Should Speed Be a Virtue or a Goal When It Comes to Church Planting?

Should speed be a virtue or a goal when it comes to church planting?

There are many ideas out there today about doing things quickly, advancing rapidly. That kind of language should not even be used. It doesn't figure into biblical missions. What we're called to do is do everything that we do in submission to Scripture.

Let's put this in the physical realm. If a couple were to give birth to children and every time the children were born would simply abandon them—or let's say they take them to four or five years old but they abandon them, or take them to adolescent years or teenage years and abandon them—we know that there's not going to be a high survival rate. We want to take our children from infancy to adulthood. It's the same thing in churches.

I will hear people talk about how they planted this many churches in a year. And I go, "No, you started a few Bible studies. You didn't plant a church." Now, the moment a group of people come together in the name of Christ, in a sense it can be called a church, and we shouldn't despise it any more than we should despise an infant because it's an infant—it's still a human being. But to abandon that infant and not take that infant to maturity, it's a crime. And I see a lot of foolish men with a lot of silly strategies, which for me is evidence that they do not spend much time in Scripture.