Church Planting

"Have you ever considered the incredible odds against Christianity? The self- proclaimed Son of God and his rag-tag band of merry misfits first preached the Gospel on the other side of the world and, somehow, it made its way all over the globe. From Israel it spread north, south, east and west. It crossed oceans and climbed mountains; it traveled on the backs of horses, donkeys, and camels. The Gospel has traversed every imaginable terrain to make its way to you and me. This happened by the faithfulness and multiplication of small churches."

Church Planting

Pillar Church of Crestview is a church planting church. We exist to know Jesus and make Him known by making more and better disciples for church multiplication among all peoples and we will continue this as the Lord allows through the panhandle of Florida and around the world. That means that a tremendous amount of our efforts and resources go into the establishment of new churches and the rising up of pastors and church planters. We preach and pray toward the goal of sending out our very best members and resources to plant new churches

Jesus calls every christian to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 16-20) of going, making disciples of all nations, baptizing, and teaching. We believe that fulfilling the Great Commission means planting churches. When a healthy and faithful church gets planted into a community, it functions as a “disciple making factory” for that community. Disciples get raised up, trained up, and sent out to other communities to repeat this process. Churches make disciples and disciples make churches. This process has been repeated over and over again throughout history, starting with Jesus.

"Virtually all of the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant church- es, not simply to share the faith. The Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20) is a call not just to “make disciples” but to baptize. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshiping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41–47). The only way to be truly sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches."

Below are six Church Planting truths that compel us to continually start new churches:

Jesus sent out Church Planters and calls us to do the Same.

Real success is measured by our Sending capacity rather than our Seating capacity.

Growth through Multiplication is ultimately more effective than growth through Addition.

New churches typically Grow Faster than older ones.

Every year in America around 3,500 churches close forever.

New Churches require new Leaders.

Pillar Church of Crestview is a part of a family of multiplying churches in military communities worldwide, the Praetorian Project. The goal of the Praetorian Project is long term discipleship of highly transient people and advancing the gospel by multiplying churches. It is our desire to train up men and women in our church (military and civilian alike) to be disciples who make disciples who plant churches. With the the unique life of the military service member, our prayer and desire is that as United States military sends our members all over the world, they would be trained and equipped to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth and fulfill the Great Commission.

Over 85% of our military members, veterans, and their families live in our communities. Many of them are unchurched and remain unreached by local churches. Others are unengaged with no active church planting strategy in their immediate vicinity to a military base. In some cases, due to the military’s unique lifestyle of short-term temporary duty assignments or long-term combat deployments, our veterans simply feel unwanted, often invisible and forgotten. The church must take significant steps quickly to engage our veterans with the Gospel as they, in turn, become mobile missionaries with the opportunity to take the Gospel to the nations.