A few weeks ago I shared several meals with an organic church planter who had an interesting vision for church planting. He was talking to judicatory leaders in his denomination about a vision he had for small churches closing their doors, selling their property, and giving 1/2 of their funds to the judicatory to finance new church planting and keeping the other 1/2 to invest in ministry within their communities. They would meet in homes if they wanted to continue to gather together for worship. This individual shared his belief that anything a church of 30 people can do in a church building they can do in a home setting just as well. I filed our conversations away in a mental file marked "interesting ideas that are unlikely to find many takers."
I was reminded of these conversations today as I was reading a church growth book. The author pointed out that the growth of anything eventually stops when it reaches its natural limits. As he said, a tree doesn't keep getting bigger and bigger. It's real growth comes as it brings forth new trees. In other words, it multiplies, and eventually dies. Human beings function the same way. We don't just continue to grow larger and larger as individuals. We produce children who produce grandchildren, and eventually we die, but the human family continues to grow through that reproduction.
As I thought about that I began to wonder why the church should be any different. We fight so hard to ensure our churches do not die even to the point of refusing to do anything that might produce growth. Churches committed to survival become very risk averse and won't jeopardize their limited resources in order to do something new that might lead to growth. Maybe the natural order for many of our churches are that they multiply themselves through new church starts and then willingly close their doors.
I know this is radical thinking, but please continue reading. Is it good stewardship for a church to spend every dollar it takes in to survive? I know churches that have not tried to do any form of ministry in its community for years because it takes every dime that comes in just to pay the utility bills and to pay a small pittance to a pastor. Is that how God's money should be used? There are churches with 30 people meeting each Sunday in a building worth thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of dollars. Is that good stewardship?
Let's consider a couple of possible scenarios. Church A has 30 people who do not live in the neighborhood but drive in each Sunday to meet for worship. These are good people who love the Lord and want to see their church grow. But, perhaps the neighborhood has changed and their church no longer represents the ethnic population of the neighborhood. Maybe the church membership is older and younger families are moving into the neighborhood but do not feel comfortable with the worship that is currently offered in the church. Could two or three church plants be started in the neighborhoods these people live in and this building be made available to the denomination to start a new church that would be more appealing to the new population?
Church B is a strong, small church. Perhaps for demographic reasons it is unlikely to ever grow to be a large church. Could this church intentionally decide to remain small and focus its ministries on starting new churches in other small, surrounding communities? In parts of this country there are many areas where there are nothing but small communities that are rather isolated from one another. Church B could discern that their God-given vision is to seek communities in which there are no churches and work with their judicatory to start churches there.
Whether a church decides to begin meeting in homes, decides to close its doors and plant new churches with its members, or decides to remain open with the purpose of starting sister churches in surrounding communities, bivocational ministers are going to be necessary. None of these scenarios will lend themselves to churches calling fully-funded pastors, at least in the near term. Visionary bivocational leaders will be needed to make any of these work.
Are any of these scenarios possible? I believe all of them are possible, but each of them will be very difficult to pull off with the present mindsets that exist in many of our churches. I also believe that they provide an excellent opportunity to impact our society in ways that our churches are not currently doing.
I'll be interested in your feedback.
2 comments:
I am not an organic or home church guy; I believe that too much is lost in the area of accountability and other areas if you go too far down this road. I believe you are correct however, with regard to a church needing to decide what its mission should or could be.
I agree with you Brian. I'm not entirely comfortable with the organic church either for the same reasons you state, but I also must admit that I've not had much contact with organic church people. Of course, some would argue, and I would probably be one of them, that there isn't a lot of accountability in the denominational church either, especially in the congregational churches. Connectional churches do have more of a structure where people are held accountable, but in the congregational churches, such as the denomination in which I serve, there is often little accountability. If someone in another church or a judicatory leader challenges some action or belief held by such churches they are usually quick to claim "autonomy of the local church, and that ends the discussion.
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