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.
  
  
  

Thin Walls

Our 1978 Jayco

  Our camper has really thin walls, maybe 2 inches thick at most.  Recreational vehicles are designed to be as light as possible for the most efficient towing and touring.  We've been on the gypsy road for a while now and have found that thin walls are a blessing in more ways than one.  The first, of course, is that when we are climbing the long and winding hills of west Michigan, I'm thankful that the trailer doesn't weigh any more than it's registered 4,400 pounds.  The old Dodge pickup is a workhorse that doesn't mind the load.
  But another thin wall for which I am thankful is the vanishing generation gap that got so much publicity a few decades ago but seems to be diminishing as observers like David Kinnaman* point out in recent studies.  One characteristic that today's young adults seem to have in common is the inclination to engage in conversation.  They don't seem to be the least bit interested in listening to a sermon or a lecture; there is definitely still a solid wall there.  But they are drawn to real discussion, and they'll talk openly about almost any subject, even religion, if there's good-natured dialogue and an absence of criticism.

Street musicians in Grand Rapids

  Kaye and I experienced the reality of this first hand in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, last week when we came across a band of young street musicians occupying a square of sidewalk near the Blues on the Mall event.
  I have found that the camera is an automatic invitation for people to engage in conversation, and I had been shooting artists and bystanders and classic car owners and getting a smile and a welcoming nod from each one.  People love having their pictures taken.  As I was sitting on the sidewalk shooting these musicians, Christina approached Kaye and started talking.  She talked about her friends and what they were doing there, and Kaye talked about our new wayfaring lifestyle and the home we had left, and there didn't seem to be the least bit of a wall between them, generational or otherwise.  Christina didn't seem to notice that we were old enough to be her grandparents and it didn't matter.  It was a delightful and refreshing experience.  The two exchanged email addresses, and when we arrived back at camp there was already a message waiting from Christina.

Musicians Steven and Christina

  And that brings me back to an unfortunate thought about the walls of denominationalism that have divided the Body of Christ for so many centuries.  I don't believe that these walls are God-ordained in the slightest but are man-made.  And it seems to me that while the walls are thinning in some places as with young people - if we are really willing to engage them, the walls are thickening in other places.
  Walls of politics are growing even within the church.  The conservatives battle the liberals, the Republicans malign the Democrats, and the evangelicals demonize the main-liners for their proverbial slippery slope (Curse that  slippery slope!)  Doctrinal walls continue to be shored up and strengthened with every secular or theological "threat" that presents itself.  Hate rises while Love Wins.
  At its last general conference the Missionary Church shored up its doctrinal walls by adopting a statement rejecting Open Theism.  And the denominational walls thickened.
  If we ever expect to engage the current culture, we must move the other way.  Damn the walls.  Tear them down.  For God's sake let's get along.  A generation depends on it.
  As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord by seeking to tear down walls by cutting the theological crap, as it were, and putting people first.
  People are more important than doctrinal stuff.  Always.


What methods have you seen implemented for thinning or removing the walls that separate people?


*David Kinnaman, the head of the Barna Group, refers to 16 to 29-year-olds as Mosaics in his book, Unchristian, What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity ... and Why It Matters.

Ben, Mister No Guilt

   "Guilt should not be a part of a believer's experience," asserted Ben with a firmness that made his normally placid dark brown eyes intensify.  He seemed more like a seasoned old sage than the mid-twenties Mosaic* that he was.  His journey out of organized church had not been unusual at all;  he was one of the 90 percent of church youths in America who quit going as soon as they graduate from high school.
   Ben had been raised in a faithful evangelical family, the eldest of three sons of the church worship leaders; his mom and dad had beautiful singing voices and never failed to raise the inspiration level of the congregation every Sunday morning.  Though it was located in a farm community in rural Michigan, the church was unusual in that it was blessed with talent, and not just musically, but in just about every way.  The youth pastor was a teen magnet because of his friendly, goofy antics, and his down-to-earth spirituality, and there was an adventure sports director who organized trips from backpacking to spelunking to paintball and everything in between.  There were even cross-cultural missions to Mexico and beyond.  Being a teenager in this church was a lot of fun.
   After a year of classes at a community college, he became restless, tired of his home in this sleepy place and took off to see the world.  He landed in New York City and rented an apartment with several other guys and found a job at a high-end restaurant where he waited tables and was a valet, parking Porsches and Mercedes every day.
   But the big city environment can swallow people whole, and Ben started to be concerned that he could lose his life or his soul here as the other guys were into things he felt could be harmful for him and he felt himself being drawn in.  At the end of a year he returned home-- and arrived just in time to experience the violent split of his home church.
   Ben's old friend, that popular youth pastor, had been serving as interim after the lead pastor moved away, and even though he had the support of 80 percent of the members, a small faction of his detractors had somehow blocked his hiring as head pastor, and now two-thirds of the constituents were leaving; they had seen him as the champion of an organic movement that now seemed impossible to realize in this newly restrictive setting.
   Ben asked for a Bible study in the home of an older couple whom he respected, because he wanted to ask questions and he knew they were independent thinkers and would not brush him off or just deliver the usual pat answers that young questioners often get.
   "What if there are no rules?" this older couple asked him, and Ben had been at once startled and intrigued by the question.  It seemed that in the church the rules were already established and nobody could question them.  These guys questioned the very existence of the rules!  Incredible.   Ben asked his first question, starting at square one:  "Is there a God?"
   They spent several weeks openly talking about every religious and spiritual thing, and Ben's friends started to come.  Pretty soon there were a dozen and then twenty in this think tank of sorts, and they were taking the lids off the old religious structures with the help of Frank Viola, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, and others, and lining it all up with scripture.  Lights came on in Ben's mind and a whole new world of spiritual depth and freedom developed for him.
   After a year of this he decided to venture to a more radical experience and signed up for a year with Youth With a Mission (YWAM) and was soon stationed in a muslim country in Asia, teaching English to university students.  Wow, what a trip, and what a long way from his quiet little Michigan home!  That's a pretty remarkable journey, and all of this before the age of 25.
   At this writing, Ben has not been back to church in a long time.  Instead, on a Sunday afternoon in St. Augustine, Florida, where he now lives, you might find him downtown with his guitar, hanging out with the homeless on the street or in the park, or he might be chilling with some of his new friends and living the life of Christ in the most natural ways that he can think of.  He's taking classes at the community college and making plans to pursue a musical quest for a few years, forming a traveling band with some old friends and letting the creative juices flow and seeing where it takes them.
  Next time you are in St. Augustine, if you have the time, stop in at the Rhett's Restaurant, a jazz piano bar where he works, see how he's doing-- and leave a big tip or some other kind of encouragement.
   Oh, and about the "No Guilt" thing--  Ben would suggest to all followers of Jesus that you really plug in to Romans 8:1, for there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, so if your local church is continually heaping judgement on you, maybe you should get out of there for a while for your own spiritual well-being.
  One more post script: Last year Ben wrote and recorded a song that speaks to his original question of whether there's a God.  It's called, "Sometimes", and some of the lyrics are, "I know that you're here, right with me, I know that you love me, I know that you care, I know that you're there, by my side, by my side...."
   So there's a true story of a modern day post-modern.  Do you know anybody like Ben?
   
*Mosaic is the label given to the generation of current 16 to 27-year-olds.  See how they feel about Christianity in the book, unChristian, What a New Generation thinks about Christianity, and What to do About it, by David Kinnaman, director of The Barna Group.
Also from Kinnaman, 6 Reasons Young Christians Leave the Church: http://www.barna.org/teens-next-gen-articles/528-six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church
Also see: Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity; Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz; Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution.a