The more I spend time across Tucson the more I’m acutely aware of the needs of seeing the Gospel penetrate all levels of society and new churches planted. I feel like I keep hitting roadblocks to figure out how to plant churches rapidly. Along with that when it comes to our conventional approach to funding through the SBC there’s good and bad news. Good news? We’re planting more and more churches. Bad news? Well, that means since our state-wide budget is not increasing significantly we’re quickly running out of funds to support new works. Solution? “Penniless church plant on the fly!!!”
I have about 4 specific areas where I’m personally interested on planting a church or churches I should say (NW side close to my house, Tucson Mall area, U of A campus, and downtown). I could do one of several different approaches. (1) Recruit planters for each of the areas, have them “own it” and be passionate about it. That is good except that could take 1-2-3 years for all the areas to be adopted but there’d be someone there who’d totally buy into it and own it. (2) I could plant one church myself and once I get that one up to speed branch out and start another one. (3) Or I could plant a church in each spot simultaneously. I’d utilize locals already involved in their church / ministries and start this as an “on-the-side” kinda of thing and let it just grow “organically.”
Sometimes I wonder if we totally overstrategize things at times. I know of a church planter who spent a whole year planning, strategizing, doing bridge events, neighborhood surverys, preview services, and so on and after a few months they’re running in the 40’s. I met another planter who just literally one day decided to start a church, rented a school, and started meeting. After a few months they’re running in the 50’s. Both of these new church plants are in the same suburb in similar settings. Which is a better approach? I guess it doesn’t really matter. Which leads me to believe to just start to invest relationally in each of these areas, pull other guys in the process, and just got for it. I don’t care if it’s a simple organic house church or if they rent out an cool hip art gallery to meet because models are secondary issues.
So, that’s the latest in my thinking of how to hurry up and plant churches on the fly. I sometimes think we make church planting way too complicated with highly specialized training and degrees and so on. We’ve taken it out of the hands of the common person and made it something for the vocationally “elite.” I loved it when I was in China talking with a house chuch “uncle” about their church planting strategies. They just taught people the bible and there was the expectation that they would plant a church regarldess of their vocation. What if that were to become a reality here? How could we get there?
September 12, 2008 at 3:10 pm |
it is a good concept, but I think (without gobs of cash) it could not be done in our current model. It could work if…. The CP is more of a coordinator and not the end all to the church. The CP does not have to have the perfect sermon with the perfect band…who has the time. Forget the “target” and just do a church and the target is the whole community.
September 12, 2008 at 10:28 pm |
You’re right … could the CP be more of the “Apostle” then and each of those who lead the plants be pastors? Are we still thinking too narrowly along the lines of planting single churches?
September 24, 2008 at 9:19 am |
For a church plant to be successful in Tucson, it would do well to follow few principles. First, imitate the in-and-out philosophy – do a few things and do them well. Second, Tucson is a collection of broken people from other states – growth is slow. Last, be willing to try lots of different things – and be willing to fail often. Oh, and your church plant will most likely fail the first time –
Eric