Stop funding church plants and start funding missionaries
I am on vacation so I don't have a lot of time to comment (or want to take the time right now), but David Fitch has an excellent article - Stop Funding Church Plants and Start Funding Missionaries: A Plea To Denominations - that I feel is right on. I would be interested in others thoughts, and hope to chime in eventually. I think this is a must read for those of you interested in denominational issues, and very applicable to our denom right now (given our interest in planting).
peace & blessings,
dh
ps - btw, I am not the "Dan" who is commenting at Fitch's site (I always use my first and last name everywhere).
posted by dan at 8:48 AM
6 Comments:
Dan,
Thanks.
Great article.
I've been working on a blog saying much of this.
We are not commanded to plant churches. We are sent by Jesus to make disciples.
In at least three of the MLI Retreats I've attended Reggie McNeal has pointed out that we now live in a 'Post-Congregational Era."
It's classic CGGC to jump on a bandwagon just after the parade has passed by.
There was a huge Church Planting wave beginning in the post WW2 era and it succeeded among the people of my parent's generation as they took their baby boomers to church to teach them to be good Americans in face of the threat of Communism.
And, there was, indeed, that Willow Creek, seeker-sensitive wave, which we caught the tail end of.
But, we live in a different time.
There is no biblical mandate to plant churches. It's past time in the USA to be congregationally-oriented.
We've jumped on the band wagon just as the wheels begin to fall off of it.
Again.
Good point.
Thanks for linking us to the article.
Have a great vacation.
Dan,
This is the right direction and is the direction we are headed, although we aren't there.
I have not been involved in a church plant that has given 3 years of support, maybe ever.
The current planter I'm working with gets $2000 per month for 12 months and already had a great home group gathered at his home.
The trend will be less and less money till it is close to zero.
One difficult factor is that there is still enough success with traditional church planting that people don't see the current need to do things so radically differently.
I think Cole's idea of starting from the group up with focusing on makeing disciples and then those disciples forming 'church' community makes more sense then planting a church and hoping that discipleship might happen there.
M,
I believe that it's past time for the CGGC to stop asking the question, "What works?" and begin to ask the questions:
What's truth? And,
What does the Word teach?
The reality is that Church Planting is not commanded or modeled in the New Testament. The reality is that what is commanded and modeled in the New Testament is making disciples.
The reality is that we do it because we have the sense that it has worked for others.
Yeah. It's tempting to follow the crowd and be compelled by peer pressure to do what others are doing. But, we've committed ourselves to establish churches on the New Testament plan. We're not supposed to be about going along with the crowd.
People almost always go along with the crowd.
I'm not defending anything, only making the observation/prediction that people will mostly not change until after the current way has totally failed, and maybe not even then.
M,
When people not guided by truth they go along with the crowd. Because the CGGC has ceased to be a people of the Word, we have become people of the crowd.
And, remember that it was the crowd that said both, "Hosanna" and "Crucify him" within a few days.
Post a Comment
<< Home