I remember first hearing about church planting when we were in Mexico City in 2006. Of course it was the next big thing. Missional communities, independent, on the edge, church as it was meant to be. It was fuelled by big names with loud voices, cool graphics and awesome video content. ‘Starting’ churches seemed to be strange to my ears not having grown up in church, I mean, churches had been around forever, right? As I listened, watched, and read, I began to get a sense for what church planting was, and yet the longer I’ve been around it, I’ve realised that when people talk about church planting they mean a variety of things. One friend many years ago said that lots of people talk about church planting, few know what it means, and even less actually do it. In my experience there is a lot of starting, energy and hype, but what does it actually mean to plant a church?
We could debate styles and models, we can talk about cores, clusters and ‘soft launching,’ but what I have had a passion for in the last 10 years is what I always have imagined church planting to be, seeing the Gospel planted in an area that is unreached, a town that has little to no Gospel witness and seeing God raise a church there by transforming and saving lives by His grace and for His glory.
Now, to clarify, I’m not saying that what others are doing is not church planting. My challenge is to think of identifying and seeking to reach places where there are currently no churches rather than see many multiple churches planted in the same towns and cities. Now, of course, this creates its own pushbacks about population sizes, cultural centres etc etc. However, if we assess where the majority of churches are planted, there are clear clusters and still lots of sparse areas. As we have considered Tony Merida’s book ‘Love Your Church’ as a church, in his chapter ‘Welcoming’ he ponders if James’ challenge against partiality works out in the way we plant, or don’t plant churches in certain areas or among certain people. Maybe we’ve lost that sense of purpose that drove those before us to see the glory of God cover the earth as the water covers the sea. Maybe prayerfulness and faithful risk taking has been replaced by a cautious pragmatism. These are questions worth asking…
So consider with me what it is to pioneer church plant as we walk through stages of what this looks like. Many of these will be relatable to all church planting to some extent, and speak to the stages of maturity rather than size, staffing, or programs. I’ll not be speaking about when you’ll need to bring on an extra staff member, or when to buy a building (although these may be relevant to church maturity) I want to focus on how a church gets started, how I’ve observed certain stages, and what the challenges are in each.
For the sake of structure I have noted five, and since I am a preacher I wanted them all to be alliterative, so we have:
Preparation
Pioneering
Parental
Partnership
Participatory
These will look at the culture of both the planters, leaders, and congregation. It will seem messy at times, but then again, so is church planting. This is more of a fluid idea, so I want to invite questions, have discussions, and learn from other planters as well, so we can rely on each other, and the wisdom of our great God, to see more churches planted for His glory and the fame of Jesus. I’ll probably not write one post on each but rather about issues that arise in these stages and how we can think through them. I’ll link to helpful materials and resources, and if you have any to add, or even want to disagree, please feel free to do so!
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