I remember first hearing about church planting when we were in Mexico City in 2007. Of course it was the next big thing. Missional communities that were Gospel centred, 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 a strange concept to me, 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 tend to 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 want to do it.
As we entered into the world of church planting in Mexico and then returned to Ireland on furlough there was an explosion in the number of churches being planted. It seemed that churches were planted every week, and we were excited to return to Mexico to be a part of this movement. Yet, when we arrived these works were gatherings of God’s people who were being developed and discipled to worship, but something didn’t seem right. The work was done faithfully, and people were coming to Christ, but it didn’t seem as what was being planted were churches. We could get into the debate of church as a people not an organisation, yet there are organising principles in the New Testament for what the church is, who is part of it, and who leads it. To plant churches, we first must understand what a church actually is.
In this series we could debate ecclesiology, 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 place 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. I’ve written about this recently in regard to ‘desert places.’ Not looking to plant a church for the sake of our tribe’s presence in a certain area, but for the sake of the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom. Not replicating a particular model of church in a different location in a cookie-cutter fashion, or reading the latest church planting ‘success’ and trying to copy that. I want us to look at church planting, not as adding to what we already have, but going where we haven’t been.
Now, to clarify, I’m not saying that what some people are doing is not church planting, but I do think we need to have a conversation to determine if we are over saturating some areas or people groups with too many churches where other places and peoples are overlooked. My personal passion (and I can be very annoyingly persistent on this!) is to identify and seek to reach places where there are currently no churches rather than see many multiple churches planted across towns and cities. Now, of course, this creates it’s own comebacks 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, particularly his chapter ‘Welcoming,’ Tony 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 ‘risk’ that drove those before us to see the glory of God cover the whole earth as the water covers the sea. It’s a question 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 might 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. When we started in Loughrea, some people asked us, “How do you just start a church?” For some it is importing a culture, or team, for a running start. For us, we prayerfully decided to start from (kind of) scratch, and I will explain some of this in the process. For some who feel God’s leading to plant, this might help you in considering what this could look like, for those who have planted it might give some help in recognising what stage you are at, or why things seem like they are stalling - and believe me, they always do!
My heart in all of this, is that see churches that mature and grow like trees, slowly and often imperceptibly, rather than flowers that bloom in beauty, but die just as quick. Churches that are faithfully growing in depth and maturity to the glory of God. As always, I would love your input, and I might ask some of you for testimony to God’s work in your life, or your planting journey on how God shaped you and your church by His grace.
For the sake of structure I have noted five stages, and since I am a preacher I wanted them all to be alliterative, so we have:
Preparation
Pioneering
Parental
Partnership
Participation
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 try to write one post on each, but might pause during one of the sections to talk about issues that arise in these stages and how we can think through them. I’ll link to helpful materials and resources when I remember to, and if you have any to add, or even want to disagree, please feel free to do so!
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