The Selection of the Planter

Foundations and practices for a biblical and effective ministry

The selection of a church planter is among the most consequential decisions in the missionary life of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. One choice, the choice of who will lead the pioneering effort of establishing a new community of faith, shapes almost everything that follows in the life of the plant: its theological depth, its relational culture, its missional effectiveness, its capacity to multiply, and its long-term viability. The largest study of new churches in North America found that planters who had gone through a formal assessment before planting led congregations with higher attendance and more baptisms than those who had not.¹ Yet the selection process is still often treated as an informal, intuitive decision, when it ought to be a strategic, spiritually grounded, and biblically informed process.

This essay explores the theological foundations, the essential characteristics, and the practical steps involved in selecting church planters in the Adventist context. It offers a framework that brings together biblical criteria, Adventist identity, and the best of contemporary missiological practice.

1. Biblical foundations for selection

The New Testament gives clear and detailed guidance for the selection of spiritual leaders, and that guidance places character, calling, and divine empowerment above institutional credentials or administrative competence. Three texts establish the framework.

First Timothy 3:1–7 gives the most complete list of qualifications for the episkopos, the overseer: blamelessness, marital faithfulness, temperance, self-control, respectability, hospitality, the ability to teach, sobriety, gentleness, freedom from greed, and a demonstrated capacity to manage one's own household. Titus 1:5–9 runs parallel to it and adds that the elder must be "holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict."² Ephesians 4:11–13 states the purpose of leadership itself: Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers "for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ."³ William Mounce's commentary on the Pastoral Epistles remains the most thorough exegetical treatment of the first two lists.⁴

Across these texts the emphasis is constant. Christian leadership is service, modeled on Jesus' own words: "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."⁵ When the apostles needed leaders to care for the neglected widows in Jerusalem, they did not ask for organizational experience. They asked the church to find seven men "full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom."⁶

These examples set a clear priority. The church planter must be, above all, a person of spiritual maturity, moral integrity, and demonstrated capacity to form others in the faith. Administrative competence is valuable. It comes after the qualities of character that the New Testament treats as indispensable.

2. Adventist identity in the selection of planters

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a prophetic identity, and that identity has to be present in every church planter, not merely assumed. The church understands itself as called to proclaim the three angels' messages of Revelation 14:6–12, and it needs planters who see that calling as a theological mandate, the reason the movement exists, and never as a denominational peculiarity. George Knight has argued that an Adventism which loses its apocalyptic vision is neutered: it may remain respectable, but it no longer has anything distinctive to say.⁷ Jon Paulien, reading the structure of Revelation, places the three angels' messages at the center of the book's central section, where God sets out his agenda for the end of time.⁸

That prophetic identity shapes the selection criteria in four specific ways.

The first is missionary calling. The planter must understand the urgency and the global scope of the Adventist mission, the conviction that the "everlasting gospel" must be preached "to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people."⁹ This is more than a general missionary impulse. It is the Adventist conviction that the church exists to prepare a people for the return of Christ.

The second is servant and equipping leadership. The planter must be able to form, train, and deploy local leaders, so that the new congregation develops its own leadership from the start and does not remain dependent on the planter indefinitely. Ellen White put it directly: "Ministers should not do the work which belongs to the church, thus wearying themselves, and preventing others from performing their duty. They should teach the members how to labor in the church and in the community."¹⁰ A planter who monopolizes ministry, instead of multiplying it, has misunderstood the role.

The third is cultural contextualization. The planter has to function as a cultural interpreter, alert to the social, economic, and spiritual realities of the field, and able to express the Adventist message in forms that make sense to the particular community being reached. In a church that has spread across the world's cultures and has had to learn, decade after decade, how to hold unity and diversity together, this capacity cannot be optional.¹¹

The fourth is practical spirituality. A life of sustained prayer, disciplined Bible study, and real dependence on the Holy Spirit is a requirement of the work, as essential as any skill. The planter who is not sustained by a deep interior life will eventually be consumed by the demands of pioneering ministry.

3. The selection process

Selection must be structured, systematic, and multidimensional. It should evaluate candidates on spiritual, behavioral, vocational, and contextual criteria, and it should do so over time.

3.1 Spiritual assessment

Candidates must show evidence of divine calling, spiritual commitment, and the fruit of the Spirit.¹² That evidence cannot rest on self-report alone. It should include the testimony of local spiritual leaders, pastoral supervisors, and conference administrators who have watched the candidate's life and ministry across seasons. Ed Stetzer and Daniel Im note that assessments range from a week of interviews, testing, and group exercises to short tools meant to help candidates clarify their calling, and they insist that the confirmation of the candidate's own church belongs in the process: a church that hesitates to affirm a member's call to plant is giving information the candidate should not ignore.¹³

The dimensions to evaluate include the authenticity of the candidate's devotional life, the health of his relationships and family, his record of faithful stewardship, and his history in ministry, especially in situations that reveal character under pressure.

The Florida Conference offers an Adventist example of how this can be done. Its committee built a process it called ACTS (assessment, coaching, training, and sending) and drew up a questionnaire organized around six dimensions of the candidate's life and ministry. For paid planters, the assessment informs a yes-or-no decision. For lay planters, who are the majority in most Adventist conferences, it opens a conversation about strengths and areas of growth.¹⁴

3.2 Behavioral and vocational profile

Practical tools can help identify a candidate's strengths, growth areas, and vocational fit. The DISC behavioral assessment gives insight into communication style, patterns of decision, and relational tendencies. Alan Hirsch's APEST framework, built on the five functions named in Ephesians 4:11 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers), helps discern whether a candidate's gifting matches what planting demands, which is usually a strong apostolic and evangelistic orientation.¹⁵ Used well, this analysis helps place the right leader in the right context. Used badly, it substitutes a profile for a calling, a danger treated at length in another essay in this series.

3.3 Training and preparation

Even candidates with strong spiritual and behavioral profiles need training in the competencies particular to church planting: forming a team, reading a community, planning strategically, communicating across cultures, resolving conflict, and handling the psychological and spiritual pressure of pioneering work. Training should join theological depth to field experience, with classroom instruction integrated into supervised ministry.

Craig Ott and Gene Wilson give a whole chapter to the personal life of church planters and another to developing servants, leaders, and planters. Their model of coaching aims at helping the planter grow in "his or her own character, skills, and problem-solving ability," and, ideally, to become a coach of others.¹⁶ The demands of planting touch every dimension of a planter's life, and preparation has to touch them too.

4. Challenges in developing church planters

The shortage of trained planters

The shortage of well-prepared church planters is a global problem. It is most acute where established churches absorb nearly all the pastoral energy and resources, leaving little for pioneering work. Ellen White saw this pattern as a distortion of the ministry. "Ministers should work earnestly and devotedly," she wrote, "opening new fields and engaging in personal labor for souls, instead of hovering over the churches that already have great light and many advantages."¹⁷

Overcoming the maintenance orientation

To change this, the church needs to make three structural shifts.

The first is continuous training. Planters need ongoing formation that equips them for the complex cultural, social, and spiritual realities of diverse fields. A single training event cannot prepare a leader for years of pioneering work.

The second is local mobilization. Established congregations need to see themselves as sending bases that develop and deploy missionaries, and not only as communities to be served. The early Adventist movement, with very few resources, sent its first official missionary overseas about a decade after its organization, and its rapid expansion in the decades that followed came from that willingness to send.¹⁸

The third is a redefinition of the pastoral role. Early Adventist ministers worked on an itinerant model, as evangelists and planters more than as settled shepherds of established congregations. Ellen White argued for that model throughout her ministry. "The best help that ministers can give the members of our churches," she wrote, "is not sermonizing, but planning work for them."¹⁹ In laboring where there are already believers, she counseled, the minister "should at first seek not so much to convert unbelievers, as to train the church-members for acceptable co-operation."²⁰ Recovering this apostolic understanding of the pastor's task, to plant and strengthen churches more than to maintain them, would greatly increase the denomination's capacity to plant.

5. The planter as movement catalyst

Properly understood, the church planter is more than the founder of a congregation. He is a catalyst for a movement, a leader whose ministry produces a dynamic of multiplication: new disciples, new leaders, and new communities of faith. Dave and Jon Ferguson describe their own church's journey in three phases: from a church, to a reproducing church, to a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches.²¹ Darrell Guder and the authors of Missional Church argued that the church has to learn to understand itself as a "sent people," and that congregations must take the steps needed to "redefine themselves as missionary by their very nature."²² The planter is the person who embodies that sending identity in a new place.

This understanding raises selection from an administrative procedure to a missional imperative. A planter who is well selected, well trained, and well supported will produce a church that carries the DNA of multiplication in itself, a church that goes on to plant.

Conclusion

The selection of the church planter is the most important human decision in the planting process. This leader is more than an administrator, a preacher, or a manager of programs. He is a catalyst for missionary movements, a person who reflects the character of Christ and embodies the prophetic identity of the Adventist movement. If the church wants to multiply self-sustaining, self-reproducing, and culturally rooted churches, it has to invest in a selection and preparation process that is spiritually grounded and carefully structured.

Doing this well costs a great deal. Doing it poorly costs far more, in human suffering, in institutional credibility, and in missionary opportunities that will not come again.

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Notes

1. Ed Stetzer and Phillip Connor, Church Plant Survivability and Health Study 2007, Research Report (Center for Missional Research, North American Mission Board, 2007), 3, 5. The same study found that the strongest predictors of survival itself were realistic expectations, leadership development training, and a peer group of planters (p. 14).

2. Titus 1:9 (NKJV).

3. Ephesians 4:12 (NKJV).

4. William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, Word Biblical Commentary 46 (Thomas Nelson, 2000), 149–92.

5. Mark 10:45 (NKJV).

6. Acts 6:3 (NKJV).

7. George R. Knight, The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism (Review and Herald, 2008), chaps. 1–2. The library copy carries no printed page numbers.

8. Jon Paulien, The Deep Things of God: An Insider's Guide to the Book of Revelation (Review and Herald, 2004), 121–22.

9. Revelation 14:6 (NKJV).

10. Ellen G. White, Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists (Imprimerie Polyglotte, 1886), 291.

11. Richard W. Schwarz and Floyd Greenleaf, Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, rev. ed. (Pacific Press, 2000), chap. 30, "Unity and Diversity," 383–96.

12. Galatians 5:22–23.

13. Ed Stetzer and Daniel Im, Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches That Multiply, 2nd ed. (B&H Academic, 2016), 49.

14. Anthony WagenerSmith, "Developing a Missional Support System for Church Planting in the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists" (DMin ministry focus paper, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2016), 35, 116–18.

15. Alan Hirsch, 5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ (100Movements Publishing, 2017), introduction.

16. Craig Ott and Gene Wilson, Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication (Baker Academic, 2011), chaps. 15 and 17; quotation at 370.

17. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 7 (Pacific Press, 1902), 255.

18. Schwarz and Greenleaf, Light Bearers, chap. 9, "Worldwide Outreach, 1868–1885," 97–109, esp. 105.

19. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6 (Pacific Press, 1901), 49.

20. Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers (Review and Herald, 1915), 196.

21. Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson, Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement (Zondervan, 2010), 19–27, esp. 22.

22. Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eerdmans, 1998), 4, 7.

Bibliography

Ferguson, Dave, and Jon Ferguson. Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement. Zondervan, 2010.

Guder, Darrell L., ed. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. Eerdmans, 1998.

Hirsch, Alan. 5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ. 100Movements Publishing, 2017.

Knight, George R. The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism. Review and Herald, 2008.

Mounce, William D. Pastoral Epistles. Word Biblical Commentary 46. Thomas Nelson, 2000.

Ott, Craig, and Gene Wilson. Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication. Baker Academic, 2011.

Paulien, Jon. The Deep Things of God: An Insider's Guide to the Book of Revelation. Review and Herald, 2004.

Schwarz, Richard W., and Floyd Greenleaf. Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Rev. ed. Pacific Press, 2000.

Stetzer, Ed, and Phillip Connor. Church Plant Survivability and Health Study 2007. Research Report. Center for Missional Research, North American Mission Board, 2007.

Stetzer, Ed, and Daniel Im. Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches That Multiply. 2nd ed. B&H Academic, 2016.

WagenerSmith, Anthony. "Developing a Missional Support System for Church Planting in the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists." DMin ministry focus paper, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2016.

White, Ellen G. Gospel Workers. Review and Herald, 1915.

———. Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists. Imprimerie Polyglotte, 1886.

———. Testimonies for the Church. Vol. 6. Pacific Press, 1901.

———. Testimonies for the Church. Vol. 7. Pacific Press, 1902.