Church planting is just starting to pick up steam.
Here is an article about modern church planting from The Leadership Network:
Church planting in the United States appears to be undergoing an extreme makeover.
According to the findings of a new research study, interest in church planting is on the rise, some of America’s best and brightest ministry leaders choose planting as their career path and church planting efforts are much more successful and promising than anticipated.
Read the rest of this article on church planting here.
some of America’s best and brightest ministry leaders choose planting as their career path and church planting efforts are much more successful and promising than anticipated.
*ponders*
Well, to me the question seems to be, what exactly constitutes “success” in a church? And how does the “success” of a successful church plant compare to what God sees as “success”?
Does God count success in numbers of parishoners? Or in baptisms? Or in the growth of outreach ministries? And how can we actually judge how many conversions there are in a year?
From what I know about my Heavenly Father, it seems He would care more about the personal relationships He has with His children individually. And this of course includes more children joining His flock, but this emphasis should not grow at the expense of those who are already His children not realizing the importance of getting to know Him on an intimate level. And most definately not as a proof of the “success” of a certain church. Only God can determine if a church is successful in His eyes, just as only He can deem whether an individual believer’s heart is turned toward Him.
God will lead anyone to Him who is willing to hear the truth, and He designates certain people that He can use as tools to bring those people closer to Him, however, He also designates people to encourage and proclaim the liberty of fellowship to those who are already saved. It is more than possible for a believer to live in an unnecessary bondage. And a true relationship between a believer and their Heavenly Father cannot result in anything less than the production of fruit, which creates a good testimony, and in my own experience, nothing is a better witness to the unbeliever than the good testimony of a believer.
These are just my own immediate thoughts from reading this excerpt.
Amana,
Great question and insight.
Yes, I think that most pastors and planters probably define “success” as more and more people, with bigger and bigger buildings, and an ever-increasing budget.
But that seems to be changing to some degree, as many Christians and church leaders realize that there is more to success than “bodies, bucks, and bricks.” They are realizing that growth into maturity is a way to define success, as well as people reaching out with love and service.
What this article seems to be stating is that church plants do a better job of evangelism and getting people to believe in Jesus than established churches. I think this would be a good measure of success as well. In my five years as a pastor, I was only aware of about five people that came to faith in Christ as a result of our church and our ministry. Certainly, we planted a lot of seeds, and only God can give the increase, but still…one per year is not so good. The second church I pastored was about 100 people, and so for them, this was 1% conversion growth per year.
On average, church plants are getting one person per month, and the average church plant is under 100 people, and so that means they are getting well over 12% conversion growth per year.
Anyway, your point is well taken. We need to be careful how we define success. One book that helped me on this was Kent Hughes’ “Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.”