Last week, we heard from Andrew Heard about the power of God's word in growing a congregation of God's people. This week, we turn to consider the conflict that church planting naturally creates. (This is an edited extract from an article first published in 1999.)

You can't be involved in planting a church without pain or controversy. Planting churches is by its very nature controversial and threatening. When a new church appears near you, it is a very natural response to fear the impact it will have on your own ministry. You will feel judged. Does their arrival mean they think we can't do it ourselves?

Our arrival quite naturally aroused all these reactions. The local press, because of what others said of me, labelled me “the sinister minister on the Central Coast”. Rumours circulated, not maliciously, just as a reaction to these fears. They tended to look for and seize on any negative gossip they could find. I heard through the grapevine that I had been kicked out of Sydney because I was married to a woman who was divorced. I heard I had never received a theological degree. I heard I didn't believe we could have any security in our relationship with God. My favourite was one some friends heard at a local party. Apparently, I wrote to all the churches on the Central Coast and said if they gave us two families to help get started we would reimburse them for any lost offertory. I just wish we had that much money!

We tried to smooth over these fears. We met with Presbyterians, Baptists, Churches of Christ, Anglicans. There is no doubt we could have done it better. But I have learnt that there will always be people who are negative. No matter what we did or how we did it, there would be those thoroughly opposed to it. This is in part because there are many who do not share our passion for the lost, or see the massive need that cannot be reached by the small numbers of churches already established. If we had waited for the negative feelings to go away—if we had waited for everyone to think planting churches is a good idea—we might as well have decided never to do it.

Early on, some of our steering committee spent an evening with the Anglican ministers on the Coast. It was very heated. But as we talked, it became more and more obvious we shared very little in common. It confirmed us in the need to act. One minister was concerned we were not a real church: we had no bishop. He felt we would cause great damage to people who may come to us thinking we were a real church only to find we were something less. Ultimately, one minister admitted to me his great fear was the loss of protection that our arrival would mean. He perceived Anglicans on the Coast had enjoyed a monopoly for a long time and our arrival would provide a viable alternative for evangelicals moving north.

We can't plant churches without controversy. In hindsight we might have done some things differently. But we still had to do it. And we have to keep doing it.

Read the full article online.

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