Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Church Plant?:
Calming Qualms About New Expressions of the Church
by Brittany Nye
After living in Columbus, Ohio for about three months and serving alongside my husband, the pastor of a church plant, I’ve noticed a general uneasiness among both Christians and non-Christians about being part of a church plant. Below are some qualms we’ve heard about church plants.
- “I’m never going to be part of a church plant! The minute you walk in the door they want you to be in charge of five different ministries and guilt you into helping with everything.”
- “I’m not willing to be part of the church plant at the smaller, core group stage. But when you guys get things up and running, I’ll consider it.”
- “I’m much more comfortable being a part of an established church. They already have ministries in place to meet my needs.”
- “Resources should go to start churches in other countries, because there are already too many here.”
One day my husband and I were talking about these qualms and concluded that church plants get a bad rap from the general public. After being part of an “older” (7-year-old) church plant for almost 4 years and ministering with many pastors who understood the need for church planting, we did not really anticipate these attitudes. On a personal level, the above remarks are frustrating since we ourselves are starting a church, but beyond that, the Lord has historically and is currently using church plants in mighty ways to spread the truth of His Gospel. Therefore, the misunderstanding of what church plants are and why they exist cripples the spread of the Gospel. The funny thing about uneasiness about church plants is that every church that ever existed was planted, and required committed people to help it flourish for the Gospel.
In a recent sermon (11/11/07), John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis made eight observations about church planting, and they have been summarized here: LINK
- There are 195,000,000 non-churched people in America, making America one of the top four unchurched nations in the world.
- In spite of the rise of megachurches, no county in America that we know of has a greater church population than it did 10 years ago.
- During the last 10 years, combined communicant church membership of all Protestant denominations declined by 9.5% while the national population increased during the same time by 11.4%.
- Each year 3500-4000 churches close their doors forever, while only as many as 1500 new churches are planted.
- There are now nearly 60% fewer churches per 10,000 persons in American than there were in 1920. (1920 - 27 churches for every 10K Americans, 1950 - 17 churches for every 10K Americans, 1996 - 11 churches for every 10K Americans).
- Today, of approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining.
- One American denomination recently found that 80% of its new converts came in churches that were less than two years old.
- “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.” - Peter Wagner
Tim Keller gives three excuses that he hears as well, LINK
- ‘We already have plenty of churches that have lots and lots of room for all the new people who have come to the area. Let’s get them filled before we go off building any new ones.”
- ‘Every church in this community used to be more full than it is now. The church going public is a ’shrinking pie’. A new church here will just take people from churches already hurting and weaken everyone.’
- ‘Help the churches that are struggling first. A new church doesn’t help the ones we have that are just keeping their nose above water. We need better churches, not more churches.’
I also want to spend a minute (if you’ve read this far) to encourage those sitting on the fence, maybe with one leg in “maybe I should be a part of a church plant” and the other leg in “I’m very comfortable at my church” to consider your gifting and resources. Some are not called to plant a church themselves but can equip others with resources.
Also, you may say “I’m too old or too busy,” and let me add as a young person that we need older folks to commit to reaching the community. Not all church plants are looking to find people to run ten ministries each. Many are trying to avoid burning out those attending the church and are sensitive to the amount of time each person can commit to. In addition, being part of a church plant doesn’t necessarily take more time than it does to be part of an established church. Church plants are blessed to have people that are on board with their vision and consistently to come to at least their large group gatherings.
I’ll leave you with a final thought by Tim Keller,
“New church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in a city and one of the best ways to renew the whole Body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is strong–Biblically, sociologically, and historically. In the end, a lack of kingdom-mindedness may simply blind us to all this evidence. We must beware of that.”
