There are many changes in church planting today, and I want to point out four good trends that I see that should be an encouragement to us and the mission we are called to in North America. Trends don’t last unless there is a groundswell of support and more people buy into the trends as helpful and good. So I hope you won’t just recognize these trends, but embrace them and promote them as far as you are able.
First, one of the trends is that there is more church planting. It’s is getting recognized more, celebrated more, and done more. When I planted my first church in the inner city of Buffalo, NY in 1988, the idea of someone going out and starting a church was foreign to most people. As a planter I looked odd to people. People would wonder why I didn’t go and pastor an established church. I believe there’s a real possibility that this exponential increase will lead to an even higher level of church planting and the building of many church planting networks. That’s a good thing. Church planting conferences are also exploding, with thousands coming to, for example, the Exponential Conference.
Unfortunately, not all denominations are getting this message. Some are still are focused on fighting and separation over the establishment of new, healthy churches. Consequently, denominations are losing people who have caught on fire for God and desiring to see a movement they aren’t finding in their denomination. So they leave and join a movement and take the Gospel into the world. That can hurt denominations. I would love to see more folks stay in their denominations and work for reform. I would love to see them get serious about church multiplication in their own mission and ministry, setting an example to their denominations.
When I was planting a church in Eerie, Pennsylvania, I went to church planting boot camp. It was three-to-four-day training on being a church planter. I was taught that churches should start new churches out of our new churches, and that if you didn’t start a church within three years you probably never would start one. Two and a half years we grew to 350-400 people. I loved church planting and want to be about planting new churches, so instead of planting one we decided to plant two. We announced that we were having “twins.” Then I started getting calls. The local act of working toward church planting and multiplication led to other opportunities for me, and other opportunities for many young aspiring planters and pastors who would go on to start new works.
Second, there is growing diversity in the ways people are planting churches. Twenty to thirty years ago there was a set pattern sort-of way to plant a church: direct mail, gather a crowd, etc. Now we see everything from house churches, to missional/incarnational communities, to large launches. The contemporary church movement is still planting everywhere, Sovereign Grace encourages people to move across the country to establish a new churches, Acts 29 often starts churches among gentrified urban contexts using outreach to the arts, and the GCM coalition (Gospel Community Mission) is focusing on missional/incarnational communities living among secular people. People and churches are getting a biblical picture of the church, that as long as churches possess the marks of a biblical church, it does not matter if they meet in a coffee shop or a cathedral.
Diversity in planting churches is a great thing. People are different. You can live in an area where within a couple of miles you have dozens of different cultures and languages. You can live in a suburban or rural area where there may be one main race that speaks the same language, yet there is diversity between generations. I’m not necessarily saying we need to plant a new church for every niche group organized around preferences. Not at all. The beauty of the Gospel is that Gospel proclamation creates unity in diversity. But oftentimes there are barriers that are difficult to overcome without planting new churches to reach the diverse peoples in the world.
A key to church planting diversity is not only that we need to let people plant all sorts of churches to all sorts of people, but that people and planters need to be given permission to plant “outside the box.” What I mean is, there are things that haven’t been tried. They are paths that haven’t been taken. We need people to feel free to try something new. What we need to see are two tracks. The first is vocational, fund-raising kind of plant. That’s what we already see in church planting, for the most part. But there’s another emerging trend, a second track, in which the freedom is given to do something dissimilar that what has already been done. I’m not talking theology. I’m not talking essentials of our faith. Those remain the same. I’m talking about the approach, or changes in method. We should embrace churches being planted that are very different from us.
If you look back to the early 90’s the growth of the Calvary Chapel (Vineyard movement) was remarkable. It ended up going some directions I wouldn’t go, but in the 80’s there were explosive movements that gave people permission to plant churches. It’s not unlike the way the Baptists did it in 1795 to 1810, or the Methodists did it with their class system. All those approaches gave people permission to plant churches. And so that trend in many ways is emerging and I think it needs to be encouraged. But in other ways, it’s always how good church planting has been done. Let’s get back to that kind of diversity in planting.
One way to facilitate this, and something that would be healthy for all of us, is to lower our expectation to grow church plants to 10,000 people. The models that are being touted today are plants with explosive numbers. Some planters feel guilty, and the stress can eat them alive and damage their family. For some, the little church they planted that meets in their home or in a small meeting space but it hasn’t quickly become that megachurch just isn’t enough. They’ve been given a model they can never emulate. We need more teaching on what it means to be faithful in church planting so that whatever kind of church God builds is the kind of church we should be faithful to serving. Inimitable models can suffocate an otherwise healthy church.
Third, local churches are becoming the engine for church planting. National denominations are increasingly moving to the background as local churches take the lead in planting. God has chosen the church to make known his manifold wisdom (Eph. 3:10) and when churches plant churches they follow the New Testament pattern. Church planting was often done by denominations in the past. They would gather resources and send out church planters. But the pace of that was too slow and you only got as much church planting as the denomination could pay for. That’s not enough. So what we’re finding now is that increasingly denominations are serving churches, which is much healthier and therefore will lead to more churches being planted. Our denominations are helpful and important in resourcing our church planting churches, but need to play a servant role rather than a direct recruitment and planting role.
Denominations also need to seek partnerships with church planting networks, realizing many of them are helping churches do church planting better. Teaming up for church multiplication can be a huge step in sparking a movement of church planting. It’s not easy. As I said before, denominations aren’t getting the church planting message very well. But if they do, the opportunities for church planting will multiply and resources will better supply the mission.
So we’re talking about local churches taking the lead, working together with planters and seeing national denominations increasingly in the background providing resources along the way.
Fourth, there’s a growing excellence in systems for church planting. Recruiting and assessing planters is being done much better through networks like Acts 29. Their churches are failing far less than denominational plants. They’ve worked hard at finding and creating good assessment tools for recognizing those God has gifted and called to plant churches. They have multiple “Boot Camps” every year and they are often packed. They not only serve as places for a formal assessment of planters, but also teaching and sharing vision. Boot Camps, or basic training, can be either inspirational or preparational. It’s very important to contain aspects of both, but most important to make sure planters are prepared.
Other important systems that are being created are connection and communication systems such as online forums for sharing experiences, seeking advice, sharing resources and so on. OnTheCity.org is one tool being used by church planting networks to help their planters connect. We are seeing these networks have regular regional meetings for training and connecting with other local pastors and churches to facilitate relationships and regional mission initiatives. Coaching of church planters is exploding. Rather than merely keeping up with their stats we are seeing one-on-one coaching relationships as the best way to help planters stay focused and get help. Scott Thomas, director of Acts 29, recently published the book Gospel Coach that would make for great reading in this area.
In the years to come, we will see more church planting as North America becomes more secular, established churches close, and God calls out new planters. And it won’t be without challenge or struggle since church planting is messy. Yet, when churches plant churches, they model the principle of sowing and reaping and display a desire that God’s name and fame would be more widely known.
I’ll be sharing these and other trends at my pre-conference workshop at the Exponential Conference. In case you didn’t know it, Exponential is the largest gathering of church planters on the planet, and today is the last day to register at the discounted rate, so get on it!
