Church planters must resist the temptation of assuming that growing churches provide generalizable models for growth elsewhere, and that the absence of ap­parent success in the present is a sign that God is not working. 

Do we demonstrate in our thinking, our words, and our actions that the formation of new communities of Jesus fol­lowers is God’s business in which we are privileged to participate, rather than something that we do on his behalf?

Too often church planters focus on the things that they can count easily, even when it blinds them to the more important transformative measures that correlate more closely with the biblical concepts of repentance and discipleship.