Several weeks ago I told Katie that I was growing kind of uncomfortable with the term “church planting.” I told her it seems to put all the focus on creating a church (an often location-based institution), and nowhere in scripture are we told to go and make churches. Instead, the church is a natural outflow of what our actual call is: making disciples. Recently we spent eight hours with the Missions Resource Network talking about this very concept, and now more than ever I feel like we have missed the boat when we put all our focus on planting churches.
We live in a religious world where spiritual health and maturity is based on one thing: attendance. And how could it be otherwise? “Evangelism” too often means “invite your friends to church.” That’s all we’ve got, it’s all we’ve been trained to do. We say, “Hey, you should come to church because we’re having this special event.” Then, once the person has become a Christian, we measure their spirituality like this: “They come to church every time the doors are opened,” or, “Why haven’t you been coming to church lately?” Or even worse: “I don’t know what happened to them; haven’t seen them in ages.” When we look at attendance as the problem and not a symptom of the problem, we’re treating the symptom and not the disease.
Don’t misunderstand me: I believe the church is a vital part of the Christian life and that we can’t be true Christians without it. However, if we put all our focus on making churches instead of disciples, I believe our churches grow with a handicap that is extremely difficult to recover from.
November 17th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Amen! I think we have missed the boat on this one….
November 17th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I really like what you have to say! I strongly believe in what you said. Even though I have been using the term “church planting” to refer to disciple-making, the later is, indisputably, the life-giving action of the church.
Good time to argue that paid ministers are the ones responsible for evangelism among lay members of the church being diminished to: “hey, do you want to come to church?” What do you think?
November 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
It’s interesting, in the light of your title and thrust, to hear how Paul used people terms and not institutional terms referring to his work in Galatia, “And some days after Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the LORD, and see how *THEY* do.” -Acts 15:36
I think your terminology shift highlights a major difference in what we are doing as church planters. Are we just starting another believer’s day care center, where people fill pews once a week, and then go on with little transformation and with less functional labor as disciples, building up one another and sharing the gospel by the changes in their lives, their deeds, and their words.
Don’t apologize and don’t pull up short of going all the way with the distinction you’ve made!
-Art
Cary, NC, US
November 20th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Hey, this also sheds new perspective to Paul reminding the Ephesian elders that he taught puiblicly and house to house. House to house (private, personal) teaching is something few church planters practice–being overly engaged in the big tent Sun mtg. But Paul (hmm, just like Jesus) spent as much time teaching people individually and in small groups in homes as he did publicly.
I guess you might consider the teaching venues employed as a measure of the interest in training up disciples vs building a big (qty) church. If you only focus on one, you are missing developing the disciples intimately. It seems both Paul and Jesus valued this personal-public dual venue approach…