Church Plant

Definition and Meaning

A church plant is a newly established church. Some are founded in areas with no church or too few churches, while others are started for new groups of people that existing churches have not reached. The work of starting a new church is called "church planting." The Korean term gaecheok (開拓) means to break and cultivate rough ground for the first time.

In Korean churches, the term is also widely used for a church that was founded recently and has a small membership and a limited financial base. A church plant that cannot cover its own operating costs and its pastor's stipend (living expenses) is classified as a non-self-supporting church.

Biblical and Historical Background

The Acts of the Apostles records that Paul and Barnabas founded churches in various cities during their missionary journeys and ordained elders in every church (Acts 14:23). Paul wrote that he strove not to "build upon another man's foundation" (Romans 15:20), a verse frequently cited in discussions of church planting.

In Korea, churches were founded from the 1880s onward by missionaries who came to the country and by Korean evangelists. The Nevius Plan emphasized self-support (bearing one's own financial costs), self-propagation (carrying out one's own evangelism), and self-government (governing oneself). Its influence is generally credited with establishing, from the earliest period, a pattern in which believers founded and ran churches themselves. During the period of church growth from the 1960s to the 1980s, church plants, many of them begun in commercial buildings, multiplied rapidly alongside urbanization.

Practice in Korean Churches

A church plant often begins with a pastor, the pastor's family, and a small number of members meeting in a commercial space or a home. A different approach is "daughter-church planting" (bunnip gaecheok), in which a larger church shares members and financial resources to establish a new congregation. For more detail, see the articles Church Branching and Branch Church.

The procedure for formally establishing a church varies according to the denomination's form of church polity.

• In the Presbyterian tradition, a church is generally established and organized with the approval of the presbytery.
• In the Methodist tradition, as in the Korean Methodist Church, establishment proceeds under the jurisdiction of the annual conference structure, including the district superintendent and the district conference.
• Baptist and independent churches, following the congregational tradition that values the autonomy of the local church, tend to leave the decision to establish a church to the local congregation itself.

The most common difficulties church plants face are financial, such as rent and the pastor's stipend. Observers have noted that a considerable number never become self-supporting. Accordingly, church-planting support from denominations and local churches, as well as whether to permit bivocational ministry, have been subjects of debate. Some voice concern about indiscriminate church planting on the grounds that there are already many churches, while others argue that church planting remains necessary to reach new generations and new areas.