Small Church Conference: Daniel Barrett on Church Planting

Daniel Barrett is the Senior Pastor at Northeast Christian Church in Bakersfield, California. Northeast is the product of a merger between the former East Hills Christian Church and Great Beginnings Christian Church.

My summary/notes of Daniel’s presentation at the Southern California Coalition of Community-Based Christian Churches.

East Hills had a legacy of debt — going into and out of ownership of their own building, for over 25 years, struggling to make the payments on a $1 million mortgage. In the summer of 2004 Great Beginnings voted to keep its doors open by a 15-12 vote.

The two churches came together as Northeast Christian Church in January of 2007. The old East Hills building was sold, clearing over $700,000. The leadership decided to give 10% of the net gain to fund the start of Kaleo Christian Fellowship in Bakersfield in January of 2008. In addition o Northeast, two other churches — Life Journey Christian Church and Christ’s Church of the Valley — collaborated to form a church planting network with Stadia to launch Kaleo.

Northeast then decided to set aside an additional $425,000 with the Church Development Fund in an account specifically earmarked for church planting. The interest on the account — over $30,000 per year — is used to further church planting. The church dreams of planting a new church every two years.

Daniel believes that, if the church is to be salt and light, it makes more sense to spread the salt and light throughout the community instead of putting it all in one pile.

“It has not been an easy path. One plus one did equal two — but one-and-a-half. One of the two pastors resigned. The church has met its operating budget only once in the last twelve months,” but Daniel says, “But through it all, I can sincerely say it without any hesitation, that not once have we considered keeping that money, even though the interest alone would more than make up the deficit this year. We know that if we want to start a new church every two years, we won’t be able to do it without some labor pains.”

The Small Church Conference: Daniel Barrett on Church Planting by Church Planting Journey, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.