Blog Archives
10 Biblical and Practical Ways to Get Involved in Church Multiplication
There’s no right or wrong way to support church multiplication in North American and beyond. I like this list. Don’t let failure of imagination or the excuse, “I don’t know how”, keep you and your church from engaging the lost through church planting and multiplication.
- Engage in strategic intercessory prayer – Proverbs 16:3.
- Adopt a church planter and his family – Philippians 4:14-15.
- Contribute to the financial needs of a church plant – Acts 11:29.
- Provide materials and equipment for a new church – Acts 11:30.
- Share your campus facilities with a new church – Acts 3:6.
- Serve on a church planting mission trip – Acts 12:25.
- Discover unreached or under-reached people in your community – Matthew 28:19.
- Start an outreach Bible study that could become a new church – Acts 16:32.
- Send people and families to help a church get off the ground – Acts 13:2-3.
- Mentor Church Planting leaders – Philippians 2:22.
The Great TRANSFER GROWTH Boogie Monster
An assumption of many pastors about church planting in North America is that new churches just draw people 
from other churches. Underlying that assumption is the fear that the new church in town is going to do harm to my success and take “MY people.” So, as a strategist I seem to spend a lot of my time talking to Pastors about the potential negative impact of church planting on their church and the SCARY notion that the transfer growth boogie monster will jump out of the closet and get us all if we plant new churches.
And, unfortunately, some church plants have earned this reputation, proving this assumption true, and done harm to church multiplication efforts in several ways. To that I say: SHAME ON THEM!!!
Church planting is about evangelism that leads to a new church, NOT let’s create a better experience than all the other churches and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” when their members pile up in our chairs and put their money in our plate. I heard of one church recently that had “lost” 800 people to a new church with a livelier experience on Sunday morning creating a financial hardship for the church. I heard of another church that intentionally targeted people from other churches because they were people of influence in the community and “God wants our church to be filled with influencers.”
JD Payne has written a great piece called Ethical Guidelines for Church Planters and challenges church planters to “not prioritize transfer growth by designing ministries that will primarily attract believers” and to “have a systematic plan to respond to the transfers who want to become part of the new church.” Here’s some of Payne’s comments:
On planting as Kingdom expansion not just church growth:
Church planting is not about attracting a crowd or launching a worship service, but rather it is about the advancement of the Kingdom as unbelievers become followers of the living God through local expressions of the Body of Christ. Though crowd attraction and starting a new worship service are not necessarily bad things, their manifestations, however, do not necessarily mean the Kingdom has advanced. In many cases, such events actually attract large numbers of Kingdom Citizens. For church planters to settle for large numbers of transfer growth is not the way of the Apostolic Church.
On the dangers of transfer growth to the church planting initiative:
Even for the church planters who are doing everything possible to discourage transfer growth, they will encounter it. Particularly in the North American context, members of other churches will be interested in the new work. Some of these brothers and sisters will have a genuine desire to serve in a new work. Others, however, will be of the massive consumerist crowd looking for the most novel thing in town. These “new-experience Christians” will remain as long as their desires are met. Like parasites on a living organism, they participate to take, until they get their fill or until something else comes along to satisfy their desires. Rather, than understanding who they are in Christ, and their place in the work of the ministry (Eph 4:12), they believe that following Christ is an individualistic, self-gratifying, desire-meeting experience void of biblical koinonia.
On the ethics of transfer growth:
Regardless of the motivation behind any local church members wanting to be a part of the new work, it is unethical for a church planting team (and the new churches) to receive them as members without regard for their local church family in which they are presently involved in a covenant relationship.
What process should be in place? Payne says the church planter should find out what evangelical church the person is a member of and why they desire to leave that fellowship. Second, contact that pastor to inquire why they would want to leave. Third, only allow them to join after discouraging them from leaving their church and asking them to get the pastors blessing that this move is a prompting from God. I’ve added a third question to my on process: “Have you made pledges to that church?” When churches are in capital campaigns, etc. they ask people to make pledges and this is seen as a spiritual commitment. So we challenge people to fulfill their pledge or be released from it. See Ecclesiastes 5:5.
Dr. Payne’s concerns for a code of ethics for church planters are worth noting:
In the face of great spiritual opposition and ministerial challenges, church planters are many times faced with the temptation to accomplish something good for the Kingdom at the sacrifice of something great for the Kingdom. Faced with funding resources that diminish over time, lack of receptivity of people to the Gospel, the pressures to start a worship service and produce certain numbers at a worship gathering, many times leads missionaries down a path that deviates from biblically based and missiological guided church multiplication strategies.
…such as settling for and designing ministries to attract Christians and not penetrate the majority of unreached people in North America and beyond.
In Part two, I’ll ask a few question of pastors and ministry leaders on the other side of this, who are poopooing on the whole notion of church planting and multiplication in fear of the great Transfer Growth Boogie Monster.
Also check out the post entitled Commitment, Honor, & Transfer Growth that spells out a few ethical guidelines for ministry leaders to consider.
Assessing the Need for New Churches in the South
A common question I’m asked as a church planter and strategist: “Why do we need new churches when we have so many already?”
Stated in other, more direct ways:
- “We’ve got that area covered already, there’s no need for a new church.”
- “Planting a new church will make Pastors in the area feel unappreciated or like they’re not doing their job.”
- “Why plant a new church when my church needs so much help?”
- “Do we really need another ‘little’ church in this area?”
- “Won’t a new church just take resources from other churches.”
These can be legitimate concerns, when brought with a kingdom mind set, and these concerns should be addressed by strategists and planters in the planning process. And I’m sure there have been occasions when for the sake of #’s we have ignored legitimate concerns and good questions from partners about the why for a new church in a given area. I’d really like to work through each of these concerns individually at some point but now I’m asking, what are the right questions and the key indicators of the need for new churches or ministries in the seemingly overchurched south?
- Is the community being transformed for the good or bad? Instead of starting by looking at ourselves (i.e. the existing churches in the community), maybe we should take a look at what’s happening in the lives of people in the area. Church planting should start with a desire to see the community transformed by the gospel. Is it happening as we need it to? Are we willing to admit that the task of transforming our community may be more than one church can handle? Are we committed to life change at all costs?
- Are there places where the Church is not? Flowing out of the first question, what do we find when we look at spheres of influence and places of engagement in the community? Are churches able and willing to engage the local schools, multi-housing complexes, business communities, correctional facilities, chat rooms, neighborhood associations, etc.?
- Are there population segments or people groups that are not being touched by the Gospel? Next, are there language, socioeconomic, or lifestyle groups, that are not being touched adequately by a consistent Gospel witness?
- What is God stirring up in and for this community? God is in the world reconciling people to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). What is He doing in this community in that regard? When our Father’s work includes stirring the heart of a church to multiply and send out its own to start a new church or launch a new campus or reach out to a population segment, we should not oppose what He is stirring. We can assess if this is a genuine call from God or a call to disgruntlement or if it is born out of divisiveness. We can also hold our planting teams accountable to be agents of transformation not division, focusing on where the church is not, and reaching out to unreached peoples.
Many Pastors, me included, tend to think about a new ministry or church through the lens of what it may cost us. What if we thought about it in terms of the great cost to those who may never hear the Gospel, or those who are going through life without the joy of a relationship with Christ, or those who are going through life’s challenges without a family of believers who can love and provide for them along the way? Can we look honestly at our communities and see the need and God’s activity if it’s there and then partner together to plant for God’s glory and the good of our communities?
Are there other good questions and key indicators as we plan to plant the Gospel in North America?
Lane Corley 