Recently, Joe Radosevich wrote a post for Voices in which he told of his trials and tribulations as a church planter in the USA. Another church planter commented and reported that his experience was similar.
Most of my experience in church planting is foreign, not domestic. My wife and I served with the International Mission Board in Southeast Asia for 25 years. My missionary assignment was to teach in a seminary, but all missionaries engage in church planning. We had the opportunity to plant several churches during our careers. Church planting overseas is somewhat different from that in North America. Foreign missionaries plant churches directly and unilaterally. In the USA, church planters usually have one or more sponsoring churches, a sponsoring association, a sponsoring state convention, as well as the North American Mission Board. Often, the church planter reports to more than one Baptist entity.
Why did I pose the question at the top? During the years I taught missions at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, I also served as Chairman of the Church Planting Committee of the Long Run Baptist Association in the Louisville area. The association tasked our committee with initiating and coordinating church planting in the Louisville area. Before long, I learned (to my surprise) that not all pastors favored church planting. Now, they all affirmed planting language or ethnic churches. If our committee proposed planting a Hispanic church or a Vietnamese congregation, the pastors commended us. If we proposed planting an Anglo (English-speaking) church, then we got pushback. The pushback included three common objections: (1) We have enough churches already; (2) Instead of starting new churches, we should aid struggling churches; (3) The proposed church will hurt the health of my church.
How did I respond to the objections? The Long Run Association did have a lot of member churches; however, two-thirds of them were in the western part of the county. They were older traditional churches that were either plateaued or declining. So, yes, we did have enough churches in the western part of the county, but we needed to plant new churches in the rapidly growing eastern part. Yes, we did have a lot of struggling churches. We did a study of struggling churches in the association and identified ten that were dying. When we visited them, they all admitted they were struggling, but all ten refused to change their worship style or programming. They wanted assistance, but they refused to change.
While I taught at Southern Seminary, the NAMB sent Ed Stetzer to serve as our Professor of North American Church Planting. One of his responsibilities was to plant churches in the Louisville area and involve the seminary community, especially seminary students, in those efforts. So, Ed’s interests and mine coincided.
Dr. Stetzer and I identified a location in the eastern part of the county that had no evangelical church of any kind. There was no SBC church nearby. When we began the church plant, a pastor in the eastern zone complained that we were planting the church “in his backyard.” Dr. Stetzer examined his claim and discovered that our church plant was five interstate highway exits away from that pastor’s church. Backyard indeed!
Dr. Stetzer later proposed starting a contemporary style church near the seminary. After a survey, I agreed and approved the project. I promised Ed that I would speak to the nearby SBC pastors about the church plant. When I spoke to one pastor, he protested, “Why plant a new church? Those people are welcome in my church.” I knew his church. I had preached for them, and it was a church whose membership consisted of older folks. Their worship style was traditional in every way. The proposed church was projected to be very contemporary in its worship. So, I asked him, “I’m sure you and your church would welcome these young adults. What would happen to you if you changed your worship enough to attract them?” He sighed and replied, “I would be fired within six weeks. So, you won’t have any problem from me, and I’ll call the other pastors on your list.” He did, and the new church, Sojourn Church, was planted. It prospered, and last I knew, they had five or six satellite congregations.
A missionary friend returned to the USA, and a Baptist state convention in the Bible Belt, hired him to be their Director of Church Planting. He resigned in frustration after a few years. Why so? He told me that he had meeting after meeting with the Directors of Missions for associations in his state. When he tried to enlist them in a church planting effort, they declined. He reported that they all said the same thing—If I promote a church plant, the nearby pastors get angry and threaten to withhold contributions to our association. I can’t afford to promote a church plant.
Let me add two more points. The late Lyle Schaller, a church growth researcher and writer, wrote that in order to grow a denomination must plant enough new churches annually to equal 3 percent of its member churches. The SBC has about 50,000 congregations. So, in order to grow the SBC needs to plant 1,500 new churches each year. We’re planting about 750, and that is one reason the SBC is in decline. To those who object that we have lots of churches already, I respond, “What kind of churches are they?” We have lots of traditional Anglo churches, but we need new churches that can reach young adults. We also need lots more Hispanic churches. Hispanics are the largest minority group now, and they are also the fastest growing.
So, how should we answer the question above? The answer is yes and no. Pastors do favor planting ethnic churches, but often they oppose planting Anglo churches.
