Track A · Planting a Church in the United States

Planting a Church in the U.S.

The complete pathway with the North American Mission Board and Send Network — from first calling to a launched, healthy church.

This is the heart of Track A: the actual road a Slavic believer walks to plant a Southern Baptist church in the United States. The journey is not a leap; it is a series of deliberate, prayerful stages — Discern → Prepare → Train → Launch → Sustain — and at the center of it stands one defining moment: the Send Network Assessment, where trained evaluators give you an honest “green, yellow, orange, or red light” on your readiness.

Before walking the stages, grasp the single most important principle in the entire Southern Baptist church-planting system — because it shapes every step that follows.

Three Requirements You Must Meet

Before any assessment or training, a prospective Southern Baptist church planter must satisfy three foundational requirements. Treat these as the doorway — everything else follows from them.

Before any application, the question is simply: Is God truly calling you to plant? A genuine call has two halves that must agree — an inward sense of calling, and the outward confirmation of mature believers and your local church. Send Network looks for a calling “validated by multiple mature believers,” not merely a private feeling.

What to do in this stage

• Examine your own heart, gifting, and motives before God, without rushing.
• Share your sense of calling with your pastor and mature believers, and invite their honest feedback.
• Let your Sending Church walk alongside you to test the authenticity of your call and your readiness — this is exactly the role it is meant to play.
• Resist the most common mistake: feeling a call and rushing forward too quickly before it has been allowed to season and develop.

This is the formal pathway with NAMB and Send Network. The steps below are the current, verified process. Move through them in order — each one builds on the last.

The step-by-step planter pathway

1. Complete the online Interest Form. This is the first step for any prospective lead church planter, found at namb.net/church-planting-interest-form. A Send Network field leader (often a local Church Planting Catalyst) will then help you take your next steps.
2. Submit your application. After your interest form, you complete the full planter application, which your Church Planting Catalyst reviews before inviting you toward assessment.
3. Complete the online pre-assessment. Three online questionnaires help you, your Sending Church, and NAMB gauge your readiness in three areas: your church planting capacity, personal character, and marriage health (if married).
4. Attend the two-day, in-person Assessment Retreat. Both the planter and his wife attend. A team of trained evaluators conducts large-group experiences and one-on-one interviews. You will preach before the group and present the vision for your plant. Your Sending Church pastor (or a designee) attends as your candidate representative to observe.
5. Receive your assessment outcome and a development plan. You are given one of four recommendations (the “light” system below) along with a written report and a plan for growth.

The four outcomes: green, yellow, orange, or red light

At the end of the two days, you receive one of four honest recommendations. About half of candidates receive a green or yellow light. This system exists to be a good steward of both Southern Baptist resources and of you — so that no one is sent out unprepared to struggle and fall away.

GREEN LIGHT	Ready — You are affirmed to move forward. You are invited into a collaborative training cohort to launch a church within the next 6 to 18 months.
YELLOW LIGHT	Ready with Conditions — A generally strong candidate with one area to work on. You receive a development plan and are also invited into a training cohort to plant within 6 to 18 months.
ORANGE LIGHT	Further Development Needed — You are encouraged to slow down and grow in specific areas first. You receive a development plan and a timeframe for a future reassessment.
RED LIGHT	Cautioned — You are encouraged to take church planting off your radar for an extended time, work through your development plan, and consider other areas of ministry.

A green or yellow light opens the door to Send Network Training — a contextualized, relational process built on coaching and mentoring rather than a content-only curriculum. The goal is to prepare you and your family for the real work ahead, not merely to hand you information.

What training can include

• A collaborative training cohort with other assessed planters, meeting regularly to grow together over the 6–18 months before launch.
• Coaching from an experienced church planter who walks with you through the development of your plan and character.
• Residencies and internships, hands-on training inside a sending or partner church — some partnered with seminaries for academic credit — where you learn planting from the inside out.
• The Farm System roles for those earlier in the journey: Student Missionary, Church Planting Intern, and Church Planting Apprentice — each a way to develop the fundamentals on the real ministry field before leading a plant.

With assessment passed, training underway, and your Sending Church behind you, you become an endorsed church planter and move toward launch. As an endorsed planter you gain access to the full five-year planter pathway, a suite of planter benefits, and the potential for financial assistance, plus a profile on the NAMB Missionary Portal where churches and donors can support you.

Key tasks as you launch

• Confirm your location and read the demographics of the community you are called to (see the Where to Plant? article).
• Build your core launch team — the families and believers who will form the heart of the new church.
• Handle the legal and financial setup — incorporation, EIN, 501(c)(3) considerations, bylaws, and a launch budget (covered in the legal and funding articles).
• Secure a meeting space, establish a presence, and prepare for launch day.
• File quarterly reports with Send Network, which celebrate what God is doing and help your partners come alongside you.

Planting is not the finish line; faithfulness over years is. “Care is at the core” of the Send Network family, because you should not carry the weight of planting alone. This final, ongoing stage is about the long-term health of you, your family, and the church.

What sustaining involves

• Establishing healthy polity and governance — members, elders/pastors, and deacons — and writing your church’s statement of faith and bylaws.
• Building discipleship and ministry foundations that form mature believers and reproduce leaders.
• Affiliating formally with a local association and your state convention (see the State Conventions & Local Associations article).
• Receiving ongoing planter and family care — coaching, peer relationships, and member care to guard against isolation and burnout.
• Looking outward to multiply — a healthy plant eventually becomes a sending church itself, completing the cycle: churches planting churches.

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Where this connects in the hub

This is the Planting a Church in the U.S. category (Track A), with its five subcategories. It builds on Are You Called? and Where to Plant?, and connects to the legal, funding, and governance articles, the Meet the Players profiles of NAMB and Send Network, and the Directory & Contacts. To begin, a planter completes the Church Planting Interest Form.

Sources: NAMB / Send Network (Church Planting, Assessment, Sending Church Resource Kit, Farm System); Baptist Press, “Potential church planters get enhanced screening”; bfm.sbc.net (Russian and English BF&M 2000). Verified mid-2026; confirm current details before publishing.