Why we don’t plant churches
We're in the middle of our Saturday series on church planting, and this week, Phillip Jensen, in a 1997 address, talks about the reasons why we avoid church planting.
Why we don't plant
It is little wonder, in some ways, that we avoid church planting. It is a hard task. There is the pain and sweat of doing the evangelism, and the discomfort and insecurity of starting something from scratch.
However, even more difficult is the opposition and hostility which greets all efforts at church planting. There will be opposition within our own congregations if we decide to plant another church. Even if the new congregation is within our own church complex, tension will be unavoidable. If we decide, for example, to take 40 people out of the Sunday evening congregation to form a new Friday night church, those left behind will feel hurt that their friends are no longer with them in church. There will be jealousy over the ‘new baby’ getting attention and resources.
It is even worse if we take these 40 key members and send them down the road to start something entirely new. It will not only attract all the negative feelings above, but there will be the added burden of losing 40 committed givers. It will stretch the budget. It will cause strain. It will inevitably be accompanied by a loud chorus of “Why don't we just leave things as they are?”
Moreover, if we decide that we can live with these tensions, and we go ahead and plant a new church in another area, the other churches in that area can be guaranteed to object. “Why are you planting a church here?” they will ask. “Are you saying we're not doing our job properly?”
One must ask however: Is anyone really doing the job properly? Our country is crawling with unbelievers. They outnumber us more than 30 to 1. There is more evangelism to be done and more new churches to be planted than we can even begin to describe. And yet in our petty jealousy and defensiveness we resist new initiatives in church planting.
It is as if we have turned Christ's great statement (“I will build my church”) on its head, and made it an expression of our self-centred insecurity: “I will build my church—so don't go planting your church”
Commenting rules
If you would like your comment to be considered for publication, please observe the following rules:
Failure to adhere to these rules will result in your comment being quietly deleted.
If you want to give us feedback but don't want your comments to appear on the blog, DON'T use the form below. Instead, please send us an email or click on the button below.
Your Comment
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.