Church Planting vs Transplanting #1-CAUTION RANTING AHEAD

It has been interesting to see the passion for starting new evangelical churches around the joint. There has been this buzz around various blogs. check it out here, here, here, here, here, and here All taking about the wisdom of Mark Driscoll (and he is a very discerning man, i met him in 2002 and have lots of time and respect for the man) and the fact that we need to start new churches and so on and so forth.

I am all for church planting, in fact Kristy and i will most likely end up planting a church at some stage (even though at the moment God called us to clean up other peoples messes). I believe God is calling the church to start new communities of faith, but the question is whether we are healthy at going about it or whether we propagate sickness.

So over the next couple of weeks i will be posting a few thoughts and rants about where i see the church planting movement going unless we get our act together.

This is where i will get in trouble

Is this just the latest fad we are going to go through in evangelical circles?? is it the latest thing that we have seen come out of some church that is successful and we kind of like the idea so we jump on board? May i remind people that the Willow Creek Movement was the bees knees back in the early 90's and do i need to say anything about the Fair Trade Coffee fiasco of just 3 years ago when it was the biggest and best thing for Christians to get involved with, and now it is kind of like a injured cat lying by the side of teh road not going anywhere (graphic! I know but it was the best thing i could think of).

I have a few concerns with the church planting movement in evangelical circles of the Australia East Coast, and i am going to restrain from naming individuals or churches because i don't think that is helpful. My aim is not to cause trouble, but to raise conversation and deep thought about this before we head into a frenzy of planting churches.

most of the churches we are starting are actually not missional
Ok Josh, what do you mean by missional, cause actually that is not a word and can mean anything you want it to mean, just like emerging. To which i would say "get out of your postmodern midset you tree huggin hippie, postmodernism is dying and we are now entering a new era" then i would tell you that missional is being a missionary in the current western culture that you live in. Reachign people where they are at. To be a missionary at least with *&^ we send people off to bible college, and then we send them down to @#$%^&* %$## in Melbourne so that they can study the culture, the language, the history, social habits and so forth.

What do we do in church planting ventures? you finish bible college, get thrown out into a parish and then  the church decides it wants to start a new church so someone who has been pastoring a church is pushed into planting a church (cause that is the done thing now).

The problem i see with this is that most of our ministers have grown up in Christian environments (i.e the increasing amount of people who have gone to Christian school, gone to church and only had christian friends all their lives and therefore have no idea about what the world is actually like,a nd have this idealized view of what "the other side" (non believers) are like.

So we have pastors who don't know how to, or have never had to relate to peopel outside the Christian Bubble going and planting churches, and therefore recreating what they have always done, or what they have seen done and they end up starting a church which is basically the same as the one they have come from, not reaching people where they are at. Or we do something slightly different such as have coffee half way through the service, meet in a pub building, have coffee table and chairs, meet in a school hall, and we are like "how cool are we are church planting, this is rad" When really we have at best changed the cover on the book.

So we are really inly starting new churches for those who are already Christians and wanting to feel like they are doing something.

Which leads to transplanting NOT planting
I now have been involved with or connected to 6 church plants up and down the East coast, some i have had personal friendships within the leadership, some i have consulted with, some i have been connected with and some i have been a keen observer.

If we start something new we are always going to have a core team, that is given (Martin Robinson suggests a starting team of about 30-40) but what happens when we start somethign new is:

1. We are always going to attract more people from the sending church than initially wanted
2. These people are usually disenfranchised or angry at something from the mother church
3. We attract a whole group of Christians who "know" how to do church and so therefore will push towards a model of church they are comfortable with
4. The church plant will end up being a replica of the sending church, and since it is the new cool fad, more people will gravitate towards it overstaking it with people who are there for their own benefit, really don't have an understanding of the mission and basically ending up with the same people from before, feeling good about themselves cause a church has been "planted" when really they are all already Christians and have come from some other churches. So it ends up being, same people, different venue, feeling good about themselves cause they have done something, when really they have just changed venue.
5. don't get me started on uni church plants. I believe it is necessary for uni students to go to church and the closer to a uni the better considering they are poor and can't travel. but planting in a uni in my opinion (can I stress this is only my opinion) is a bit of a crock cause ultimatly you end up just taking people of uni age from the local churches cause they want to congregate with a larger group their age and find a husband or wife. (which qualifies as a meat market, not a church plant)
   

Two church plants that were done in the early 00's i can remember very vividly. Both aiming at a select groups of people, both actively went around telling people "If you fit into this category, you should come to this new church we are starting" and progressively since if Christians fit that group they end up saying, "I need to go to that church because it is where i will fit cause i am the same shape as them" So we have homogeneous churches made up of all the people from churches around the joint, so that for example we have the "musical church" and all the other churches don't have any people with musical skills cause they are all at the "musical church" or the "I wear weird pants church" so all the churches around the joint  don't have any weird pant wearing people becasue they are all at the one church. So in the end 90% of growth comes from transfer, and not actually being missional and meeting people where they are at.

Comments

[Jez]

Way out of my expertise to comment, but interesting nonetheless.

I like the new blog style

[Dave Miers]

when someone starts a post with "CAUTION RANTING AHEAD" - i'm expecting to be offended.

but, except for the bad spelling from fast-rant-typing, i think what you've said is gold.

i think that what you've described sounds more like lots of the planting that has happened within sydney. further up the east coast, if you know what i mean, i think there are been genuine missional communities with growth coming from new converts as much as, if not more, than transfer.

looking forward to the rest of the series!

also looking forward to some answers to counter lost of the stuff you've raised in the post.

[unkleE]

Josh

I too agree with most of what you say. But I think you don't go quite far enough (why are you surprised?). You say "most of the churches we are starting are actually not missional", and while I think it is correct, I suggest it has the wrong emphasis.

We should be doing mission first and then if the mission is successful, a church will be formed.

I think that's how Paul did it. I don't think he went into town and hired a building and started seeker services. Acts reads to me like he went first to the synagogue to tell the Jews about Jesus as Messiah, then he discussed with the gentiles. Churches formed, and sometime later he appointed elders (plural!!!).

We so often get it back-to-front. If we're denominational church, we define an area on the map in need of a church, appoint a pastor and perhaps a few followers, and they set up shop, run services and then think about who is their mission field. If we're pentecostal entrepreneurs, we do much the same, but as a more individual effort.

In Exiles (and other books), Mike Frost gives examples of successful missions that began quite unusual churches that suited the culture of the people - much better than imposing some English parish church culture or US entrepreneurial culture!

In this, as in many other matters, modern church seems to depend more on the traditions that worked in Christendom than on scripture, the power and guidance of the Spirit and an understanding of local cultures.

[Dan]

Hey Josh.
Just wondering... I totally agree with the fact that many church plants end up just being the best, new, exciting thing and thus grow through transfer growth rather than from actual conversion.
You've pointed out heaps of negatives. What would a church plant that does achieve it's missional aims actually look like on the ground. Do you agree with unkleE who says that you reach the people first and then create a church or do you think you still use the elements of having a core group go with you, start a home group, grow to forty or fifty and then launch a church but you just be careful of being a transplant?
I'm just trying to work out whether you are ranting at the process or the people behind it.

[Josh]

Hey Dan,

You are very right in saying that i have raised a whole heap of negatives, hopefully in future posts i will move into some of the positives, (i.e with sending out of a group of core people from a large church it means that holes need to be filled, so some previously not involved people need to step in and fill the gaps)and to the foundations of what a missional church looks like.

In response to your questions:

"Do you agree with unkleE who says that you reach the people first and then create a church or do you think you still use the elements of having a core group go with you, start a home group, grow to forty or fifty and then launch a church but you just be careful of being a transplant?"

I think the answer is both and (sorry if this is annoying). I believe that a core group can be planted well if it has the right DNA, but i also believe that planting from scratch with non-christ followers can work, (it can also fail).

I think new church plants need to be very clear that they don't want transfer and be very firm about it, you don't want people joining and making it become a fad. After establishing a core, i think church planter should turn transfers away (they will just go to another church)

Am I ranting at the process or the people behind it. I think i am ranting at the people who are corrupting the process.

I suppose the other question i am asking is "why start new churches when we can't maintain the others which are dying, why not bring them back to life?"