Church planting begins with a simple but often overlooked truth: at some point, the church you are part of was planted. Someone carried the vision. Someone chose a can-do attitude. There was a plan, and almost certainly sacrifice. And there you are. Proof that it was worth it!
At its best, the Church gathers the body of Christ, worships God together, forms people as disciples of Jesus, and reaches out to its community, sharing the Good News in both word and deed. That’s the kind of Church our nation needs more of.
So imagine this: what would New Zealand look like if there was a thriving, outreach-focused church within easy reach of everyone?
It’s a compelling vision. But it stands alongside a sobering reality. Right now, almost 600,000 people, around 10% of our population, don’t have a church in their local area. That includes fast-growing communities like Flagstaff in Hamilton, Whenuapai in Auckland, parts of Rolleston in Canterbury, Grenada North in Wellington, Pāpāmoa East in Tauranga. These are not empty neighbourhoods, They are full of people, but without an accessible Christian community nearby.
This is part of why we must plant churches.
Church planting remains one of the most effective ways to reach people not yet connected to faith. New churches can be particularly effective at engaging new generations, new residents, and those outside existing church networks. They tend to be outward-focused, flexible, and mission-driven from the beginning. They create new front doors into faith.
But we don’t just need new churches. We need renewed ones too. Replanting offers a pathway for existing churches to rediscover purpose and reconnect with their communities. It honours the past while stepping boldly into the future, bringing fresh leadership, vision, and mission to places where a Christian presence already exists but needs revitalisation.
Together, planting and replanting create momentum.
In New Zealand, that momentum is being nurtured. Several denominations, dioceses and networks are outworking their planting visions. CATCH Network, Multiply and other organisations are equipping potential planters with best-practice assessment tools, resources, ideas and coaching.
For nearly three years I’ve been part of a nationwide church planting learning community. This community has brought together a broad range of senior leaders & planters: from the North and South Islands; from large and small cities. Groups from Pentecostal churches, independent churches, and from Wesleyan, Open Brethren, Presbyterian, and Anglican churches.
Rather than planting in isolation, this approach brings leaders together to learn, share, and grow. It fosters a culture of encouragement, accountability, and practical support.
A key insight from this learning community is that healthy church planting is not accidental – it’s intentional. In simple terms, planting requires four elements: authority (permission to plant), a planter (or team), a date (a clear launch point), and a location (a place to gather).
Another emphasis is sustainability and multiplication. The goal is not just to start churches, but to start churches that can eventually plant others. This kind of thinking shifts the mindset from addition to multiplication — from maintaining to sending. This was the mindset of the early Church!
And crucially, it reinforces the need for a blended ecology of churches.
New Zealand is diverse, and so the Church must be too. We need resource churches that can train and release leaders, campus locations that extend into growing suburbs, and autonomous churches shaped by local context. We need missional churches embedded in their neighbourhoods, micro-churches meeting in homes, churches on marae reflecting Māori identity and tikanga, and churches on or near university campuses engaging the next generation.
No single model will reach everyone — but together, a range of initiatives can reach everyone. The twelves groups participating in our first two-year cohort of our learning community have planted or replanted thirty-two churches across that time.
The opportunity before us — helping grow the Church in this country — is significant. A church planting movement is not built on a few standout leaders, but on many ordinary people saying Yes: yes to going, to sending, to supporting, and to praying.
The truth is, someone once did that for your church.
Twelve months ago, someone planted a church that a mother and her family joined. We heard her story this week…
My church has been an answer to prayer. Our family is here because God made it so. I’ve been a Christian all my life, but when my kids were young, we stopped going to church for about eight years. It wasn’t that we’d lost our faith, but life became overwhelming, and church felt like too much. Over time, my faith became sidelined. I still believed, but it had stagnated, inseparable from guilt and inadequacy.
But, even when I felt far from God, He wasn’t far from me. God was paving the way for my church long before it started. Particular people and events had crossed my path that God was using to draw my heart back to him.
Yet, I thought coming back to church was impossible. Sunday mornings were our only family morning and how would my older kids even respond to church? It was all too hard.
I remember praying: God —can you make it possible for us to go back to church? And He did.
My sister in law sent me a video about a new church starting up just around the corner. But we quickly dismissed it: what difference would it make? It was still going to be a massive undertaking to get my family in those doors and I wasn’t up for the challenge.
But this church was different. We could do 5pm. And the kids already knew and loved the school playground where the church meets! Long story short, God took my list of reasons why not, and turned them into reasons why we couldn’t say no. And it was effortless. The boys loved kids’ church. This was my answer to prayer.
And the impact of my church continues. God is still tugging at my heart, and I have a joy in God that I’ve never experienced before. When I first arrived, I saw that joy in so many of the people here. It’s in their eyes, it’s in their welcome, it’s in the worship and the sermons, it’s in their lives. Faith at my church isn’t a result of “shoulds” and “ought to”s” like I had felt in the past: this is real, genuine faith, filled with love, not fear…I’m thankful that this church surrounds my family with so much love.’
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