What Kinds of Churches are We Planting?

This was in Steve Sjogren's Servant Evangelism e-newsletter this month. I thought we might want to interact with his observations.

What Kinds of Churches are We Planting?
by Steve Sjogren

A few years ago the idea of planting a new church was a novel thing it seemed. When Janie and I first came to Cincinnati there were maybe 3 or 4 guys around the city of Cincinnati – with a total population of close to 2 million – trying to plant a church at that time. Today – about 20 years later – there are several dozen in the trenches trying to make a go of it in the church planting game. I find this both great and not so great.

It is great in that new “wineskins” are emerging to meet the needs to new people who are coming along with a desire for new values, a greater desire for more of God’s presence, more practicality, new assumptions that the old wineskin just didn’t get in many cases.

I personally watched for a number of years a very gifted, nationally known pastors, speaker and author in the 70s (I know – you weren’t born yet…) try to reverse the trend of his Southern California denominational church and “renew” it – to see the Spirit of God fill his church with newness, a sense of expectation each week, etc. I watched him work tirelessly week after week. When I arrived on the scene of his weekly services, he had been tireless working away at renewing his congregation for over a decade. It was obvious to me – as a rather intuitive person – that his people resistant to the message of walking in a life of the fullness of the Spirit, of giving their lives away to others, of being inviters. It was heartbreaking. After seeing this patter up close over a prolonged period of time I made a couple of good, long-term decisions: 1. It would be a waste of a good life to devote myself, my ministry call and strength to that approach considering my desire to see change come upon a congregation (I’m not wired for a snail’s pace change over decades of ministry), and 2. That the idea of “renewing” a congregation was debatable – if it was really possible both according to church historical observation and the teaching of scripture (namely Jesus’ teaching about the message of the “new wine” needing a “new wineskin” – that just makes sense and of course it is inspired scripture).

All of that to say, that the trend toward church planting is a good thing at one level. I have helped plant approximately 40 churches in the past 20 years – 24 of which were a part of my denomination, the rest were other groups. I’m a fan of all that God is doing. However, it isn’t the mere fact that new churches are being planted that excites me. In fact, the planting of new churches could, in the long run, be problematic if those new congregations are of the right quality. That is, if they aren’t practicing new things that bring the kingdom of God to bear upon the earth, if they aren’t bringing to bear new assumptions about the life of Jesus lived out by all of us who are a part of the Church – the list goes on.

My concern, and it is a growing concern as I continue to travel the world (last year – 2005 – I spoke at over 100 locations around the world – all over the US, Canada, Europe and the UK). It is only natural that as one travels patterns start to emerge. The vast majority of the places that I spoke in this past year were churches that have been planted in the past 20 years or less – so they have been a part of this fever to expand the kingdom through church planting.

A couple of things have troubled me and a couple of things have encouraged me.

First, I have seen that many of these churches, contrary to the story that they tell publicly, have grow “laterally” – in other words, they have simply absorbed the majority of the people from their congregation from neighboring churches. They put on a better show for already-believing people who were looking, essentially, for something new. That is sad to me. I believe that is sad to the heart of Jesus too. What do you think?

Second, at the majority of the churches that I have been at, as I have snooped around it is apparent that the ongoing message that is preached week in and week out is some derivation of “Cute sells.” Or another way to put it, “If we can be more clever than the guys down the street in putting together our message series then we will grow numerically.” If I see one more message series based on a TV show that is popular I don’t think I can be held accountable for the actions that I will take! In other words, Jesus didn’t base his ministry on cute, or clever. The Pharisees were clever and cute. Jesus was PROFOUND. Encounter after encounter in the Gospels Jesus was absolutely, knock you off your feet profound in his dealings with person after person. What people are dying for is an ounce of profoundness to be both spoken and done by the leaders of the body of Christ.

To the bright side: As I reflect on my travels of ’05 I see that the Holy Spirit is amazingly consistent, throughout the world. Wherever I go – and I mean everywhere – he is on the move with what I call the “spirit” of outreach, evangelism and ministry to the needy. People all over are picking up on that. That makes Jesus happy. When we draw near to these people we are getting very close to the heart of Christ. Like never in my history as a follower of Christ, people are hearing the call of God to pursue those who don’t yet know God in a personal way.

One last point on the bright side: There seems to be a glimmer of hope in the leadership level of things around the globe – the people of the Church have been aching and crying out for this for the longest time – to become authentic. There is an increasing move toward openness – to sharing from the heart – toward sharing the real stories of what is really happening in leader’s lives from the pulpit. Again that makes Jesus happy. That style of communication causes people to want to come to church and to want to follow the leadership of those who share those kinds of stories on a regular basis.