Had an interesting discussion today with someone from CRM about church planting.
They used the analogy of a person who grew to the age of 19 or 20…and instead of leaving home, stayed there, comfortable and getting fat….at their parents expense. Is the church like this? Growing old and fat….and not having any children? Not growing old?
I look at my own denomination and I wonder where all the church plants have gone. Back in the ’80’s and even 90’s churches where being planted, my father started two himself!
Now…I struggle to think of a new church plant.
We need young leaders, young pioneers…we need old guys willing to give it a go.
We need churches who put aside their own fattening needs and plant churches.
I want to be in the church planting game. Thats scary…….We need to get our church to maturity, so we can start planting churches. If no one else will, we will…..and in inner city areas as well……
The greatest period of evangelism and growth through evangelism generally takes place during a church plant, the first few years. We need to do this…..
mmmm…I can feel God giving me some vision!
“We need to get our church to maturity, so we can start planting churches.”
Unfortunately, thats a common cry, and whilst all the churches are struggling for the ever illusive maturity, young leaders walk away in frustration….
My dad…at the age of 55+ planted two churches, both of which are doing well, with little or no support from other churches, through sheer hard work.
Also, I doubt you know much about our church, and I find it interesting that write what you have, with no real knowledge of our circumstances.
i don’t think you need to take roo’s comments as personally directed at your church mark – he simply makes a general statement (maybe he wrongly used the words “all churches”) that is quantitatively and qualitatively backed up by his own experience (my experience) as well as the experience of thousands of people all over Australia, NZ, England and the USA (see Jamieson’s “Churchless Faith” – what was the largest study on Evangelical, Charasmatic and Pentecostal churches across these continents that ad been carried out).
The funny thing is – many of those who have left the church have done so not to leave their faith behind but precisely because they needed to leave in order to keep their faith alive. In doing so, they continue to meet with fellow journeyers and consequentially effectively “plant” churches all through their communities (they just are rarely formally recognised by any denomination).
So maybe we are seeing church planting in numbers that we dream of – they just look a little different from what we are used to?
Hmmmmm?????
sorry mark, that wasn’t meant to be personal, it was more that in relation to your post about getting fat and lazy, we sometimes can find a bunch of arbitrary signs or signals we require before moving forward that lead us to that place of comfort, such as seeking maturity before planting a church, but maturity it hard to measure so there will always be some saying ‘we are there’ whilst others say, ‘no we need better pastoral care or better worship or whatever’. be bold and go for it is what i meant, i didnt mean to put you down or imply your never will do it, in fact, i really hope you do. and those you plant, plant in turn and so on.
Go with it Mark – you guys have just combined – how about getting an off-shoot going where you have a few families located?
Even just a mid-week type thing?
I have two suggestions.
1. Don’t wait until your church is “(insert perceived need)”. If you do it’ll never happen.
Start planning now and work towards it.
2. From a denominational point of view find 5-10 people 20-40 and train them as church planters. Send them out and resource them as needed.
Get people like yourself with influence to act as protectors for them when/if they fail.
Also look at people 45+ (especially 60+) who are interested in planting churches for older people. It’s a massive mission field for us.
Our church has planted a church every 3 years for the last 15 years. It all started with the same passion you're writing with Mark … a desire, a dream, a passion … that's all … then we prayed – hard!!
And 17 yrs later we've planted 6 churches, 1 has since closed but all in all it's been a exhilirating journey.
I'd agree with Gareth, no time like the present to at least plan & cast vision.