, ministries).

2nd phase (second five years) = scale up phase (establishing systems, rails that anticipates and provides for growth - from accounting to HR policies to ministry processes and more.  This is the blow-up, experiment, renovate and hone stage).

3rd phase (third five years) = growth phase (seeing membership increase and take off after the net's been set and carpet's been laid).

4th phase (last five years) = multiplication phase (go plant other churches!).

If anyone is interested in my powerpoint on this, please go to "Downloadable Stuff" section (left hand column).   Cheers.