by Jay Nickless, church planting field coordinator
If you’ve been following this series on church planting, you’ll no doubt recognize the three essential elements of an effective church plant—namely, the right planter, the right place, and the right plan. Last month, we focused on the right planter. In this month’s installment, it’s time to turn our attention to the right place.
The Right Place
One of the realities of church planting is that it’s completely possible to have a competent leader (the right planter) and a terrific strategy (the right plan), but if you’re not in the right place, your odds of success are minimal at best. I’m convinced that a major factor as to why some church plants fail is precisely because they were planted in the wrong place.
After watching some good guys fail from being incompatible with their community, I began to construct a strategy to help planters better analyze prospective communities. We call this strategy the T.A.P. (Target Analysis Process).*
The T.A.P. Process requires the leader to recruit and equip a team of 8-12 people to analyze, research, and engage prospective communities over a period of 8-10 weeks. The primary goal of this process is to identify a target community where the church will be started. In the past few years, multiple groups have successfully utilized this tool to determine their church planting target community.
Choosing a target community is not an arbitrary process. If there were ever a decision that required prayer, faith, discernment, wisdom, teamwork, and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, it’s the determination of the target community where a church will be started. If guys like Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and Titus desperately needed each other and were totally dependent upon the leadership of the Holy Spirit, perhaps we should follow their lead and do the same.
When Jesus was accused of “working” on the Sabbath because he healed a person who couldn’t walk, he responded by saying, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” The premise for determining a target community is this: God is at work! Right now in various locations God is at work in people’s hearts, drawing them to Himself. At the same time, He is at work in the modern day “Peters” and “Pauls,” sending them to those same communities to share the gospel and plant new churches. Making that connection is a vital part of a new church plant’s success.
*For more information on the T.A.P. Team Process, email me at j.nickless@fecministries.org
