Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers

Books on church planting are plentiful. What’s sparse is sound research on what’s really working.  In arguably the most comprehensive study ever done by Leadership Network to review the methods, trends, and outcomes of church planting organizations across the United States, surprising results emerged. Not only were more U.S. churches being started than closed each year, but the greatest increase of new churches were being planted by networks

Taking findings from the original study and reframing them to catalyze today’s church leaders, Ed Stezter, head of LifeWay Research, and Warren Bird, director of research at Leadership Network, coauthored VIRAL CHURCHES: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers (May 2010; $24.95; Hardcover; ISBN: 978-0-470-55045-8), the latest book in the Leadership Network series with Jossey-Bass. Beyond merely describing the research on church planting movements, Stetzerand Bird advocate for a fresh alternative to one-at-a-time  church planting and offer specific help and inspiration for pioneers of the new frontier.

“Church planting is good. A vision for a church multiplication movement is better,” the authors write in the introduction. Whether starting an emergent community geared towards the urban poor or a rock-n-roll mainline congregation for suburban baby boomers, readers will uncover the common threads of successful church reproduction. In addition to showing what types of church models are working best, Stetzer and Bird also provide the tools for collaborating with others in the process, an integral step in increasing the odds of a church’s long term success.

Rick Warren calls the book “pure gold” in the foreword, while Mark Driscoll recommends it for those “who want to go from making a dent to making a difference.” For church leaders who take seriously the Great Commission to spread throughout the world, VIRAL CHURCHES casts a clear vision of how to plant churches that will multiply.