Church Plant or Church Splinter?

I feel the need to restate my love for church planters and church planting in general. It is that love that causes me to look more deeply into the practice of church planting as we currently do it in America. I am not so concerned with different church planting models (though there do seem to be some that work better than others) as I am with spiritual and strategic issues. My question is simply this:

Can we really call all of these new works "church plants" if the bodies that are created do not connect to each other and all of the previous works in their community and city? It seems that church planters will often join together while they are training or preparing to launch. But, once they have launched they get consumed with their own work and we successfully create yet another splinter in the Body.

I struggle with seeing four to five churches within 10-15 miles of each other trying to reach the same demographic and psychographic group. It might be a workable strategy if these churches actually worked together. I have not witnessed that very often, though, and I believe it is symptomatic of a large problem. That problem is a diseased church. Try as we might we are not ridding ourselves of the "old" disease simply by creating "new" works.

So let me ask my question another way (please feel free to respond), "What distinguishes a church plant from a church splinter?"

It is just not Sexy enough

Church Health is not a sexy topic, not like Church Planting anyway! Just a few stories of churches going from 100 to 1,000 in a few years and it is easy to see why church plants are sexy! They are the stuff mid-life crisis dreams are made of. I can just hear the marketing now, "Find yourself in an old, traditional, boring, irrelevant, heartless, non-missional church? Well look over here... because I have something brand new for you. It is sleek. It is clean. It is hip and relevant, and it will change your life and your community!" Intended or not, I believe that is the message many church planters hear. Honestly I am almost to the point where I want to shout, "Stop planting more churches!!"

It is not that I am against church planting; for it is clearly a Biblical mandate. I am against the prevailing idea that planting more churches will make The Church in America more healthy. If all of the church plants over the last 10 years exhibited a dramatic shift in vision and effectiveness than their predecessors then I might agree that given enough time and enough new churches the disease in the American church will work itself out. But, there is no such evidence. And, if the number one factor in a healthy church is healthy pastors and staff, then we have to look at what we are doing differently today in calling, training, and supporting our pastors than we were 10 years ago. I think it might be a good idea to take a step back and cure the disease that ails us before we keep spreading it to a new generation of churches.

As I look around the country, the most successful church planting movements are being led by healthy churches; not by conventions or institutions. That leads me to believe that if we can find a way to cure our existing churches then the issue of church planting may very well fix itself.

Paul, the first Church Health Consultant?

I did not think I could be a consultant and a minister. My college degree focused on consulting, business strategy, and process. I left most of that behind when I became a youth pastor and began my official church work in the traditional manner. Ministry, after all, is a deeply spiritual thing whereas business is purely temporal. Or so I thought at the time. God has been waking me up to many such misconceptions recently. Along the way He has shown me that I can use my skills for analysis and my heart for His Kingdom in order to minister to His bride... The Church.

My own bride was the first one who reminded me that in many ways Paul was the first church health consultant. We talk often about Paul as a missionary because of his church planting efforts, but in reality he spent more time as a church consultant than he did as a church planter. An overview of Paul's life reveals that his heart was not just focused on starting new works, but on keeping past works healthy. There are several things I am learning from his example, each of them likely to pop up as individual posts later.

1. Healthy people, not just More people. Paul's letter to the churches and the visits we read about in Acts deal with issues of health, not just admonitions to reach more people. Certainly Paul is concerned with evangelism; it is his stated life's purpose. He also knows that sickness within a church will kill any evangelistic work they may attempt. Healthy parents produce healthy children; sick parents produce sick children, and sick children are likely to die prematurely.
2. Do not Burden the hurting churches. Most churches who need consulting cannot afford the consultant. I believe the worker is worth his wages. I also believe this is an area where those who have resources can minister to those who do not. Just as the church as a whole ministered to Jerusalem during its physical famine, it may be time for the church as a whole to minister to hurting members during our spiritual famine.
3. Don't plant on top of someone else's work. Paul planted new works where other work did not exist. If a previous work did exist he was likely to move on to another area or strengthen the existing work. I think this sheds some interesting light on our modern church planting strategy. It seems that church planting is best done among unreached people groups... and that is not the way the American model seems to be unfolding at the moment.
4. Bring others along in the process. Paul generally travelled with a group. That was for very practical reasons during his time period. It also allowed leadership development to happen on a level that is impossible to replicate through lecture and letter.

I have been reading many books during this transition in my calling. Most of them have to do with church health and revitalization. They offer a call to return to mission and vision; to focus on people outside of your own walls with a heart for evangelism. I agree with those calls, and yet it strikes me as odd that none of these books mention church health ministry as an evangelistic or missional activity. Our first and best example of a missionary was heavily involved in church health consulting.

I must have received a dozen offers to plant a new church in numerous places around the US and Canada these last twelve months. It seems that there is no shortage of funds available for those willing to pick up, move, and begin a new work for God. That is a good thing. I wonder, though, why we are not being just as enthusiastic about training and sending a new generation of missionaries who help correct and strengthen the local churches that already exist. Paul seemed to think church health was a worthy endeavor, and the fact that God led him to record that work for us to read and remember makes me think God believes it is worthwhile as well.

Support

There is a facet of ministry that is currently lacking in our system; the personal touch. Our current model of calling, training, and supporting pastors is quite programmatic. We stand in front of thousands and give an invitation to "surrender to God's call" and then trust that God will touch those who need to move. We take those who respond and stick them with thousands of others in a homogeneous learning environment hoping God will teach them what they need to know. Then we send them into the field and tell them that they can attend this conference or that retreat (for a fee of course) to fill in the holes that inevitably arise between their education and their practical experience. Intended or not, the net result is that we have thousands of pastors moving through ministry feeling very alone and desperately looking for some model upon which they can base their calling. That is one reason why things like 40 Days of Purpose have been so successful in attracting users. In reality it is very likely that God wants to create an entirely new and unique model in our pastors, but that requires personal training and direction that they do not receive.

Much like calling and training, I believe that they way we support pastors in the field needs to be more personal. Our current method of support involves seminars, retreats, books, and many other impersonal, generic solutions. They are not bad things, they are just insufficient. They are solutions that could work well in partnership with a one-on-one discipleship and mentoring relationship. Most people explain our current support methods with words like "efficiency" and "stewardship". It is just too costly, some will say, to minister to each church or pastor individually. The problem is... that is just not true. And, even if it were true it would still not be a good enough reason to continue spending our resources on a broken strategy. If the current strategy was producing marked results, then we could argue that it is a good use of resources. Evidence suggest that the current method does not produce such results.

Contrast that with the work that the Healthy Church Group is doing in California. In the last 5 years they have done individual consultations for over 400 of the 2,000+ California Baptist churches. Of those over 40% have seen a marked increase in Sunday worship attendance, baptisms, and giving. Imagine if 40% of SBC churches began seeing growth in these three areas in the next 5 years. It would be incredible! The truly amazing thing is that the main reason the other 60% do not see the same improvement is that they do not choose to follow the recommendations of the consult. The HCG is currently making more changes to include long term 1-on-1 coaching to increase the personal and relational impact of their consults with hopes that it will increase the number of pastors and churches who follow through with change.

Even with such evidence that a personal, relational solution can provide great results, some will still argue that it is not cost-effective... that it just requires too many people to be practical. The fact is that the current SBC structure would allow this kind of individual support for every church in the convention without the need to add any additional staff. Merely using the current State and Association level staff members they could offer an individual consult for each church every 5 years or so. I personally believe this is the direction conventions will move if they want to survive in the coming decade.

The Church in America is much like a house built on a foundation of sand. The way we have been calling, training, and supporting our pastors over the last few decades has left a crumbling foundation. Our current methods are as effective as a man trying to hold up that sandy foundation. As soon as he moves to support one corner another begins to fall. He may grow efficient at moving and supporting and be able to artificially keep the thing standing for a while. But, eventually it is going to come crashing down unless the foundation is changed. In this analogy, the foundation of The Church is local body, led by the local pastor. We must change the way we build that foundation in order to reach future generations and redeem the current generation.

Training

Though I realize there are other methods of training pastors, it seems that the vast majority of them come from Seminaries. As with many institutions of higher learning, seminaries are designed with the basic premise that if pastors learn the right things then they will be successful. The training is extremely uniform though it attempts to prepare an extremely diverse group of prospective pastors. They may have many of the same basic gifts, but their personalities, stage in life, and ministry experience is generally all over the board. The pastors that leave seminary are able to correctly prepare and deliver sermons. They also seem to be lacking in disciple-making, leadership development, vision casting, and personal spiritual development (their own development). I believe all of these things and more are best learned by practice and in a live environment. I propose an alternate, system similar to the one that the medical profession uses, in which perspective doctors must do internships and residencies before they are sent out on their own. I believe a system could be developed that requires one year (20-30 hours) of class work and two years of resident work at a local church. The churches chosen would need to meet certain criteria obviously, but with some of the recent work done on healthy, growing, and comeback churches there should be a large group to begin with.

The benefits to this system as I see it are:

1. Lower barrier to entry. As it stands seminary is a rather large barrier to entry due to the cost and time involved. The value that it offers is at odds with the cost it requires. Basically, if you have the time and money to invest, you can get your paper. If you don't... then many churches will not consider working with you.


2. More personalized training. Much like a doctoral internship, ministers could experience several different res of ministry within a church before deciding upon their focus. And, the host church could provide feedback based on real-time observations of actual experience.


3. Development by doing. Christian love is best lived out in the context of a community of believers interacting with a lost world. It takes all of ten to fifteen hours to read a great book on leadership or evangelism. But it can take months or years of practice to really learn the application of those systems.


4. DNA transfer. Church is an organism. Healthy churches have a certain DNA or Culture. You cannot teach those things in classroom, they must be fused into a person through time and effort.


5. De-centralization and Exponential Growth. Limited supply and Increasing demand is a bad thing in the pastor training economy. It is true that online availability can help with some of this, but that only provides an online version of the current system... which gives even less personal feedback based off of observed practices. Assuming my system works it will lead to more healthy churches by spreading the DNA from healthy churches across the nation. That will open the door for more and more training centers.

It is easy at times to look at our failing churches and blame pastors and people for being lacking. They lack vision, they lack passion, they lack surrender and spirituality. Perhaps all of those things are true. Yet, I wonder... who ever taught them how to cast vision, how to live with passion, how to practice surrender and develop a strong spiritual relationship with God? Were those things built into them in their three years (and countless thousands of dollars) spent on seminary? If pastors are the leaders of the church, then who are the leaders of the pastors? In our current system it is the seminaries, and those people who run them. And, if our system is getting the results it was designed for (which all systems do) then we need to change the way we train people. And, I think it requires something deeper than simply looking at our curriculum choices and teaching practices.

The Call

Current statistics say that anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of churches in America are plateaued or declining. Those trends stretch back for a couple of decades. That indicates that there is a problem with our system; the way in which we call, train, and support pastors. Let me make a quick note that I do believe God is ultimately responsible for His church and I am not arguing for a business solution to a spiritual problem.

To borrow terminology from Triperspectival Leadership models we are currently calling too few Prophets and Kings. For those tempted to say, "God determines who gets called, not us!", I counsel caution. That line of thinking leads to a place where God does not give us systems to accomplish His will. you might as well say that it does not matter how we disciple because God will bring growth to whom He wants. It does not mater how we evangelize, God will save who He wants. It does not matter how we serve, God will meet the needs He wants met. The fact is God accomplishes all of these things through His body and that is us. So, one of the tasks God has for us is to train up the next generation in such way that they see his call to ministry life.

At first I was going to say that we have too many Priests in lead-pastor positions, but that is not accurate. We don't have too many priests, we just have too few Prophets and Kings. It seems that we have been somewhat reactionary in the way we call pastors. By "we" I mean the churches who pay them and follow them. Forty years ago your premier pastors were mostly Prophets. They were the model that most pastors attempted to imitate, and most congregations wanted a "strong" pastor to "preach the Word!". These pastors spoke the Word with power and led in the confidence that God was directing their steps. They were extremely confident but not very personable. Perhaps that led to our current wave of Priests as lead pastors. These pastors are meeting a very real need in their people; to connect with their spiritual leader on a personal, meaningful level.

What we are discovering is that many Priests often struggle with things like Values, Mission, and Vision. So, the call has come out for Kings to join in leadership once more! Strategy will be the salvation of The Church if you listen to some voices. This is crucial time for The Church, because purely reactionary thinking could be devastating. Prophets bring God's Word, Priests bring God's heart, and Kings bring God's plans. The danger we face is that we focus so much on the plans God reveals that we lose our dependence on His Word for our power and His Heart for our direction.

We must become proactive in our thinking about what church would look like with the right mix of Prophets, Priests, and Kings all using their gifts and talents for His glory and to build up His bride. Right now most of our Kings have landed in the secular world, a place that values their input. For many years Kings have been seen as "less spiritual" because they dare to talk about things like systems and structures and measurable goals. The fact is there are many people who are completely committed to God spiritually who also have great strategic minds. God gave them those minds, and we need them in the church today. We also need a resurgence of the Prophets; men who will speak God's Word to God's people clearly and pointedly regardless of the reception or response. We need them to talk to The Church, not necessarily to the culture.

The solution to this issue is both simple and difficult. It is simple because in truth God is the one who calls His pastors. It is difficult for at least two reasons.

1. Our secular culture pays kings handsomely, making it hard for them to hear God's call.
2. Our church culture does not include kings, adding to the barriers they face hearing God's call. Kings are seen as those "outside business people" that you bring in for special needs, like capital campaigns or master site plans.

We must work to remove the barriers that keep people from hearing God's call. That will require a church-wide call to simplicity and a surrender of the "American Dream" which is so grounded in the physical and temporal. It will also mean that we encourage our thinkers to invest themselves into God's work. When thinkers get involved change often occurs. That may yet be another reason why thinkers have been kept at arms length for so long, because current leadership rarely likes continuous change, knowing that it might mean a loss of influence and comfort.

More Churches... Healthier Churches

I love church planting. The last two churches I served at were church plants, and they were great models of what church plants can be. A quick look at the numbers in America makes it clear that we need new churches. Even if all of our current churches were operating at full capacity we would still need new churches.

The fact still remains that we also need healthier churches, and that statement applies to many of our recent church plants as well as the 100-year-old church down the street. From my experience it takes a church plant about 5-8 years to begin to look strikingly similar to older, stagnant churches. Even if the numbers are still moving up or looking more healthy than the older church, the systems within the church begin to look more and more similar to its predecessors.

This is true in natural relationships and it is true in churches. Children grow up to act like their parents... even if they swear that they never will. Without serious work and submission to God we all become our parents; it is the way God designed it after all. In fact he promises us many times in Scripture that actions and decisions last for generations.

So, if we want to be planting healthy new churches then it only makes sense that we should be focusing at least as much energy making healthy parents as we are birthing new churches. Otherwise we are just creating more work for ourselves in the future as we will be coming back to these church plants in 10-15 years and dealing with the same issues that currently face their parents.

There is much evidence that when healthy churches are involved in the planting of a new church, that church has a very high probability for success both in the short and long term. So, how do we work to build health into our churches? Better yet, how do we build health into The Church? The fact is this is not an issue that affects single churches here and there; it is something that affects the vast majority of churches across the country.

I believe a good first step is to take a clear look at the way we Call, Train, and Support pastors in America. Next Monday I will start discussing those steps, which are crucial to the System, Structure, Organization, or Organism that we call The Church in America.