The Assemblies’ rate is 50 percent more than what is found in the SBC. They have opened the first part of 2011 with 177 new churches, tracking at a 3 percent pace, or almost twice the SBC rate.

At the North American Mission Board luncheon prior to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Phoenix, I shared some important statistics about the state of SBC church planting. Let me share more here.

LifeWay Research, in its Viral Churches research, examined church planting strategies and the effectiveness of all Protestant denominations. Leadership Network invested heavily (more than $100,000) in the research. As you can imagine, it was an enormous project.

While doing the research, which was at first a private report, I listed the denominations and groups that were strongest and those that were struggling in church planting. Later, Warren Bird — the director of research and intellectual capital at Leadership Network — and I published the research project in the book “Viral Churches.”

We discovered and subsequently reported that the SBC is not one of the leading denominations in church planting. Facts are our friends, but some people in the SBC mistook my honesty for disloyalty.

Well, NAMB has now publicly stated that it is planting at a rate “under” 2 percent. Maybe facts really can be our friends. The reality is that our numbers tell us that we are not particularly effective at church planting.

Let’s take two examples for comparison.

As a denomination, the Assemblies of God has 12,457 churches. Last year, they planted 325 churches. A few years ago, I had the privilege of spending two days with the Assemblies of God leadership, helping develop their strategy that later became the Church Multiplication Network. They have increased their planting to one new church a day. Their rate is about 2.6 percent (up from 2 percent in 2008 and 2.1 percent in 2009).

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