Healthy Churches Multiply
In the sixty-year history of New Life we’ve planted one church intentionally and at least three unintentionally. I’ve heard the unintentional church plant called a “splant”—a conflation of “split” and “plant.” If you’ve been a Christian for a while, you’ve probably lived through one. Perhaps an associate pastor at your church started a church a few miles down the road without the elders’ blessing. Maybe a senior pastor was fired and then planted a church nearby, or left and then returned to start a church. Sometimes church leadership retroactively calls these splits plants, and often not with any poor intent: they’re trying to be gracious.
I wonder if that one plant for every three splants is reflective of the average church. My hunch is that splants outpace plants. That is heartbreaking.
Those who choose to splant are culpable for their sin, but the existing churches bear responsibility as well. Far too few churches are committed to God’s intention for them to multiply.
First, let’s admit: it’s hard to multiply. Planting churches is taxing on the mother church. It takes time, energy, finances, and (most significantly) people. It’s painful. But it’s biblical.
Churches, like people, are intended to be streams not ponds, highways, not cul-de-sacs. The book of Acts shows us a healthy church multiplying itself across the Roman Empire and beyond. Paul is a church planter. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are coaching documents for these elder-pastors. If you pick up any of Paul’s other epistles, Paul is training the city-churches at Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, etc. Many forget that these letters weren’t letters to a single church. Paul wrote to one city church, a network of churches in the city. These churches were so connected that Paul could write one letter that would be read by all of them. These were multiplying churches.
Researchers estimate that only 7% of churches in the United States are reproducing and less than .1% are involved in a multiplying movement (see this study by Exponential and Lifeway). Isn’t that disheartening? It saddens me. It’s not that this type of church doesn’t exist any longer. I need to look no further than our partnership with God’s church multiplying work in southern India through Mission Voice Network than to know God is still in the work of multiplying his church.
I’m convinced that if we are going to see God bring about revival in Tucson, Arizona, and the United States, we have to become a healthy multiplying church. There are at least two reasons for this: first, church plants are much more successful at reaching the lost than established churches. Second, if many come to faith, it will require more local congregations to provide places to disciple and care for these new members of Christ’s family.
Here are six ways that we can participate in God’s multiplying work:
1) Develop partnerships
Every one of Paul’s letters ends (and sometimes begins) with a list of men and women Paul is in partnership with. Very few churches have the resources (time, finances, and people) to launch a church plant. But the city church does. To be clear, while there is undoubtedly a benefit to partnership with church planting organizations, I’m talking about church-to-church local partnerships.
What other like-minded churches are you cultivating relationships with? Which of those churches could you initiate conversations regarding church planting? You might have a potential worship director ready to be launched while another church has a church planter preparing to start a church. This year we began supporting a church planter from a local partner church. We don’t have a church planter waiting in the wings right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t participate in God’s multiplying work in Tucson.
2) Train leaders
Speaking of which, where do those church planters come from? When I served as a pastor in New Jersey, I had the benefit of ministering in a seminary town where every fall a new crop of seminary students would come to the church, eager to be trained and deployed.
In Tucson we don’t have that luxury. That not entirely a bad thing. Having seminarians show up at your front doorstep can make it appear as though you’re developing leaders more than you are. What does it look like to have Paul’s mindset of pouring into potential leaders or young leaders around him? This, after all, was Jesus’ method of ministry.
We are working hard to develop a leadership pipeline that proactively engages those at New Life to be contributors, not consumers, and stewards of the gifting God has given them. It has been rewarding to see men and women who have gone through groups lead groups of their own or step into more significant leadership at New Life and beyond.
3) Be generous
Multiplication costs something. In Acts 13, when the church at Antioch heard the Holy Spirit calling them to release Barnabas and Paul for church planting work, it cost them two leaders who had poured over a year of their lives into discipling them.
When God calls us to multiply, he is going to call us to release some of our very best leaders. It is going to cost us financially, and it will cost us time. But we must be generous. Multiplication can’t be about our church; it has to be about God’s church.
Multiplication can’t be about our church; it has to be about God’s church.
4) Be creative
Never have church leaders been more aware that the way we’ve always done things isn’t sufficient to meet the demands of this quarantined world and the new age of the church that it is sure to usher in. Every poll coming out shows that the ever-increasing secularism of our age has accelerated during COVID-19. Spiritual disengagement is pervasive, and we know we need wisdom and creativity that only comes from the Spirit to combat it.
A multiplication mindset moves us beyond just trying to preserve what is to imagine what could be. Instead of expending all of our energy plugging a leaking dike, let’s pour out our effort on new creative ways to disciple, evangelize, and worship.
5) Share the good news
We professionals are not nearly enough to create multiplication. God working through his people is how multiplication will happen. This year many Americans have devoted massive energy toward fighting racial injustice. The NY Times bestseller list is populated with books on racism. Americans have given up their nights and weekends to protest, and they’ve given up their finances to fund the work. They’ve spent time and energy engaging in serious dialogue with friends and co-workers. Why? Because injustice matters and a concern about racism captured their hearts.
I am grateful for the important and timely work being done to right wrongs and to bring this sin to the fore (even if, at times, I disagree with the objectives and means by which it’s being done). But do we have such a passion for the state of our neighbor’s soul? Do we have such courage to engage spiritual conversations over the eternal weight of our co-worker’s relationship with Christ? Paul calls every Christian a minister of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). It is good and right for us to be ministers of reconciliation in this world to help tear down the dividing walls of racism, but greater still is our work in reconciling sinners (enemies of God) with Christ. If you care about horizontal reconciliation, shouldn’t you be that much more passionate about vertical reconciliation? The former can’t happen without the latter, after all.
6) Pray
God works through prayer. Period. When was the last time you prayed for the salvation of your neighbor or co-worker or family member? In some crazy way, God uses our prayers to stir his heart. Our prayers stir the fires in our own hearts as well. When I pray for someone, I empathize with them and my capacity to share the good news with them grows. Let’s pray for the salvation of those around us. And let’s pray for revival.
The work of multiplication is personal and corporate. I long to see that work happen in my lifetime. Let’s pray and act so that we might be blessed to see a great movement of revival in our midst.
New Life’s Culture Statements:
2. The gospel changes everything
4. God loves you and your neighbor
5. We are contributors, not consumers
6. Character outlasts charisma
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash