Pillar 2: Church Planting

When I was growing up, I did not want to be a pastor of a church. First, I wanted to be a dinosaur. Second, when I was little older, I wanted to be a Jedi. Ask any child what they want to be when they get older, and every single one of them will respond with some kind of occupation that is epic - why? Because within each of us is an intense, natural desire to affect change in the world. We all want to leave a mark. We all want to till the soil of our world in a way that only we could do. We want our lives to be significant, and what we usually mean by that is we want our lives to change the world in some way. It starts when we are young children, and it never truly leaves us.

When I was in high school, our youth group went on a mission trip to Middle Tennessee every year. We helped refit foreclosed and dilapidated homes in an old military base turned housing coop. And we put on a children’s program for the residents. We stayed in one of those homes that had been fitted for large groups by the pentecostal church down the road. That church had made the housing coop their mission. It was the soil they intended to till in the name of Jesus.

The first year we served, we had strict orders from our hosts to not leave our house after dusk. The coop was a staging ground for many of the drug dealers in the area, and it wasn’t safe to be out at night. When you looked outside, nobody was there. I remember being uncomfortable on one of our prayer walks, because the sun was beginning to set.

By my sixth and final year going on this annual trip, things had drastically changed. We threw two outdoor block parties that year, each of which lasted well past dusk. Families from all over the coop came to watch their children play soccer and to share a hotdog with their neighbors. Nobody was afraid. And that was the beginning for me. That was the first time, I understood what a church could do - how a church could affect change in the world.

That was the first time, but it wasn’t the last. I’ve seen the church bring life and dignity to families living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and Haiti. I’ve seen the church capture the imaginations of the secular academics as well as townies and frat boys in Athens. The church is an incredible force for change in the world, and that should not surprise us in the least, but it often does.

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a pastor, and I sure didn’t grow up wanting to be a church planter - but when I look at my deepest, God-given desire which is to see Christ redeem all that is broken in the world, I can’t imagine what else I could do that would have a more consistent impact for the kingdom of God than planting churches.

But here’s what I know: I know that a lot of people, maybe even you, don’t understand why we need more churches. You look around and say, “I passed eight other Christian churches just on my way here. And I live five minutes away!” We surrounded by churches. Gwinnett County is saturated with churches. So why would planting more churches in Gwinnett County be one of our pillars of ministry? I’m glad you asked.

First, because Jesus tells us to. When Jesus gives the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel, or in any of his other great evangelistic challenges, he does not send the church out to just share their faith with others. He sends the church out to plant more churches. “Go and make disciples of all nations”, Jesus says, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” So the Great Commission is not just a call to “make disciple” but also to “baptize” them. And what the Bible clearly teaches is that baptism is the act of incorporating someone into a worshiping community. So, Jesus must be intending something greater and more intensive than to get “decisions” for Christ through conversions. He intends that the church go into a city or region, proclaim the gospel, welcome new believers into a community where they will continue to be shaped and formed by the continued sharing of the gospel story within the context of the local community of worshippers. What would we call that activity today? We’d call it church planting. So, why is this a pillar of our church? Because we believe it was one of Christ’s pillars for the church.

But, some of us may respond and say, “I hear that, and I agree with that. But that was what was needed in the beginning. But now that our streets are filled with churches, why do we say that planting more churches is still important?”

The answer is this: study after study after study shows that new churches reach new people for Christ far better than existing and established churches. The churches that you passed on your way here - they may be exceptional gospel-centered communities. But they are not having the impact among the lost that is needed today. That may sound controversial, but if you’ve done any research at all, you know that it’s not questioned.

The missiologist Peter Wagner says that church planting is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven. What he means by that is that new churches are the best at reaching the unchurched and leading them to maturity in their faith. Tim Keller wrote this ten years ago and it has been confirmed again and again since then. He says,

Dozens of denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most of its new members (60–80 percent) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshiping body, while churches over ten to fifteen years of age gain 80–90 percent of new members by transfer from other congregations. This means the average new congregation will bring six to eight times more new people into the life of the body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size.

Why is this the case? Well, there are a number of reasons. New churches tend to attract younger generations, new residents, and new people groups. If you think about an established church, one that has been faithfully ministering for decades, they have over the years come to solidify their identity, their culture and traditions, their worship styles, their preaching topics, how they make staffing decisions, and their particular methodologies for ministry and outreach. And it is desirable to formalize these things, because it leads to a stable and steady church. But the context in which these things were developed was the context of a few decades ago, and not the present context, which means the rising generations, or people who recently moved in, or immigrants often do not connect with the message or method of that church’s ministry. When the neighborhood changes, the churches that were excellent at reaching the old neighborhood are not as effective at reaching the new one. That’s why the continued planting of new churches is vital for living out the Great Commission. New churches are the best at reaching new people.

Think about it this way. The internal needs of that church require a lot of time, energy, and resources. Facilities, staffing, and programs all require significant attention, so that most of the communities resources is allocated to needs that surface within the walls of the church rather than to those outside of it. This is a natural progression for church communities. But a new congregation is forced to focus on the needs of its non-members just to get off the ground. The eyes of the church plant are focused outward, not inward, and so they are better positioned to connect with the unchurched than established churches. This is why new churches grow primarily by reaching the unchurched, rather than “stealing sheep” from existing churches. There is some natural transfer, but the vast majority of growth is from the lost.

As an example of that, in 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention put out a report that showed where their baptisms were occuring. Now, these are baptists, so their not counting babies - these are people who have come to faith in Jesus and are welcomed into the church community through baptism. They found that the majority of their baptisms were happening in their church plants. Not their mega churches. Not their flagship congregations, but in their church plants. Church plants are more effective at reaching new generations, new residents, and new people groups.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, let me make a one more point. Maybe the question remains, “Why plant churches when we already have so many?” Well, let’s talk numbers. It may seem like there is a church on every corner, but actually, in the American South, there is roughly one church for every 700 people. So even if every church building in our area were full, there’d still be a huge number of unchurched people. On top of that, on average in America, four thousand churches are planted each year. That sounds pretty great doesn’t it? That’s a lot of new churches! But the problem is that on average, 3,700 churches close each year. So the net number of new churches is actually very small: only 300. That is not even close to keeping pace with population growth, let alone to reach the increasing numbers of the unaffiliated. So we need to plant more churches.

This is why we are doubling down on planting more churches. This is why church planting is a pillar of our church’s ministry in this next season.

Paul writes in Romans 10:13

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

There is a thread that runs throughout the entire Bible, a thread of God sending. He sends the Spirit to bring order to the chaotic waters in Creation, to create a place where all could be blessed. He sends Adam and Eve to continue that cultivating work and fill the earth with the blessings of the Lord. He sends Abraham and his family, who became the nation of Israel, to be a source of blessing for all the nations of the earth. And above all, he sent Jesus to create a people by his death and resurrection -a people who are completely forgiven and made new, a people who know no end to the love and grace of the Father, a people who have been given abundant life through no merit of their own, and then Jesus sends that people out into the world to invite the lost and broken into the family of God.

We will plant churches because we are a people sent. John 20:21, “As the Father hs sent me, even so I am sending you.” As Jesus was sent to form a people by his death and resurrection, we are now sent with that same mission - to form communities of people who are shaped by his death and resurrection. The best way to welcome the lost and broken into the family of God is by the vigorous planting of new churches that can reach new people in the name of Christ. If you want to talk about a life of significance - if you want to talk about making an impact on the world, this is it. Let’s lean into this pillar together over the next five years and watch as God moves powerfully in and through and all around us.