Wisdom for church planting

Paul, you beat me to the post! Yes, the Church Planting conference at Moore was excellent, and I enjoyed the Thursday as much as you did the Friday, and for all the same reasons. (Although, speaking editorially, if you ever again use the word ‘awesome’ in that fashion while writing on Matthias Media time, I may have to reconsider your contract.)

Three things occurred to me during the day.

1. As various speakers talked about the practical (and very smart!) things they did in church planting, it struck me that ‘pragmatism’ might not be the most helpful word to describe what was going on. When Paul Dale, for example, talked about the steps he went through in launching Church by the Bridge, or as Phil Campbell discussed his approach to church planting within Queensland Presbyterianism, it wasn’t a cold, ‘do whatever it takes’ pragmatism. Nor was there the implication that if only you get these three magic factors right, then people will flood into the kingdom. The underlying theological goals and principles were uncompromising—to see people converted through prayerful preaching of Jesus, and to depend on God to sovereignly change people’s hearts.

   But with these goals and basic methodologies as the driving force, and with a biblical ethic and framework firmly in place, it was plain that you could learn a great deal about the practicalities of seeding or planting a new ministry through observation, research and experience. You could be smart about it. I think the better and more biblical word might simply be ‘wisdom’.

2. It’s easy when discussing these matters to end up equating ‘church planting’ with ‘evangelism’, as if the structural process of starting a new congregation automatically leads to real gospel growth. But as Andrew Heard pointed out, if you’re not a mission-minded evangelistic church, then propagating a new version of yourself won’t lead to any more evangelism than you’re doing now (i.e. hardly any). You may get some transfer growth, but that’s about all.

   However, if you are a mission-focused congregation, then planting some well-trained, evangelistically minded members in a new location or at a new time to reach a new group or subculture can be a brilliant way of facilitating gospel growth—if you’re wise about it. (One of the key wisdom factors emphasized by Al Stewart and Andrew Heard was ‘leadership’: you need the right kind of guy heading up the new venture.)

3. Understanding the nexus between church planting and evangelism is particularly important as we learn from the church planting experience of some of our American brothers. I am grossly simplifying, but in most parts of the US, it is far easier to put up your shingle and gather a reasonable crowd than it is in most parts of Australia. The society is just more ‘churched’, with a vastly greater number of vaguely or culturally Christianized people who are willing to come to church if presented with the right package. In this context, starting a new church can be an excellent way to evangelize because you are drawing in unconverted people who are nevertheless quite willing to come to church.

   In a more pagan, unchurched country like Australia, there may be many contexts in which getting people to church is not the wisest way to evangelize them. Evangelism will happen in the workplace, at the pub, through personal relationships, in the neighbourhood, at school, in the marketplace. In this context, planting a new congregation may well provide a good home base for reaching out to new people, but (as Paul pointed out in his post) how we reach those people will almost certainly require a willingness to think outside our traditional structures and methodologies of getting people to church.