Why Plant Churches? (Part 2) - Tim Keller

1. New churches best reach a) new generations, b) new residents, and c) new people groups. First (a) younger adults have always been disproportionately found in newer congregations. Long-established congregations develop traditions (such as time of worship, length of service, emotional responsiveness, sermon topics, leadership-style, emotional atmosphere, and thousands of other tiny customs and mores), which reflect the sensibilities of long-time leaders from the older generations who have the influence and money to control the church life. This does not reach younger generations.   Second, (b) new residents are almost always reached better by new congregations. In older congregations, it may require tenure of 10 years before you are allowed into places of leadership and influence, but in a new church, new residents tend to have equal power with long-time area residents.

Last, (c) new socio-cultural groups in a community are always reached better by new congregations. For example, if new white-collar commuters move into an area where the older residents were farmers, it is likely that a new church will be more receptive to the myriad of needs of the new residents, while the older churches will continue to be oriented to the original social group.  And new racial groups in a community are best reached by a new church that is intentionally multi-ethnic from the start. For example: if an all-Anglo neighborhood becomes 33% Hispanic, a new, deliberately bi-racial church will be far more likely to create 'cultural space' for newcomers than will an older church in town. Finally, brand new immigrant groups nearly always can only be reached by churches ministering in their own language. If we wait 

until a new group is assimilated into American culture enough to come to our church, we will wait for years without reaching out to them. 

[Note: Often, a new congregation for a new people-group can be planted within the overall structure of an existing church. It may be a new Sunday service at another time, or a new network of house churches that are connected to a larger, already existing congregation. Nevertheless, though it may technically not be a new independent congregation, it serves the same function.] 

In summary, new congregations empower new people and new peoples much more quickly and readily than can older churches.  Thus they always have and always will reach them with greater facility than long-established bodies. This means, of course, that church planting is not only for 'frontier regions' or 'pagan' countries that we are trying to see become Christian.  Christian countries will have to maintain vigorous, extensive church planting simply to stay Christian!  

 

2. New churches best reach the unchurched--period.  Dozens of denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10 years of age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other congregations. This means that the average new congregation will bring 6-8 times more new people into the life of the Body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size.   

 

So though established congregations provide many things that newer churches often cannot, older churches in general will never be able to match the effectiveness of new bodies in reaching people for the kingdom. Why would this be? As a congregation ages, powerful internal institutional pressures lead it to allocate most of its resources and energy toward the concerns of its members and constituents, rather than toward those outside its walls.  This is natural and to a great degree desirable. Older congregations therefore have a stability and steadiness that many people thrive on and need. This does not mean that established churches cannot win new people. In fact, many non-Christians will only be reached by churches with long roots in the community and the trappings of stability and respectability.   

 

However, new congregations, in general, are forced to focus on the needs of its non-members, simply in order to get off the ground.  So many of its leaders have come very recently from the ranks of the un-churched, that the congregation is far more sensitive to the concerns of the non-believer.  Also, in the first two years of our Christian walk, we have far more close, face-to- face relationships with non-Christians than we do later.  Thus a congregation filled with people fresh from the ranks of the un-churched will have the power to invite and attract many more non-believers into the events and life of the church than will the members of the typical established body. 

 

What does this mean practically?  If we want to reach our city--should we try to renew older congregations to make them more evangelistic, or should we plant lots of new churches?  But that question is surely a false either-or dichotomy. We should do both!  Nevertheless, all we have been saying proves that, despite the occasional exceptions, the only widescale way to bring in lots of new Christians to the Body of Christ in a permanent way is to plant new churches.  

 

To throw this into relief, imagine Town-A and Town-B and Town-C are the same size, and they each have 100 churches of 100 persons each.  But in Town-A, all the churches are over 15 years old, and then the overall number of active Christian churchgoers in that town will be shrinking, even if four or five of the churches get very 'hot' and double in attendance.  In Town-B, 5 of the churches are under 15 years old, and they along with several older congregations are winning new people to Christ, but this only offsets the normal declines of the older churches. Thus the overall number of active Christian churchgoers in that town will be staying the same.  Finally, in Town-C, 30 of the churches are under 15 years old. In this town, the overall number of active Christian churchgoers will be on a path to grow 50% in a generation.

Why Plant Churches?

The following is a list of the 6 reasons[1] that SDBC’s leadership (Pastors, Directors and Elders) decided to make church planting a central part of The Mission of our church in January 2008.

It is Biblical: In the Great Commission Jesus lists several tasks relating to congregations: going, baptizing, and teaching. These are the ways, Jesus says, that the church is going to make disciples. The “earliest church believed they were fulfilling the Great Commission by planting new congregations. The Great Commission calls us to evangelize and to congregationalize.”[2] Also, the church in Antioch committed itself to sending leaders from their congregation to plant churches in other geographic areas (Acts 13-14). This is why church planting authority Ed Stetzer says “The New Testament points to the fact that new churches and church planting are direct and inevitable consequences of believer’s involvement in witnessing and proclamation.”

To reach the lost: Studies show that “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.”[3] It has been shown that established churches make greater progress in kingdom evangelism by initiating new daughter churches. “New churches are more effective than large churches, particularly in evangelism. On a per-capita basis, new churches win more people to Christ than established churches.”

Bruce McNichol explains the findings of his research in Interest Magazine:

 -       Churches under three years of age win an average of ten people to Christ per year for every one hundred church members.

-       Churches three to fifteen years of age win an average of five people per year for every one hundred church members.

-       Church over fifteen years of age win an average of three people per year for every one hundred church members.[4]

Tim Keller, lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, known all over North America as an inspiring model of a church that plants churches, says “no single church, no matter how large and active, can all by itself change an entire area. We must saturate areas with gospel-centered new churches. This is the only way to truly insure the transformation of our cities that we so much desire.”[5]

To develop new leaders: Like Jesus developed the twelve and like Paul developed Timothy, Titus and other Elders and Pastors, new churches have the opportunity to develop people who would not otherwise have stepped up to lead, serve or minister because those roles in established church have already been filled.[6] Planting churches helps SDBC to accomplish one of our other main goals  central to The Mission: to train and develop new leaders for the Church within Canada. Central to this is the idea that we train and send more and more people to plant churches in our immediate area and beyond, our “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1.8) – a paradigmatic text for both Acts and for the church in general. Our vision is to be an Antioch church, which is not afraid to identify, train and send the best of us (Paul and Barnabas).

To grow the Kingdom of God:  Ed Stetzer says, “A maturing kingdom awareness is more important than a local church mentality…Leaders who are unwilling to make organizational sacrifices for the benefit of the kingdom become stunted in both growth and in understanding God’s larger purpose.” This kingdom mentality has always been central to SDBC, and is seen in our global mission focus; this will help us direct those efforts toward a local mission focus. This is why one of the visions of the book Discipling Our Nation: Equipping the Canadian Church for its Mission, published by Outreach Canada, is that each local church plants “at least two daughter churches: first to replace itself and second to extend the Kingdom.”[7] There is great wisdom in such a vision for the local church.

Growth and Health of SDBC: Studies show that Mother Churches often experience a surge of energy and excitement from the existing congregation when they plant a church because they see God’s people sacrificing and multiplying and because they are seeing the kingdom grow. Tim Keller points out that planting new churches is “perhaps the best way to renew and re-vitalize older churches and enhance all ministries.” He says, “The mother church usually experiences a surge of high-esteem and an influx of new enthusiastic leaders and members. There is usually an increase in numbers and confidence.”[8]

 Churches who have church planting as part of their DNA attract leaders. Churches who have church planting as part of their DNA attract leaders. There is a church in Vancouver which began about 4 years ago with 20 or so people which always had church planting at its heart. It is now over 600 people, and there are multiple church planters who intern at the church to be sent out. This church also hosts a gathering of church planters once a month for teaching, equipping and prayer.  Part of that growth and health comes back to the priority of leaving a lasting legacy: Our lead Pastor (Paul Johnson) often says that planting new churches will “help our church have a legacy long after we are dead and gone. A hundred years from now there could be churches existing all over BC because of our efforts.” We can be a part of stamping Canada and reaching beyond the geographic boundaries of where our local churches exist.

To increase the number of evangelical, Gospel-centered churches: In an age of bad doctrine, and theological challenges to the historic Christian faith, our denomination (Fellowship Baptist), and our church specifically, need’s to extend its influence. We are responsible for what we do with who and what we have, and cannot assume that other churches are preaching the Gospel and doing Gospel-centered ministry.

 This is the aforementioned reasons The Fellowship now has church multiplication as a top priority. The director of the Fellowship, Dr. Jon Kaiser said in his 2007 address to the Fellowship: “What is the best contribution we can make? I believe each region should see it’s calling as growing and multiplying healthy churches. We should be involved in leadership development, community outreach, and church multiplication.” The more churches that carry the gospel into different areas the better. This is why it is necessary that “the local church DNA comes to believe that every church should plant churches.”[9] In this sense we can set the tone and inspire many other churches in The Fellowship to follow our lead as we follow the lead of Dr. Kaiser and others.

---

[1] More reasons can be explored in Paul Beker and Mark Williams, The Dynamic Daughter Church Planting Handbook.

[2] Ed Stetzer, Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age, 33.

[3] C. Peter Wagner, Church Planting for Greater Harvest, 11. See also Tim Keller, Advancing the Gospel into the 21^st Century, 3: “New Churches are by far the best way to reach (1) new generations, (2) new residents, and (3) new people groups. Studies show that newer churches attract new groups about 6-10 times better and faster then older, established churches do.”

[4] Cited in Aubrey Malphrus, Planting Growing Churches for the 21^st Century, 44.

[5] Tim Keller, http://www.redeemer2.com/rupc/rupc/index.cfm.           

[6] See Ed Stetzer, Planting New Churches, 322; Tim Keller, Advancing the Gospel into the 21^st Century, 3.

[7] Murray Moerman, “Discipling Canada and the Nations” in Murray Moerman ed., Discipling Our Nation: Equipping the Canadian Church for its Mission, 7; see also Murray Moerman and Lorne Hunter, “Saturation Church Planting: Current Needs & Recent Progress,” 20: “Every church, in fact, must contribute to these emerging church planting movements by planting at least two new congregations while it is able” one to replace itself, because, like humans, no congregation lives forever, and a second to extend the Kingdom” (14). He goes on to point out that at the end of 2003 evangelical churches in Canada existed at the ration of 1 for every 3, 189 Canadians.

[8] Tim Keller, Advancing the Gospel into the 21^st Century, 3: “I know of a small congregation in our area who had filled 100 seats twice to max 4 years in a row. Finally they sent 50 people out to a new town to form a new church. Just two years later there were 350 people coming to the daughter church and the mother church had filled its seats back up in three weeks.

[9] Murray Moerman and Lorne Hunter, “Saturation Church Planting: Current Needs & Recent Progress,” 17.