David T. Olson's "Top Ten Reasons to Plant Churches"

10) New faith communities tend both to engage younger people and to be more multiethnic.

9) New churches energize established churches that help start them.

8) Churches tend to grow for about 40 years after their birth.

7) Church starts make good use of energetic, creative clergy.

6) New churches serve as laboratories for existing churches, with established communities learning from both the failures and the successes of emerging communities.

5) New churches provide leadership opportunities for new people that are not available in established communities that already have many leaders.

4) New churches are better able to contextualize their ministry for new generations than are churches that were designed for earlier generations.

3) New churches are better able to contextualize their ministry for growing ethnic populations than are churches that were designed for other ethnicities.

2) Conversion growth is more common in new faith communities than in established faith communities.

1) The population of the United States is growing; churches in the United States are declining.

(This list is paraphrased from David T. Olson's The American Church in Crisis, pages 155-156.)