Ed Note: With Steve Wright, Jimmy Scroggins argued in a recent 9Marks Journal article that bi-vocational ministry is the future of church planting. J.D. Greear responded to that piece here.

I am always inspired by my friend J.D. and his passion for Christ’s churches. It is a passion that I share. Our church in South Florida, like Summit in RDU, is committed to seeing new churches planted and to helping them flourish. We all agree that we need thousands of new congregations in North America, especially in the densely populated urban centers where our tribe (Southern Baptists) are notoriously ineffective. And we all agree that we are going to have to pursue multiple strategies and models in order to penetrate the lostness that grows around us.

So is bi-vocational “the future” of church planting? I still think it is. Church planting movements around the world are being driven by this model, and bi-vocational has been the pervasive strategy for most of church history. I still know that we have a “math problem” when it comes to funding the thousands of churches we need to start. But I also understand that bi-vocational church planting is not the only model we need to pursue. Our church is pursuing multiple strategies simultaneously: we partner with “launch-large” churches, we are multi-site, and we are developing our bi-vocational strategy. In fact, we are partnering with Summit to help plant a church in Indianapolis right now. The bottom line is this: we need more churches planting churches, and it is going to take more than a single model or strategy to plant them. There is no disagreement here.

Jimmy Scroggins is pastor of First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, Florida.   

March 2013
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