Episode 364 - Church Planting Secrets Every Entrepreneur Needs | Dave Ferguson

Mar 3, 2026

Dave Ferguson, co-founder of Community Christian Church and New Thing Network, is a seasoned church planter and movement leader. He discusses how pastors and entrepreneurs share entrepreneurial wiring. He breaks down movement-level multiplication, the RPMS leader dashboard, the four R's for scaling, and why missional imagination spurs creative, marketplace-minded ministry.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

First Plant Broke The Talk-To-Action Barrier

Planting the first church forced Community to stop talking and start reproducing when a youth pastor moved to Denver.
The planter raised $250k in ten days which convinced Dave Ferguson to publicly commission that church and send people to join it.

ADVICE

Use Small Networks To Scale Care And Planting

Structure networks of 3–6 churches so each pastor has manageable span of care and accountability.
Ferguson split oversight among leaders into small networks which improved pastor care and dramatically increased planting rates.

INSIGHT

Church Planters Share Entrepreneurial Wiring

Church planters and entrepreneurs share entrepreneurial wiring: they imagine an idea then execute to see it realized.
Ferguson says both love creating, risk-taking, and the process of turning a dream into tangible results.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

When Pastors and Entrepreneurs Unite: Multiplication, Movement, and Missional Imagination

What happens when you put a pastor and an entrepreneur in a room with a whiteboard? According to Dave Ferguson, you get real solutions that push back darkness with light. Join host Justin Forman as he sits down with Dave Ferguson—co-founder of Community Christian Church in Chicago and the New Thing Network, which has helped plant 30,000 churches across 69 countries—to explore what it really takes to build a movement, why church planters and entrepreneurs are more alike than they think, and how "missional imagination" could be the missing ingredient in both the church and the marketplace.

Dave shares hard-won lessons from decades of church planting, network building, and leadership development—including the leadership framework from his upcoming book Multiplier: How Healthy Leaders Create Lasting Impact. From the four Rs that fueled exponential growth to the RPMS dashboard that keeps leaders healthy over the long haul, this conversation is packed with frameworks entrepreneurs will immediately recognize and apply.

Key Topics:

Why church planters and entrepreneurs share the same wiring—and what that means for the Kingdom
The "chaortic" principle: how clear vision + clear values unlock movement-level multiplication
Dave's RPMS framework: the four gauges every leader must monitor daily (Relational, Physical, Mental, Spiritual)
From addition to multiplication: the difference between making disciples and making disciple-makers
The "all abilities church" story—what happens when a salesman with a passion gets a pastor's blessing
50 micro-expressions of church inside Amazon—and what it means for entrepreneurs in the marketplace
Why "missional imagination" beats checklist Christianity every time

Notable Quotes:

"If you put a pastor and an entrepreneur in a room with a whiteboard and a facilitator, I can't imagine you're not going to come up with real solutions to go like, hey, here's how we push back that darkness with light." – Dave Ferguson

"You reproduce who you are and what you do." – Dave Ferguson

"If we aim for mission, you're going to get mission and you're probably going to get some of the deepest friends that you've ever had." – Justin Forman