Planting a Church [The Everyday Pastor - Ep. 54]

What does it actually take to plant a healthy church? Matt Smethurst and Ligon Duncan discuss the joys, challenges, and realities of church planting. Drawing from Matt’s experience planting River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, they explore everything from assessing a call to church planting and gathering a core team to fundraising, developing leaders, and cultivating a healthy church culture. 🔗 MENTIONED ▫ Planting by Pastoring by Nathan Knight - https://www.amazon.com/Planting-Pasto... ▫ Church Planting Thresholds by Clint Clifton - https://www.amazon.com/Church-Plantin... ▫ Why Plant Churches? by Tim Keller - https://s3.amazonaws.com/rpc-download... ▫ New Churches Podcast  | ”Zero Year” | Season 1 | Episode 655 - https://www.newchurches.com/podcasts/... ▫ Church Planting Journals by IX Marks - https://www.9marks.org/journal/church... If you're ready to go deeper, Southern Seminary's PhD program is where that begins. Visit https://bit.ly/SBTS-TEP to learn more. 00:00 Why every church should care about church planting 03:30 Church planting in the Book of Acts 06:30 How Matt became a church planter 08:00 Building a sending team 10:30 Church planting and gospel partnership 12:00 Assessment and preparation 13:30 Conversion growth vs. transfer growth 16:00 Why church planters need pastors 21:00 Knowing when you're ready to plant 24:00 Core team meetings and membership process 27:30 Raising support and fundraising 29:30 Starting simple and avoiding program overload 33:00 Developing elders and leadership 37:00 Recommended church planting resources 39:00 Final encouragement for church planters ——— 🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://tgc.org/together 📫 SIGN UP for exclusive content and updates for pastors: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/pa... 🎧 Don’t miss an episode of “The Everyday Pastor” with Matt Smethurst and Ligon Duncan! ▫ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... ▫ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2oCDMJF... ✅ SUBSCRIBE: ▫ YouTube: / @thegospelcoalition ▫ TGC Updates: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ne...