There’s a fun article (at Next-Wave Ezine) that takes off from a typical list of "10 Keys to Effective Church Planting." Here are a few excerpts starting with #4 of the 10 keys:
4. Determine your target audience.
I guess on this one I would just say- Look in the mirror. Expect that the people who will be part of your community will largely look like you. Expect that, but pray for different.
And quit targeting people. I think it freaks them out.
5. It takes big money to plant a church.
Okay…
If you’ll excuse my language, that’s a load of shite. And a dangerous lie to tell to church planters. I wish to God (literally) that people would stop saying this. Is it easier to plant with "big money"? In some ways… And I’m really glad for churches that are able to start with a lot of support. Seriously. The fact that someone is willing to put up that kind of money on a venture that statistically has an 80% or more chance of failure is amazing in the best sense of the word…
So why not start simple? Let it grow organically…
6. If you build it they still might not come.
Amen, brother. So… focus less on building and more on being. Be the kind of community (whether you are 10 people or 100) that others will find loving and welcoming, where they can find God and themselves be found. People will show up for that. You can figure out the bells and whistles later. I say, quit being a builder. Try being a gardener…
7. Clarify the “win”.
Yeeeeahhh… got no idea what this means. I know about setting quantifiable goals and all that. But we’re talking people’s souls, not numbers. We’re talking about community, not benchmarks.
Do your people love God?
Win!
Do they love each other?
Win!
Do they love others outside of your little thing?
Win!
Are you together figuring out how that all works together in community? What that looks like for you as a unique group of Christ followers? Are you feeding people who need food, clothing people who need clothes and generally being Jesus to those God brings in contact with you/your community?
Win, win, win!
Don’t have your five-year plan together? No mission statement? No idea what comes next?
Join the club.
And don’t sweat it.
Do the things Jesus is telling your community to do, love people and trust God to build His church and…
You’ll know the win when you see it.
The whole article, written by Bob Hyatt, can be found here.
Comments
5 responses to “Church Planting “Keys””
Great comments. Posisbly another “Key”: I’m especially in seeing simple, organic churches “review” themselves from time to time. Organic church may be simple, but it shouldn’t be purposeless. On regular intervals, every church should be put up next to the measuring tape and marked off on a proverbial “wall” (didn’t our parents do this to us as growing kids?). Then they can see the visible difference in our growth to look more and more like Christ.
I agree with your sentiments on money, even if it could be more delicately expressed (eg cobblers). Luke 10:4 says “Do not take a purse or bag …” does it not?
Ross
http://to-the-gentiles.blogspot.com
Skimming over that list, I feel like many of these “key” points are rooted strongly in a modernist perspective in which a business paradigm is assumed for effective church planting. Strategies such as demographic targeting and the assumption of large overhead seem to be basic fundamentals of business operations. If planting a church equates establishing a fledgling business, then I’d say these points are a good start. But here are some problems I see with the modernist, church-business:
Operating church like a business organization means operating within a competitive mindset. Pitting one church body against another in the drive to acquire more members (as we have witnessed in the modernist church context) hardly seems to me the embodiment of Christ’s body.
On the other hand, the early church was initially divided simply as a result of local proximity. Church was grounded in the community as it was and not in what a few leaders wanted it to be. This is why I feel that establishing a specified target audience (i.e. Asian-American young adults, Baby-Boomer middle-class white Americans, etc.) is essentially wrong-headed. The church is simply the reflection of the local community in which it is planted. The consumer driven modernist church has long since abandonded this idea and what we see instead is a constant shuffle of people searching for the church which best suits their preferences (and subsequently churches competing to best cater to that ideal), all the while blatantly disregarding that a missional-minded church embraces the local community as it is founded, in all of its disparate diversity, rather than molding its congregation to some specific social archetype.
This is why I am beginning to increasingly appreciate the idea of the Simple House Church. From my understanding it moves away from the church-business and much of its inherently divisive organizational paradigms, and attempts to approach church as a sincere, authentic reflection of local community with little underlying impetus to compete for numbers and money. The business apparatus inherent to the modernistic church which require an ever increasing measure of these resources lest they be driven out of competition, seems practically absent in the emergent house church.
What do you guys think? I have recently been intrigued with the aspirations of the house church. Any input would be appreciated as I try to better embrace where you guys are coming from.
I’m with you on this, Richard. Well said!
Did you have to start by saying s—e, what is all that about, let your speech be seasoned with salt, why oh why in this post-modern culture do we as Christians think that we can say what we want and it will be accepted, is it cool to say this?