One church plant or two?

You've just received a $100,000 donation for the on-going ministry of your church. How do you spend it?
My take is that you have only two good options...

1. Spend it on revitalizing existing congregations and ministries
2. Use it to plant a new church

What arguments would lead you to think that planting a new church is the way to go?

Many of the arguments for church planting fall into two categories.

1. There are arguments that are really just urging us to do church. Eg. Jesus' essential call in Matthew 28 was to incorporate believers into a church community. But the flaw in that argument is that, if we've already got a church to incorporate new believers into, why do we need another one?
2. There are arguments that look to the model of church-planting in the book of Acts. Paul planted churches and so should we. But the problem with that argument is that the situation then was one in which no church community existed. Once again, if we have a decent bible teaching church in our area why do we need another one?

For these arguments to work we need a change of mindset. As long as we think geographically about church (eg. parishes) it's difficult to get away from the mentality that says 'we don't need another church in our suburb'. But once we escape that way of thinking we are free to realise that there are countless people-groups in our community and networks that aren't being reached by the gospel. Faced with that reality the only gospel-minded and mission-minded response is to create new fellowships and gatherings to reach those people and groups. Only in this way will we reach the myriad of 'cities' that exist in our city. We need to be missionaries to the culture around us.

Of course there are countless practical and sociological reasons to plant churches. Here are just some... (without any accompanying evidence... just trust me on this!)

• New churches freed from the influence of established generations and cultures are better about to reach young people or new people groups.
  
• New churches can more quickly integrate new members and get them involved in ministry.
  
• A new church is far more likely to grow from amongst those who are not presently attending another church. Churches more than 10 years old tend to gain 80-90% of their new members by transfer.

So how would you spend that $100,000? One church plant or two?