If church revitalisation is like raising the dead (a difficult task by anyone’s standard—except Christ’s!), church planting is like giving birth (easier, perhaps, but still painful and labourious). Still, like childbirth, church planting can be difficult, messy, noisy, and worrying but it is worth it in the long run. In fact, the New Testament argues that there is something of a need for discomfort in church planting.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. — Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV)