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AUSTIN High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin has implemented a church planting strategy that has yielded new congregations in a growing area of Austin in need of a strong gospel witness.
A decade ago, when Juan Sanchez became pastor, High Pointe was not healthy financially, but the church decided that if God allowed them to grow, “we would no longer build auditorium space, but instead we would plant churches.”
High Pointe committed to give at least 10 percent of its receipts to causes outside its walls to ensure they were not keeping all the money for themselves but by faith—despite financial difficulty—were modeling for the congregation sacrificial giving, Sanchez told the TEXAN.
Their first church planting venture grew out of the handful of Hispanics that Sanchez was preaching to each Sunday before the morning service. They hired someone to lead the group, and it became an independent Spanish church.
As High Pointe continued to grow, the church realized a large number of members were driving from Elgin and from Cedar Park and Leander, all of which were a half-hour’s drive from the church.
“If we had people coming from those distances all the way to High Pointe, then clearly there was a need for gospel churches there,” Sanchez said. “So in order to care for our members well and plant gospel churches where our members felt there wasn’t one they could attend, we just started long-term deciding we need to plant churches where our people are coming from so they don’t have to drive so far.”
The leadership developed a church planting strategy that includes bringing someone on staff in a pastoral assistant role to learn who they are, what they’re about, how they’re structured, how they govern and what their philosophy of ministry is—“just getting to know our DNA,” Sanchez said.
In the second year, the church planting resident develops a core team of members who will agree to help start a new congregation. The team studies what it means to be a church, studies a statement of faith and church covenant, studies how to live together as a church, and studies how to develop a culture of evangelism and discipleship.
“It’s really just equipping them to understand what this might look like and the commitments that are going to be expected of them,” Sanchez said.
In year three, they launch. In 2011, High Pointe launched Covenant Life Fellowship in Elgin, sending 30-35 people on a core team, and that church was self-sustaining by its second year.
Then, for the church members who were driving from northwest Austin—mainly Cedar Park and Leander—High Pointe turned to Ben Wright, who had served on staff for several years as an associate pastor.
“Ben already knew our DNA, so we jumped right to year two, which was developing the core team,” Sanchez said. “The next step was planting the church. They were planted in February (2016), had their first public meetings in early March, and the Lord has really blessed them already.”
Wright, now pastor of Cedar Pointe Baptist Church in Cedar Park, said the population in that area is growing significantly as people move from around the world to Austin’s technology sector. “Church planting hasn’t even begun to keep up with that need,” he said.
The nations are coming to northwest Austin, Wright told the TEXAN, and “there’s an opportunity to reach people with the gospel who will have ways to spread that gospel back to countries that are very difficult to reach.”
“I’m grateful for High Pointe’s leaders taking the risk of sending out a bunch of solid, faithful people for the sake of the gospel,” Wright said. “High Pointe isn’t a rich church by any means, and I have tremendous respect for Juan leading his church to act in faith for a cause infinitely bigger than his own church’s interests.”
Wright said he has read in church planting literature that many, if not most, of the initial launch team members tend to leave the plant within three to five years.
“By God’s grace, that didn’t happen in the plant High Pointe launched five and a half years ago, and we pray it won’t happen with us,” Wright said. “People who’ve already been part of the same church know what to expect from the pastor, and they know what to expect the church will be like. There aren’t nearly as many surprises, and that creates stability.”
Sanchez compared church planting to getting married and having children. People want to wait until they’re ready, but they’ll never be ready, he said.
“If you’re waiting until you’re ready to plant a church, you’ll never plant a church,” Sanchez said. “It does require faith. It requires wisdom. You don’t want to do this foolishly. You have to count the cost.”
Part of counting the cost is financial, he said, and another part is letting go of valuable church members to start new growth.
“If we were to wait until we thought we were ready financially and leadership-wise, we would never do it,” Sanchez said. “So we have to pray about it, the church has to come to an agreement, and by faith we have to step out and do the Lord’s work.”
Sanchez emphasized that no congregation has to plant a church alone.
“I would encourage people not to reinvent the wheel but to get help that’s already available. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention has a lot of good people who have wisdom and experience. So you don’t have to be an expert in church planting to plant a church,” Sanchez said.
