Church Planting and Revitalization

Doesn’t church planting divert valuable time, money, and resources that could be used to revitalize the existing church?
Why would a church in need of revitalization expend resources on planting a church? Church planting is only for vital, healthy churches. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until the church has made more progress toward revitalization before it begins to plant? When is a church ready to plant another church?

Answer: What if church planting could propel church revitalization in the sponsor church?

Our core score, our mission, is reaching people who are unreached. To do that we need vital ministries happening throughout the community. That means revitalizing dying and declining churches; it means planting new vital ministries throughout the community. Revitalization is about putting a church back on mission. It is moving from an insular, survivalist, parish church culture to a ministry outside-the-walls, kingdom growth culture. It is a church-wide shift from insider to outsider. It communicates that the most important thing is reaching unreached people. It is about joining Jesus and His mission “seek and save the lost.”

Such a shift requires powerful systematic action—things that force us to become involved in new activities, namely activities that get the focus off us, those already on to inside to others, those outside our church in need of a relationship with their creator. The shift also requires powerful symbolic activities—something that grabs our attention, giving us something new and vivid on which to focus. (Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know, 182)

Planting a church may be the most powerful symbolic action a leader can take when trying to revitalize their own church. Planting a church says that nothing is sacred except the mission. The benefits of church planting for the sponsoring church are so counterintuitive that it unequivocally focuses the church’s attention on kingdom growth rather than self-preservation. It communicates that “we are so committed to kingdom growth we are committed to supporting something outside of ourselves, we are willing to sacrifice leaders, talent and money to see unreached people reached. It is one of the most powerful demonstrations of faith an organization can make to its congregation. It may be the most powerful tool in shifting the focus off ourselves and onto people outside the walls of our church.

In “The Effect of Church Planting on the Sponsor Church,” Jay Farmer writes:
Church planting involves a great deal of risk for the established church. Kevin Mannoia surmised that “it takes risk to keep the mission paramount — to witness for Christ and to plant new churches. Yet if we are serious about growth and making Him known, there is no more effective way to do so than to start new churches.” C. Peter Wagner gave five reasons why planting new churches is so important. These five reasons are:

1. Church planting is biblical. Church planting is the New Testament way of extending the gospel.

2. Church planting means denominational survival. One of the absolutely essential ingredients for reversing the decline is vigorously planting new churches.

3. Church planting develops new leadership. New churches open wide the doors of leadership and ministry challenges and the entire body of Christ subsequently benefits.

4. Church planting stimulates existing churches. In more cases than not, a new church in the community tends to raise the religious interest of the people in general and, if handled properly, can be of benefit to existing churches. That which blesses the Kingdom of God as a whole, also blesses the churches that truly are a part of the Kingdom.

5. Church planting is efficient. There is no more practical or cost-effective way of bringing unbelievers to Christ in a given geographical area than planting new churches.

In this list of reasons for church planting Wagner identified three key factors for how church planting aids in church revitalization. These factors are: (1) planting churches is biblical and obedience results in blessings, (2) planting churches raises the spiritual watertable of the community, and (3) planting churches stimulates existing churches toward evangelistic growth. (C. Peter Wagner, Church Planting for a Greater Harvest)

According to Jay Farmer, churches that do choose to take the risk do benefit tangibly from planting another church. Churches that plant see:
1. A significant increase in Sunday Morning Worship attendance over five years.
2. A Significant increase in annual baptisms over five years.
3. A significant increase in Sunday School attendance over five years.
(Click here to see the full report.)

Eleven Stages of Spiritual Growth

(from a GHC cluster meeting led by JD Pearring)

1. Resisting Stage—people who are mad at God; hostile.

Biblical Example: King Herod; bad thief at Calvary.

My note: According to Gene Appel, your church must have a small percentage of people at this growth stage (cynic) in order to be a prevailing church(xxii, How to Change Your Church Without Killing It). Makes sense--if your church is really impacting the unchurched community, resistant people should be showing up on your doorstep. Having resistant people on your doorstep is a litmus test of how compelling your environment is and how deeply your church is reaching into the truly unchurched segment of the population.

Encouraging the next step: challenge the resistant: God, if you are out there, show me.

2. Questioning Stage

Biblical Example: shepherds in Christmas story

Next Step: Start clarifying your questions. What are you wondering about?

3. Seeking Stage—there is a continuum of seekers from casual to aggressive.

Biblical Example: Wisemen; other thief on the cross

Next Step: look to the bible for answers. (Common question: What is my purpose in life?)

4. Responding Stage—this stage is when people make a commitment to Christ--not just sick or sorry, but people ready to surrender.

5. Adjusting Stage—baby believer. (Babies cause excitement and stress.)

Biblical Example: Neighbors in Luke 1:65

6. Stabilizing Stage—spiritual adolescence. This is the stage best described by the word “awkward.” Adolescents see themselves as omniscient, tend to be selfish and fickle. Most church problems are created by people camped in this stage.

Biblical example: Zechariah and Peter

We all go through adolescence—we all slip back into it at times.

My thoughts: Willow Creek highlighted this growth stage in their Reveal Study. These are people that have made a commitment to Christ and grew at some point, but are stalled—they are not currently growing. They may have some large un-surrendered areas of their life and inconsistent spiritual disciplines. This group was compared to the non-growing spiritually mature group (roughly 10% of Willow Creek) They have no glaring areas that need to be surrendered and have consistent spiritual disciplines, but don’t feel they that are growing and often discontent with what their church is offering them. These two groups are roughly named “stalled” and “discontent.”

What “Reveal” revealed is that the key to propelling people beyond this growth stage is “responsibility.” At the adolescent growth stage we have a window of opportunity to teach people to become responsible for their own spiritual growth. If a person can say, “I need to be fed”, they can feed themselves. My 7 year-old daughter no longer asks us for something to eat when she is hungry. She has been given a sphere of authority in which she can select certain items from the refrigerator and pantry on her own at anytime. She has been taught to feed herself—she is no longer entirely dependent on us to feed her. As she gets older she will begin to help shop for food and cook. We aim for adulthood when she will be able to buy her own groceries and prepare her own food. To have a 35 year-old daughter who needs her mommy to stock her pantry and prepare meals would be absurd! And yet, we have many people in our churches who cannot (the stalled) or won’t(the discontent) feed themselves. Reveal asks a very important question: Do we inadvertently condition people to be dependent upon us (the church) for spiritual growth? At what point and how does the church help people take responsibility for their own spiritual growth?

These are some very serious questions that need to be addressed if we are going to help people become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

7. Growing—people who recognize they don’t know it all. They have become intentional about moving beyond adolescence.

Biblical Example: Joseph

8. Serving—people applying what they know in service to others.

Biblical Example: Mary

9. Reproducing—people intentionally reproducing their lives

Biblical Example: Elizabeth

10. Maximizing—people who are doing what they are designed to do—their ministry sweet spot.

Biblical Example: Anna

11. Celebrating—people who have arrived and are celebrating how God has used them. This would match John Maxwell’s level five leader: one who leads out of reputation. I.e. people follow because he has consistently led from results, relationship and investment.

Biblical Example: Simeon (and Anna)

Church Plant Day 43 (297 Days to Launch)

What are we about?

What is is Riverpark Community Church?
It is an organization that creates environments that lead people in a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

What is the problem?
People are going to hell and life is hell without God. The reality: that statement may be true for 90% of the people in our community. Barna research estimates that 39% of the West attends church. There are 130 evangelical churches serving a population of 500,000 people in the Ventura/Oxnard Metro area (Ojai to Newberry Park). If 39% of the population were going to church every church in our area would have 1500 people in average attendance. Is there a church in our area that has 1500 people in attendance?

What is the solution?
The solution is to multiply the number of churches in our community. The mission of Riverpark Community Church is to transform the Pacific Rim by planting churches in urban coastal communities from California to Canada. The 14 mile strip of land along the coast contains some of the most influential and populous communities of North America. Its influence radiates across North America and the Pacific. It is where I believe that the kingdom kind of life that Jesus promised has had the smallest market-share. Riverpark Community Church is the beginning of a church multiplying movement to change that.

The Golden Compass

Remember the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark?. . . the Nazis have found the ark and placed it in a wooden crate with swastikas stamped on the outside. As it is being shipped there is one scene where the ark causes the swastikas to burn up and be disfigured.

I just bought the Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman and I wonder . . . "If I set The Golden Compass next to my Bible which one will ignite?"

I have gotten six emails in the last two days warning me about The Golden Compass and its anti-God, anti-Christian themes. I haven't read it yet, but plan to read it tomorrow. So if you are looking for some good commentary you will have to tune in later.

But here are the thoughts of a Family Pastor and former Lit. major on The Golden Compass phenomenon.

One of the emails said that Phillip Pullman was anti-C.S.Lewis. My first thought was . . ."who cares!" But . . . they do have something in common. C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, not for adults to discuss the accuracy of the allegories, but for children to have a reference point for the Biblical story. The Chronicles of Narnia are illustrations of Biblical truths. Lewis hoped that as adults they would remember the stories of Narnia and, as a result, more easily embrace the Biblical truths they represented. I.e. "I get it. Jesus' death for us is like Aslan's death for Edmund. He takes Edmund's punishment on himself." (Lewis also believed that this is exactly what God has done throughout history in myths. e.g. the dying and rising god myths. C.f. "Myth Made Fact." God was prefiguring, in mythology, the story that would become fact in Jesus Christ.) J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis called this preparatio evangelica--preparation for evangelism. Pullman, self-admittedly, is doing a different sort of preparatio--it is preparation for atheism.

To me that is not a great danger. The flurry of email warnings I have received is because the anti-Christian themes are so overt in the Golden Compass. I mean how can you ignore, "God is a liar, God is a cheat, God is senile." Sounds a little anti-God to me.

The undetected themes that pervade much of literature are the more dangerous. For example, I didn't get a bunch of emails warning me about the movie, "The Bridge to Terebithia." Basically, the main point of the movie was that the imaginary land of Terebithia was more relevant and had more powerful answers to the problems of everyday life than traditional Christianity. (Might have been a valid argument--traditional Christianity has had diminishing returns of late.) But, my point being, . . . I didn't get any emails on that movie.

Parents must be vigilant whatever they are watching. We must also remember that untrue themes can be just as powerful teaching tools as true ones. There is power in watching movies together and discussing the worldviews that are at play in them. This helps our children learn discernment. The greatest tragedy of all is that there doesn't seem to be any great Christian literature that is pacing culture and rivaling The Golden Compass. I don't think book bans are the answer. Christians should be writing the best literature. "The Bible is the great code of art." Who will be C.S. Lewis today? Who is writing the next Chronicles of Narnia?