The Faithful Church Planter

by Tony Merida

We tell our aspiring church planters, "We want to prepare you for a thirty-year run!" So what will keep us going? How can we be faithful to the end?
This resource shows us what it looks like to start faithful and stay faithful in church planting ministry. Tony Merida draws wisdom from the Scriptures to show us the eleven key competencies that mark a healthy church planter. If you aspire to plant churches, whether you're a seasoned pastor or a growing leader, The Faithful Church Planter will equip you to be deployed around the corner or across the globe, scattering gospel communities everywhere.

Genres: Leadership, Christian

161 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2021

About the author

Tony Merida is the founding pastor of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, NC. Tony is the author of Faithful Preaching, co-author of Orphanology, and serves as a general editor and as contributor to the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series (B&H Publishing Group) along with David Platt and Danny Akin. He is married to Kimberly, with whom he has five adopted children.

Reviews

[Tyler Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gospel-centered, clear, rich with Scripture, and loaded with the wisdom of a pastor whose been your shoes. Merida comes alongside the reader like a friend and walks through years of insights, stories, and expositions to point you to the ultimate goal of a church planters ministry: faithfulness.

[Josh Loomis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Merida provides great insight in what’s necessary to be a faithful church planter. This book is more about character than the how to of church planting. Biblically rich and easy read.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to what is needed to be a church planter (though, I'm not a church planter, so I can't say for sure). Considering planting a church myself, this book didn't feel like the end of the discussion by any means, but it is definitely a great place to start! There is quite a bit of overlap for general calling to pastoral ministry, but the emphases seem applicable to church planters specifically. While I wait and discern God's calling, I know that developing these characteristics in myself and family is the baseline for future ministry.

[Andy Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the author's collection of qualities needed of a church planter. The book was recommended to me as a help to elders in general, and it certainly was. In some ways, the advice was more on the general side than the specific, but I found some helpful ideas in the section on hospitality.

[Gavin Jarvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't my first church planter book that I've read. But this is the clearest, the most practical, and deeply gospel centered.

[Aaron Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels more like collected articles on the themes of church planting than anything. It's great stuff, an easy read, but nothing especially profound or paradigm-shifting.