Why Is Church Planting So Hard to Fund?
Why Is Church Planting So Hard to Fund? And why we’re not giving up.
Let’s be real for a moment.
When there’s a disaster, people respond. Quickly. Generously.
When it’s a radio station reaching millions with the gospel, people catch the vision.
When it’s feeding the hungry, housing refugees, or caring for orphans — we don’t need to convince anyone that it matters. Because it obviously does.
But planting churches?
That barely registers.
You can talk about unreached people groups, about the spiritual hunger in post-Christian cities, about how the early church only expanded through planting. And still, it feels like you’re whispering into a vacuum.
Church planting is one of the hardest things to raise interest — or funds — for.
Why is that?
Maybe because it’s slow.
Maybe because it’s not “urgent” in the way a crisis is.
Maybe because you don’t see the fruit straight away.
Or maybe, just maybe, because church planting isn’t sexy. There’s no instant gratification. No grand launch moment. No before-and-after picture that tugs at the heartstrings.
But here’s the thing.
The Church is the plan.
The body of Christ is God’s strategy for reaching the world.
And planting churches isn’t an optional extra. It’s the engine of mission.
Newfrontiers, the family of churches we’re a part of, has always known this. From the very beginning, church planting has been in our DNA. Across every sphere — ChristCentral, Commission, New Ground, and others — we’ve seen it over and over again:
Church planting changes everything.
It raises leaders.
It reaches the lost.
It reshapes cities and nations from the inside out.
But that kind of work takes sacrifice. It takes vision. And yes, it takes money.
At WayMaker, we’re doing it anyway. Whether the spotlight’s on us or not. Whether the funds pour in or trickle through. Because we’re not building empires — we’re building outposts of heaven.
And that’s worth giving your life to.
That’s worth funding.
So, if you’re reading this and you’ve ever thought, “Is church planting really that important?” — just look at the early church.
There was no Plan B.
