Skunkworks and Seeds
I have been doing a lot of thinking about the methods of church planting. Certainly there is a place for the 'large church, launch big' model. That typically results in a church with around 200 people on launch day. However, there are a number of challenges to that model. One of the biggest is that you need a big (pre-launch) budget to launch a big church (and large teams and big facilities, etc). I love this model (and highly respect the pastors, that I know, who have launched their church this way).
I'm working on a different model. It's built around the agrarian principles in Scripture (go to an empty field, plant seed, nurture and prune for incremental growth). It's based on the example of Jesus in Luke 10. In this model, "The resources are in the harvest." So, you don't need a huge pre-launch budget - you only need a leader who is willing to step out in faith.
There are a number of thought-leaders working on this model. One of those is Ralph Moore. I think he has good things to say in this article. He uses a different illustration, but makes a great case for starting small and empowering the person. Check it out: https://www.ralphmoore.net/church-multiplication-skunkworks/
