As so often happens, reader Charles McLean raised some challenging questions in response to Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
Most start-up churches (those words stick in my throat as generally oxymoronic) come about for one of three reasons: [a] we don’t like the way our current fellowship is ruled, so we create one we can rule to our satisfaction; [b] we move to a place where no existing fellowship thinks just as we do, and we’ll not give our fellowship to people who don’t think exactly like us; [c] I want to make a living preaching and running a church, and as no one is offering to hire me, I open my own shop.
It’s a difficult challenge to respond to, for several reasons.
The New Testament model
First, as I read the scriptures, the New Testament model is one church per community. That church might meet in several locations (during New Testament times, houses were the typical meeting places), but despite having multiple locations, they were but one congregation under a single eldership.
Obviously, under that model, we’d only “plant” a church in the sense of creating a new meeting place for members of the existing, city-wide church or founding the first Christian congregation in a given community. But there are no American communities that follow this model.
Churches that adopt a multi-campus model are actually moving in the direction of this model — so long as they don’t invade other cities. When they enter other cities, they are following the McDonald’s franchise model rather than the New Testament model — limiting themselves to a particular preferred market segment rather than taking a step toward a truly unified church.
There are very serious reasons why the early church adopted this model. They considered it sinful in the extreme to divide over race, ethnicity, or even doctrinal disputes. They were united by a common faith in Jesus and submission to his Lordship. To insist on being in a separate congregation because of a disagreement over, say, eating meat or honoring the Sabbath, was considered heretical — that is, anti-gospel and anti-grace.
Today, we, of course, engage in this anti-gospel, anti-grace behavior constantly, because we want to meet with people who agree with and affirm us — largely because we lack the grace and love that should compel us to be united despite our disagreements.
Moreover, going back for centuries, we’ve defined who is “us,” and thus fit for fellowship, based on adherence to a list of doctrinal positions — but the early church was united based on faith in Jesus, not agreement on fellowship halls and orphanages.
Nowadays, we’re adding to the list of grounds for division: disagreement over missional methodology, which is a fancy way of saying: disagreement over how to reach the lost. Thus, if the elders of church X wish to reach the lost by encouraging friends to come to church rather than, say, using small groups or doing ministry in the community, to many of us, it becomes appropriate to form a new church that seeks the lost by using more fashionable methods.
That’s perhaps a bit over-stated. After all, the disagreement is often not so much over methods but heart. When a church becomes inwardly focused and no longer truly has a heart for the lost and needy in the community, we often conclude that the solution is the planting of a new church, and indeed there is some truth to that.
Lipstick on a pig
However, we’re putting lipstick on a pig. After all, even if that conclusion is entirely correct, it doesn’t address the underlying problem. Why is it that the first church became inwardly focused? Why can’t a church filled with Christ-followers be persuaded to, you know, follow Jesus?
And if we plant a new church with new methods but the same teaching as the old church, what on earth makes us think that the new church won’t become just as self-centered as the old church? What makes us think that we aren’t guilty of Jesus’ charge against the Pharisees —
(Mat 23:15 ESV) For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
I mean, do instruments, PowerPoint, and female communion passers address the real problem? Maybe we’re just using better methods to convert people to the same ol’ wrong religion?
Other than a few cosmetic changes — that is, other than lipstick — what are we doing to change pigs into sheep? If we preach the same sermons and preach the same religion, just with better music, why would we expect better results?
So here are the hard questions: What are you going to do at the new church to get different results from what you got at the old church? And why can’t you do those things at the old church?
Is a plant the best solution for the real problem?
You see, when we look past the superficialities and get down to the licklog, we see that the frustration so many of us have with established churches comes from preaching a flawed gospel. And if we use newer, better, hipper methods of attracting people to the same flawed gospel, we are wasting our time.
Moreover, if we do figure out what’s wrong with the gospel we preach — the gospel that has created buildings filled with self-indulgent, self-important members — aren’t we doing a terrible disservice to our existing members — the ones we’ve taught wrongly — not to even give them a chance to respond to a better form of the good news?
This is not to suggest that there never is a good time and place to plant a church! In fact, I’m a big fan of church planting. But like Charles, I’ve seen too many cases of poorly designed church planting efforts, based more on the needs of the planter or denomination than any real concern for the Kingdom.
After all, if we love the church — as Jesus does, as a man loves his bride — then we’ll be just as concerned with the existing churches as the lost we want to reach. Indeed, one of the fundamental flaws I see is many planting efforts is a rejection of existing church members as unworthy of our time and talents. It’s just very typical of many ministers to pursue evangelism at the price of the souls of the already saved.
Surely, it’s possible to fashion an approach to missions that doesn’t begin with the assumption that existing churches are hopeless and must be left behind in order to build the Kingdom. I understand the feeling, but is that really how Jesus feels about his bride?
