Quit Planting Churches!

(This is Part 2 in a pair of posts: See Part 1, "The Church is a Com-bus".)
  
Sorry to be so negative.  I'm not really a dissenter most of the time, and I wonder about the irony of my continuing to be the troublesome elbow in the ribs of the church when I am not even a part of that world anymore.  I guess this unwelcome prophetic gift is my thorn in the flesh for now, and I feel sorry for Jeremiah, who was probably a really nice guy but was called upon by God to confront wrongdoing in the leadership and 2-1/2 millennia later is still known as the Weeping Prophet.  Poor fellow.

Church Planting is a Waste

  Anyway, today I feel called upon to state that church planting is a waste of time and valuable resources in a culture that is slowly abandoning the institution of the church.  In our local town of 1,200 people there are ten churches within a 2-mile radius, and they are all slowly shrinking except for one.  That one is the new one which was just started less than two years ago and which immediately filled up with all of the already-believers who were bored with their old churches.  Or maybe they were just excited to be a part of the next new thing and came over to help get it off to a good start.  Nonetheless, there are now more empty seats in the other nine churches, most of which are not even half full now.

  And the "new" church is nothing new at all.  It has already banned the misfits from the worship band and reprimanded the wannabe youth volunteers, and effectively ex-communicated some of its participants who asked too many questions about the nature of God in the Old Testament.  So this new church is a clone of every other conservative church in the neighborhood and perpetuates the popular views of the church as judgmental, critical, and exclusive.  It only makes sense, as the contributors to this new work all came from old works and brought their baggage with them.

  It must really piss off the visionary young men who are the most likely ones to want to plant a new church.  They are full of energy and excitement and aspire to win the lost and reach the world for Christ.  And then they see their new sanctuary fill up with the already-found religious vagrants who used to attend the church down the block.

  And in a year or two they take a critical look at what they have created and discover that there are no new believers and they have not made any difference in the world except to cannibalize* the other churches nearby, and they realize their "new" work is not new at all.  Although it probably has the best worship team in town, and there is something to be said for that.  And if numbers are a measure of success, then they are more successful than the other churches in town.

  I have a young friend who tried to be on the worship team of that new church. Rick has an idea now that we should reverse the trend and start consolidating.  We should close most of the churches in town and all meet at the high school gym on Sundays.  I mean, we all have a common belief in Jesus, right?  We could save a lot of resources that are spread out all over town in so many disintegrating buildings and properties, and we could save hundreds of thousands of dollars on pastoral salaries.

  Of course, the pastors would all have to quit their jobs and buy into this thing to make it happen.  Of course.  And the denominations that own those properties would have to relinquish  their properties and abandon their unique sectarian doctrines.  Right, that'll happen.  And the holiness camp will get along with the Calvinist camp and charismatic camp.  Uh-huh.

  Okay, look.  I'm not so naive as to think that anything like that will ever happen (and neither is Rick).  Here's what is naive:  The retiring president of my former denomination just posted his last editorial in the denominational newsletter saying, "I believe... it will take 100,000 new congregations to re-evangelize America...  Every church was once a church plant, and every church - in its life time - needs to plant multiple churches."**

  This man has not been paying attention.  Every denomination in America is declining.  And it wasn't churches that evangelized America in the first place, it was traveling evangelists.  Sinners who need evangelizing don't come inside churches, so there is little correlation between church planting and evangelizing.

  The only movement that is growing is the house church movement and the exodus out of the religious institutions.  America will not be re-evangelized until God initiates the next revival, and the signs are all contraindicative at the present time.

What to do:

  So that leaves only a few options for the would-be church planter:

1. Change your goals:  If you must plant a church, realize you will not be evangelizing or winning new believers but working with old ones.  And they will bring their old ways with them.  You will be like every other church in town, and you will make enemies in those other churches from which will come your constituents.  A new church plant simply starts the music for the next round of musical chairs where the believers all get up and march around to the next "new" chair.  You have to be okay with that, because your church plant will be no exception to this rule.
2. Change your mind:  Don't plant a church.  Stay where you are and keep pouring into the old wineskin.  Of course, you will still be serving the Body, not the Lost.  You'll keep feeding the already full, and you'll have little or no impact in the community.  You'll have to be okay with that.
3. Change hemispheres:  Become a missionary.  While there is no movement going on in America right now, there are thousands coming to faith in Christ every day in China and Africa.  You could win souls to your heart's content.  This will require radical changes in your life, and only a few rare souls are up to the challenge.
4. Change your direction:  Start a house church.  Again, you'll be working with believers but in a more organic way and without the stigmas attached to church, and you'll have a better chance of impacting your neighborhood.  To do this best maybe you should go cold turkey and quit going to regular church.  If so, study what's happening in the world by reading some of the books I've listed in the right sidebar of this blog, especially, unChristian, by David Kinnaman, the head of the Barna Group.  It's a real eye-opener.
5. Change your life:  Be like Bob; quit going to church and enter a whole new lifestyle of Being the Church.  Read and study the Bible from a new vantage point that precludes organizations and includes only Jesus.  Hang out with non-believers with no agenda but to love them and make friends of them.  This requires the most foundational changes in your faith and your approach to life as a follower of Christ, and you will probably have to start by entering an extended sabbatical - a time alone or with a few like-hearted pilgrims when you must first de-construct your former institutionalized life.  I predict you'll never go back.

    Okay, then.  I may have discouraged some potential church planters, but at least I've listed some alternatives which may save you a lifetime of frustration and disillusionment in a post-church culture where church planting doesn't work and is the wrong thing for you to do with your life.

  Love me for it.

* My brother, Gerald Sims, gets credit for the concept of the cannibal church and is writing a book about it.
** The Missionary Church Today magazine, spring 2013, Vol.46, No 1, page 3, Dr. Bill Hossler, President.  For their general conference this summer The Missionary Church has scheduled Alan Hirsch, co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come, which blows up the conventional ways of doing things.  I think they could have a tiger by the tail, but they're sure to ignore everything Mr. Hirsch says and keep holding on to their irrelevant traditions.  Sorry, but they won't let go the old wineskins.
  
  
  

The Church is a "Com-Bus"

  It's been four years since my church blew up and I was unceremoniously dismissed from the place I had served for forty years as youth director, worship leader, trustee, and missions director, among other things.  I had most recently served on the board of directors by virtue of my position as Elder of Missions and Evangelism when the new pastor told me, "Maybe it would be better if you didn't come at all; you're seen as a divisive person here." (yes, I'm actually quoting him).  I've got to hand it to him; it takes balls to actually ask a life-long leader in your church to quit coming.  He and the other leaders - right up to the district superintendent - had become fed-up with my constant challenges of the status quo.  I guess I should be happy - at least I didn't suffer the same fate as John the Baptist (actually, I am happy; I might still be there if I hadn't been asked to leave).

  One of my challenges to the system surrounded the inability or unwillingness of the church to get down and get dirty with the lost in our neighborhood and around the world.  We existed only to perpetuate our own comfort and our traditions.  We were all about protecting our way of life inside the four walls of the church and our denomination.

  I had seen a vision of what we were, and it was a rather unsettling picture.  I had actually awakened one morning and, still half asleep, an image was brightly projected on the screen of my mind, along with a knowledge of what it meant.  The picture I saw was what I later named the Com-Bus.  It was a large machine moving slowly through a wheat field, and the main chassis of the beast was a large combine, a harvester with a huge cutting head at the front, but there were two things unique about this machine.

  First of all, the cutting bars and the rakes were not moving; they were either shut off or disconnected so that, though the machine was moving over the ground, there was nothing being harvested.  The grain was just being flattened by the large wheels of the monster.

  The second odd thing about this harvesting machine was that the grain hopper behind the cab had been replaced with a bus body so that there were actually seats for several dozen riders.  Not only that, but as I looked closer, I could see that in fact the bus was full of people, but they were not just riding, they were worshipping.  There was a worship leader standing at the front and singing, and the whole crowd were singing along with hands raised and so entranced by the worship that none of them even glanced out the windows.

  If they had looked, they might have seen what I could see as a bystander: The rear emergency door was open and some of their participants - mostly high school graduates, I think - were carefully jumping from that exit and wandering away across the field, never to return to the vehicle again, so the crowd on the bus was slowly shrinking.

  This is where my vision ended and my troubles at church began.  Well, not really; I had been in trouble before for being the annoying elbow in the ribs that tries to awaken others to unpleasant hypocrisies of the system (We come from a long line that includes Martin Luther and a few other dissenters who are mostly all dead now).

  Now the most surprising thing that happened to me in the year following my vision, was that my wife and I, along with 150 other travelers, were also evacuated from the rear emergency door of that colossal machine.  And it wasn't a drill.

  So in the last five years since seeing this vision, I have changed locations and become an outsider, and my view of the realities is from a different perspective.  Mind you, nothing has changed about the church since I've left, nor is there any deviation in the obvious analogies about the huge harvesting machine that has transformed into a self-contained worshipping machine that was actually crushing the ripening grain onto the ground as it lumbered ahead.  And like most graduating seniors, I'm glad I'm on the outside now and do not intend to return.

  I am standing in the field with the other outsiders - both believers and nonbelievers - and have discovered that we really look very much like each other.  Like wheat and tares, I guess, and that's how the Lord said it will be until the end.  I have lately hung out with Mormons, former Catholics and Episcopalians, gays, atheists and "nones"* and have been able to spread the love of God in a less oppositional way than I ever did while functioning within the religious system.  It's a slow process, but more personal and authentic than before.  And more effective.

  I don't know how much longer the institutional Com-Bus will keep rumbling along.  The slow decline of organized religion in America is well documented, but I'm sure it will be around for a long time and still serves a valid purpose to insiders, I guess.  Gene Edwards, in his book Beyond Radical, says the decline started at the Reformation almost 500 years ago and that it will not be complete for another 300 years.  Sorry, I couldn't wait that long.

  The Great Commission has two parts: 1) Reach the Lost, and 2) Teach the Found.  The American church believes in both parts and preaches both parts, but only carries out Part Two.  This is partially because Part One can't be done from inside the walls like it could sixty years ago, and the church, for the most part, will not venture outside the walls.  In a gesture of wishful thinking - or delusion, every church marquee reads, "Everybody Welcome" to a world that passes by every day but will not come inside.

  And there's the rub:  The world will not come inside, and the church will not go outside.

  I guess it's up to outsiders to do the job.  For one thing, we are uninhibited by restrictive policies and denominational doctrines and hellish hierarchies and negative stigmas .  People aren't afraid of you when your only agenda is love.  Lots more could be written on that.  Later.

  Have a great day.  And be real.  And don't be afraid to challenge the status quo; it's not like you'll lose your head over it, although you could lose your comfortable religious world as you now know it.

* "Nones" are those mostly younger Americans who, when polled about religious affiliations, will check the box for "none".  They now make up 20% of the population.  The church will not/cannot reach them.