How Much Planning Went Into Deciding Where to Plant a Church?

I’ve repeatedly said that what Richard Florida writes about in his book Who’s Your City? has enormous implications for church planting.  It all comes down to the question posed in the title of this blog … how much planning went into deciding where you’re planting a church? To review, in the book Florida talks about the 3 biggest decisions we’ll make in life: (1) What are you going to do? (2) With who? (3) Where? We obviously spend A LOT of time planning and preparing for the first two, but what about the third?

What I’m interested in is how much time, effort, energy, and research went into the decision-making process church planters go through in determining where they’re going to plant. Also, where is the confluence of listening to God’s voice/will, knowing how He’s wired you and who He made you to be, and taking a pragmatic approach. Since most church planters say that God called them to the area and people they’re planting among then how do they determine it? Did they also set out certain criteria of what they’re looking for and prayed through them?

I’m also interested on a personal level because of my own process for determining where to plant a church again. It really was a long and arduous process full of tons of research, even more prayer, talking with friends, discerning needs, and trying to take a step back to see where God was at work locally, regionally, and globally. The decision to plant in Vancouver started off as a “nudge” or a strong feeling of “I’m incredibly drawn here” to the Pacific Northwest. That all started after my wife and I worked for a summer at a camp in SE Alaska after college. Since then I’ve spent countless hours researching Vancouver and other cities in the West. I was looking for a larger city (2+ million) that has a large Creative Class, a city on the front end of the new urbanism, a global/international city, a very ethnically diverse city with a large number of “visible minorities,” heavily unchurched, a large Asian population, a healthy number of colleges and universities, and other factors like a city that is striving to be eco-friendly, sustainable, and compact. Some of the other things I was looking at as well were support systems and structures that would be an aid as we planted. That way there are others I can tap into for advice, encouragement, mentoring, information, and so on.

I don’t assume that there are any 2 identical ways of how much planning went into deciding where to plant.  As each person is different so is each story. For some it was a quick process while others it was slow and drawn out.  For some it meant staying home and reaching a people and culture they’re familiar with while others it meant packing up and relocating to a different city or country. At the end God is glorified as people are reached and churches are planted.

The Creative Class and the Role of Preaching

If preaching/teaching is always contextual then when one is engaging the Creative Class then how does it alter the way we approach communicating God’s Word? A quick survey through some of the key people in the New Testament reveals how adept they were to adapting their methodology when it came to communicating God’s Word to various audiences. Jesus told a lot of agricultural stories, Peter relied heavily upon the Old Testament when speaking to fellow Jews at Pentecost, and Paul quoted local poets and referenced regional deities when addressing the Athenians. When speaking to the Creative Class how are we to “go and do likewise?”

The Creative Class tend to be tech savvy urban hipsters and while those are very broad parameters it’s a good start. People in Bible times didn’t have the chance to use any modern technology like we have today when teaching but then again just look at some of the antics of the prophets and you’ll see how creatively they did teach. They simply used what was around to communicate what God was saying to the people. What about today? For example, Epic Church in Tucson uses Twitter throughout the preaching element as well as text messaging. In a culture where everyone tweets everything they hear, see, or think then the church can certainly tap in. Some may argue that people just need to sit down, shut up, and simply passively listen. You tell me where someone does that today in our culture?  School? Not really as it’s pretty interactive. Where do we go in our culture today where someone talks at you for 45 minutes without any chance to respond or interact?

The core issue is to be able to effectively communicate God’s Word in a culturally applicable manner and we know that methodology has and does change from culture to culture and time to time. Many think to change or alter the way you communicate God’s Word is altering the message and that is simply not true. Again, the say it out loud principle goes something like this,”If you were to communicate God’s Word to an illiterate rural people in some other remote part of the world would you use a 45 minute lecture format?” Ok, so we know that answer … the question is, “Why not?” Context. Context is everything. The bottom line is to be able to effectively communicate God’s Word and in a contextualized way where the hearers are not turned off by the methodology.

So when communicating God’s Word to a tech savvy urban crowd who’s used to multi-tasking and being connected to technology all day then what does that look like?  You tell me …

New Urbanism: Renewing the City Or Are They The New Suburbs?

As you know I’m all about seeing cities renewed whether that be spiritually, socially, or the built environment.  There’s nothing more exciting than to see new churches planted in the heart of the city or seeing urban family’s lives renewed as they grow into who God wants them to to be. There’s also something incredibly exciting about seeing old decayed neighborhoods turn around and turn into swank places to live, hang out, or simply visit. There are many aspects of this movement of new urbanism that goes hand-in-hand with not only the way life should be lived but how community is to be formed and expressed in the church. However, sometimes behind the veneer of trendy sushi eateries and coffee shops is something not so pleasant.

I’m all for many of the elements of gentrification as it brings more focus, attention, and investment back into the city.  There’s something refreshing and encouraging to see old homes and buildings restored and renewed with a modern twist. Many times such efforts are a hope and an attempt to reverse or curb the flight to the suburbs to bring more people back into the city. I like to use St. Louis as an example because I know they’ve gone from over 800,000 people in 1950 down to 330,000 today within the city limits. More people moving back into the city would be good all around. Sometimes I struggle because usually when we talk about more people moving back into the city usually we’re referring to Whites. A lot of times gentrification pushes ethnic families right out of neighborhoods where they’ve lived for years.

I know many developers who’re involved in the process of renewing neighborhoods do seek to provide affordable housing along with the market rate ones which is a good start. I remember the little town I grew up in and for the most part everyone lived side by side regardless of income or socio-economic status. Sometimes in the suburbs you basically get a slice of one socio-economic level living all together and sending their kids to the same school. One of the gems of things like new urbanism/gentrification is to have a great diversity of ethnicity as well as socio-economic classes all living together, doing life together, and even part of the same church together.  That would be a great reflection of the overall church universal and something beautiful.

Some of the downsides of church planting, like trendy gentrified neighborhoods, is where we’re targeting simply one class and if stats hold out it is usually among middle or upper class White suburban families. Sometimes even when church planting is in the city core it is still among trendy White urban hipsters and then the question arises … are gentrified neighborhoods then the new suburbs?

Why Do We Plant Churches in the Suburbs?

If roughly 70% of church planting today in various cities are in suburban contexts what does that tell us or teach us? Of the various church planting groups, networks and denominations that I looked at all of them had by far the majority of their church plants taking place in the suburbs.  What do we do with this obvious trend?  Is it a good thing?  Bad thing?  Should we keep going with it or curb it?

According to Dr. Ron Boyce who teaches at Bakke Graduate University and formerly at the University of Washington the suburbs are the New Urban Frontier. I took a doctoral level course from him studying the nature of cities and I think in a good way he encouraged me not to look at an urban/suburban dichotomy and I agree. We need to look at cities as a whole and not create artificial lines because although on a map there are clear lines demarcating what is city and what isn’t for most people it is all seamless. The point that I’m trying to bring up is that if we believe in transforming the culture from the inside out why do we still have an outside-in mentality? Our city cores most often hold the key to influencing not just the rest of the city, but the region, and even world. If that is the case then why are most of us planting churches on the far fringes?

Obviously there are huge needs on the fringe since those are the rapidly growing parts of the metro area, therefore, it is a very strategic place to plant churches there. With that said I think the biggest difference is the whole mentality, philosophy, and approach to church planting that takes place in the city versus the suburbs. We can’t expect to do things the same in both locales and the city environments with their complexities and compactness bring to the forefront a whole new slew of challenges that many planters are not equipped to deal with. In urban environments you can’t help but notice more the social implications of the Gospel. The Gospel not only has the power to transform lives but also social structures, schools, neighborhoods, homelessness, and so much more.

Our cities are desperate for the power of the Gospel to transform lives within which will have an impact on social structures. In a message I heard from Mark Driscoll given at the new Mars Hill campus in Albuquerque he talked about if more men in the city would meet Jesus and be changed they’d stop beating their wives.  Well said. The reality is that we need that take place both in the urbs as well as the burbs.

Church Planters Are Indeed Part of the Creative Class

It dawned on me today as I reflected on my interaction with hundreds of church planters across the nation that they are truly part of what economist Richard Florida has dubbed the Creative Class. As our nation and economy continues to shift away from manufacturing and industry work to more knowledge/creative workers it has given a rise to a new class of people.

The Creative Class is a class of workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms (2002). The Creative Class is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects. The Creative Class also “includes people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content” (Florida, 2006, p. 8). Their designs are widely transferable and useful on a broad scale, as with products that are sold and used on a wide scale. Another sector of the Creative Class includes those positions which are knowledge intensive, these careers usually require a high degree of formal education (2002). Examples of this sector are health professionals and business management, who are considered to be a part of the sub-group called Creative Professionals. Their main job is to think and to create new standard approaches for fixing the problem at hand. Creativity is becoming more valued in today’s global society.

Without anyone really even noticing or realizing it church planters have slid into the role of creative types and knowledge workers. Church planting not too long ago was performed by those who simply couldn’t find a church to pastor. It was almost like church planters were lower-tiered ministry professionals, sort of a minor league or developmental system for churches.  But things have changed and changed drastically …

The church planter of today is truly at home in the Creative Class.  Most often they’re educated (many times highly educated), work well with and live in the realm of ideas, and continuously are in the creating process.  If you were to go to any church planting conference whether Exponential or Catalyst or the like you’ll basically find the best and brightest leaders there.  Not only that but many times they’re urban (whether geographically or mindset), tech savvy, global, and very fashionable. Now instead of the cream of the crop simply taking over established churches these creative-types are the cutting-edge entrepreneurs of evangelicalism regardless of tribe, denomination, network, or group. These are the best of the best and most creative.

Church planters by and large are highly relational, travel heavily in social media, and with or without “seed money” they’re starting not only new churches but new businesses and non-profits as they desire to serve and make their city a better place.  Their ideas and creativity not only create amazing new expressions of church but help renew and transform neighborhoods, communities, and cities. They start coffee-shops, work with local art districts, create their own studios and galleries, launch their own small tech companies, start their on co-op organic gardens, and that is only the beginning. They are indeed knowledge workers as the live in the realm of ideas/knowledge, communicating those ideas to their churches and communities, and so on.  They’re at home with studying and creatively teaching what they’re learning.

The day of the church planter is here and it has meshed seamlessly with such societal phenoms as the rise of the Creative Class, new urbanism, proliferation of social media, and we’re simply getting started …

Non-Family-Oriented Church Planting in the City

I know, its a silly title but bear with me. I’ve said on numerous occasions that the bulk of church planting materials out today seemed to be geared towards planting in a suburban context in and among a very homogeneous grouping (i.e. Anglo, young families, etc). In these training materials there’s a high emphasis placed on a hoppin’ children’s and youth ministries which is geared towards the family.  But what if the area you’re planting in is (a) not suburban and (b) among predominantly singles or marrieds with no kids, and (c) non-homogeneous?

As many of you know the process of gentrification is simply the process of revamping and renewing inner city neighborhoods and turning them into desirous places to live by or in the downtown core. “Gentrification sometimes involves replacing older buildings with new, high-rise apartment buildings or condominiums.” (Global Cities, 31) Who typically lives in these gentrified neighborhoods? “Young urban professionals (yuppies) and dual-income, no kids (dinks) households. A large portion of yuppies and dinks in professional occupations (lawyers, accountants, information technology specialists, etc.).” (31)

So, what does your church planting strategy looks like then if you’re not targeting families? Again, we’re good at doing children’s ministries, VBS, backyard Bible clubs, and so on but if the church you’re planting has little to no children then what?  Not only that but what do you do when these young singles start to get married or the dinks start having children? How will you keep them from fleeing the city center to the pull of the suburbs? What does your church need to do to make the city centers a viable place to raise children?  (or do you think that is even a worthy goal or endeavor?) What does that look like? Investment in better schools? More family-friendly neighborhoods and adequate parks? Most know that while gentrified neighborhoods are swank places to live, for the most part, there’s a reason why inner city public schools have a bad reputation.

So here are some questions to think through when it comes to planting in the city especially in gentrified neighborhoods: (1) How do you create and foster relationships and connections in the neighborhoods that aren’t centered around children? (2) What is your plan to retain families once couples in your church start having children? (3) How can your church serve the city (Jer. 29:7) and make it a better place?

How Well Do You Know Your City?

I remember a few years ago taking a walking tour of downtown Seattle with Dr. Ray Bakke with a group of fellow doctoral students. We were part of a two week course called Overture I where we studied issues like the city, what Scripture teaches us about it, what’s going on globally, and so on. We walked for several hours and would stop frequently while Ray talked to us about the city.  I was mesmerized.

Here was a man who loved God, loved the city, knew what the Bible taught us about cities, and as we walked the streets of Seattle he knew that particular city. Since that day I vowed that wherever I lived I would become a specialist on understanding that city.  When I was in Tucson I’d spend hours each week going over websites, driving and walking around, and talking with people to help me better understand that magnificent city. I felt a little bit like Ray when I’d take potential church planters up A-Mountain that overlooked the downtown core and from that vantage point I could talk to them about the city and what God was doing.

How well do you know your city? Do you know it’s past? Are you able to assess and diagnose what’s going on it today and where it has hope or hurts? Do you know where your city is going? Just yesterday I read through the City of Tucson’s 100-page report on the future of their downtown revitalization project.  I couldn’t help but feel excitement for the city as it scraps and claws its way onto the national scene competing to retain and attract talent (knowledge workers or the creative class). I was proud that the city recognizes where its hope lies and how its seeking to rebrand itself beginning with a revitalized downtown core. As I blogged recently, cities with a strong downtown core (central business district) often have a strong real estate economy and do a better job of attracting talent and new business.

If you were a doctor diagnosing your city what would you say? If you were to prescribe treatment or medication what would you give it? A city is more than a collection of buildings, freeways, and the people who live there.  It was an identity, a hope, a future, a personality, and a collective will. The better you know your city the better you’ll be able to better plant churches.

Loving the City Goes Beyond the Bread Line

Somewhere in our thinking about loving and serving people in the city we’ve defaulted to dishing out helpings of instant potatoes at bread lines. While this is indeed a worthy (and godly) endeavor it is only the tip of the iceberg. I would venture to say that most feel a love for their city but it is usually accompanied by guilt because you’re not feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving, nor volunteering at an inner-city after school program, or helping out with a Habitat for Humanity housing project. How did we become so myopic in our thinking?

Maybe you need to ask yourself this question, “What needs to take place for my city to be better?” Yes, I know the temptation is to simply blurt out “get everyone saved” but that’s too simplistic and shallow of an answer.  The problems aren’t always spiritual in nature and may have to do with issues like affordable housing, branding a city, redeveloping the central business district, retaining college graduates and so on. Maybe the reason why you have so much violence in your city is that because it has a horrible economy with a high employment which means many men are at home instead of at work which means domestic violence escalates through the roof. While salvation is indeed life-transforming on the personal and familial level what about saving the city as well?

There’s been much written about how cities prosper and advance simply because they’re able to retain their college students.  If you show me a city who’s losing college graduates (talent) in huge numbers you’ll see a city that has a struggling economy. A city needs to not only retain but attract these grads that make up part of the “knowledge economy.”

“What are the things that cities have to be really good at to be successful in a knowledge economy? We concluded that cities had to be really good at talent, connections, distinctiveness, and innovation. A strong city core was an accelerator of all four of those dimensions.” (Carol Coletta in Next American City magazine)

So what do you do if you love and care for your city and want to get involved? Maybe you can begin but taking a deeper looking at the four things listed in the quote above … “Talent, connections, distinctiveness, innovation.” What can you do, or what can your church do, to contribute to one of those areas? For example, how can you / your church be apart in revitalizing and stabilizing your downtown core?

“A strong core is proving to be valuable in ways we never imagined. We learned, for instance, that metro areas with a strong core, a strong central business district, hold their real estate values throughout the metro area better than those metro areas with weak cores. So those cities that have invested in the core and been judicious in the planning and development of the rest of the metro area, I think, have been very well served.” (Carol Coletta)

Love your city and give yourself the freedom to serve it in ways that makes sense to you that goes with the way God made you. There are many ways that you can be involved in serving your city. The church needs to simply give itself permission to be innovative in this way and once you blow the lid off your creativity then there’s no telling how the church can truly impact and influence entire cities.  Think about it …

How to Exegete Your Community (Part 1)

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately as I’ve had interactions with church planters from various places who’re seeking to understand their immediate community that they’re planting in.  I believe we all know it is important to exegete your communities and that we need to do it but the “how” is the more difficult part.  Are you ready?

First of all, I’m not a stat geek and so my process is going to be more intuitive than pouring over 76 page demographic reports.  Listen, I know to marketers that things like the flow of traffic and generic preferences of the people are good but it is easy for planters to get bogged down in the minutia of it. When it comes to demographic profiles sometimes they can be like horoscopes in that they’re so broad and general that they apply to everyone and yet no one at the same time.  Obviously, when you’re finding out about ethnicities, language groups, and such it is helpful.  Look at these reports simply like your car’s dashboard where all you really need to know is your speed, RPM’s (debatable), and how much gas you have left.

WALK THE STREETS

The best way to collect the info you need is to simply immerse and invest yourself in the community.  Walk the neighborhoods and get to know as many people as you can … baristas, neighbors, community leaders, city leaders, realtors (GREAT resources!), developers (residential and commercial), educators, restaurant and business owners, and so on.  It is amazing that when you connect with a wide group of people like that how much networking takes place and the relationships are priceless!  We get into the funk of thinking that all we need to do is have a trendy worship gathering and a little marketing and poof!  Insta-church!  We’re missing out on soooo much!

Several examples: When I was in Tucson I really wanted to know what was going on in city’s downtown core.  I spent day after day there.  I’d hang out in coffee shops from the really nice ones to the scary ones, I’d eat in restaurants, go into shops, and walk the streets.  They had a self-guided 2+ mile walking tour of the downtown where you learned all of the downtown’s and city’s past as well as what’s going on today.  I became well-versed in Tucson’s history and could walk you through most of everything that took place in the last 2,000 years there (no joke) in the downtown area. So I walked … I learned and I began to sense and feel the struggles of what was taking place downtown. I became passionate about the city core, I poured over the downtown newspaper, I connected with urban planners, commercial developers, and housing leaders because the city had a dream, a compelling dream to reinvent the downtown core and I believed that new churches could be part of that fabric. I spent hours and hours researching new housing developments, new transit systems that were being built, what new restaurant was coming in, what churches were in the area and what they were doing, what the educational system was like there and so much more.  The more I learned the more I fell in love with the city core, the built environment, and more importantly the struggles and dreams of those who lived there.

Next example: Not too far from my house a new coffee shop opened up and of course that became a new base of operations for me.  After getting to know the whole AM barista crew they finally asked me what I did. Because I had that relational investment I was able to share open and freely about my desire to plant churches in the area that sought to invest in and make the city a better place.  They were actually excited! We tend to think to start new churches, especially in heavily under-churched cities, that people will be antagonistic and anti-church but if you have a great relationship and you share your heart for the community (because you’re part of it and you know it) then you’ll be surprised how many non-Christians want to be involved with you. I understood the area, the needs, and when I shared with these baristas how the church can serve the city they were enthused.

As you’re connecting with people in your community begin internally finding out the answers to these questions:

1. Who lives there? (are people moving in or moving out of the area?)
2. Why do they live there? (are they stuck?  Is this a destination kind of place?)
3. What’s going on?  What’s the history? (Is there a lot of construction … both housing and commercial? What has happened in the past the shapes and influences the community and decisions today?)
4. What are the dreams and aspirations of those who live there? (where are people here going?  Is there a collective over-arching vision/dream of this community?)
5. Where is this community going? (Is the area in decline?  Is it it be gentrified? Is it all brand new?)
6. What are the biggest needs here? (Every place has needs)

These are simply a FEW questions to get the ball rolling.  This is by no means comprehensive.  I believe that this is a more intuitive than scientific process and approach. I know we’re all wired differently so if you need all of the papers, pdfs, and reports then go for it. But what I’d like to do over the next several blog posts is to flesh out some different ways you can understand your community from all different angles and source.

Welcome to the journey …

Planting Churches Among the Creative Class

The past few days I’ve found myself in various coffee shops in gentrified neighborhoods in and around St. Louis.   These are all uber trendy and swank places to live and there’s definitely a draw for church planting. Frankly, the city needs new churches in these neighborhoods. Again, in some of my preliminary research showed roughly 7 out of 10 new churches are planted in the suburbs and while we need more there and not less there’s also a HUGE need in the city.  However, cities are tough and there’s no way of getting around it.  For example, there’s a reason why the city of St. Louis (city proper) has gone from over 800,000 people in the 1950’s to just over 300,000 today.  When you think about it … that’s a big loss.  Why did so many leave and flee to the burbs?  The city is a tough place.

Now when I say tough I’m not necessarily speaking of the “hood” but the reality of planting and even raising a family in the city is challenging.  For example, some of the swank areas I was in today … Soulard and Lafayette Park are great places but what I immediately noticed is that they’re full of young singles or young couples.  I didn’t even see one kid in any of those places today.  Now I’m not saying they aren’t there but that stands in stark contrast of hitting a Starbucks in the burbs full of soccer moms and kids in tow.  If you live even in those gentrified neighborhoods whether you work in the area or going to plant a church you have to deal with the schooling issue.  Yes, it’s easy to plant when your munchkins are young but then when they hit school age all of the sudden you have to make some tough choices …

What are you going to do about schooling your kids? How committed are you to the community and the city?  Enough to put them in inner city public schools?  Private school?  Home school?  Or is the temptation going to be to hit the burbs once your kiddos are entering school especially if you don’t have the cabbage to afford private schooling?  I’m not going to make judgment calls on whether you have your children go to public vs private vs home school, but recognize that you will have to deal with that decision.

But, the good FAR outweighs the bad. Having your children in schools with kids of all different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds is awesome. To have your kindergartner sitting in a class with students from Iraq, Bosnia, Thailand, Mexico, and who’re black, white, and brown is going to have a lasting affect that will literally shape their lives.  They’ll grow up globally minded and conscious as well as having a heart for the whole world.  They’ll be color blind, tolerant, and accepting of the various cultures around them.

To plant in the city is an investment indeed.  In some ways it is a sacrifice and in others ways I believe it is the key to an amazing life.