Adopting a Church Planter: What It Means and Why It Matters
One of my core convictions as a leader in Converge MSC is this:
Every healthy church can play a meaningful role in church planting.
I believed this when I began serving pastors and planters years ago, and I believe it even more today. Across our Converge MidAmerica, Southeast, and Caribbean region, church planting is accelerating, and the harvest is wide open. What we need is not only more church planters, we need more partner churches who will walk with them.
Yet many churches hold a common misconception:
“We’d love to be involved in church planting, but we don’t have the money or the size to make a difference.”
That simply isn’t true.
Yes, financial support is valuable and deeply appreciated. If your church can give toward a new plant, we’d love to talk. But church planting isn’t only sustained by dollars and large teams, it is sustained by relationships, encouragement, prayer, and shared mission.
And right now, especially as God brings more planters into our southern states, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and beyond, these planters are eager for connection within Converge MSC.
The good news?
A church in Michigan or Illinois can absolutely “adopt” and support a church planter hundreds of miles away.
In fact, some of the strongest partnerships we have seen come from cross-state relationships that bridge regions, cultures, and communities within our movement.
How Adopting a Church Plant Makes a Real Difference
Here are practical, meaningful ways your church can support a church planter, regardless of church size or budget:
1. Provide Credibility and Covering
The parent church allows the new plant to reference them as a sponsoring or sending partner. This credibility helps the planter build trust as they gather a launch team in their community.
2. Offer Leadership Accountability
Your pastor can serve on the temporary church plant board, giving oversight, wisdom, and moral covering during the early months.
3. Pray for the Planter and Family
Prayer is not symbolic, it is spiritual oxygen. Your church can intercede for their health, protection, relationships, finances, and spiritual fruit.
4. Be a Safe, Confidential Ear
Sometimes what a planter needs most is someone who understands. Your pastor can serve as a confidential sounding board and steady voice when the journey gets hard.
5. Provide Coaching (Optional)
If desired, the parent church pastor may coach the planter, helping them navigate challenges, clarify next steps, and stay aligned with their mission.
6. Send Practical Help Through Teams
Youth groups, missions teams, or small groups can travel to the church plant to help with outreach events, preview services, community projects, or launch-phase needs.
7. Encourage Through Notes and Milestones
A simple handwritten card from another church can bring encouragement at exactly the right time. Celebrate anniversaries, baptisms, grand openings, and answered prayers.
8. Include the Planter in Your Missions Weekend
Let them share their vision with your congregation. This builds excitement and widens your church’s missional heart.
9. Invite the Planter to Preach at Your Church
This deepens relationship, builds confidence, and allows your people to participate in supporting the plant’s story.
10. Send Your Pastor to Preach or Speak at the Plant
Your presence shows partnership, unity, and encouragement to the launch team.
How Supporting a Church Plant Transforms the Parent Church
One of the amazing side effects is this:
When a church adopts a planter, the congregation comes alive.
Missions gets real.
Evangelism becomes tangible.
Prayer becomes passionate.
And the church’s own sense of vision and calling expands.
Church planting doesn’t just bless the new church, it revitalizes the sending church.
Let’s Plant Churches Together
At Converge MSC, we believe in starting, strengthening, and sending. When your church comes alongside a new planter, you aren’t just helping them launch services, you’re helping launch a movement of multiplication across our region.
