Right now I’m noticing churches everywhere in the U.S. are feeling the need to make cuts in their budgets because of the economy.  If history repeats itself, the first thing to go in church budgets is going to be “missions” (foreign and domestic).  While I don’t advocate this, I also don’t take a traditional view to things like missions/outreach budgets.  As your congregation navigates these financially challenging times, I’d like to speak a word to my supporters and friends. 

Why let money get in the way of supporting missions?  God doesn’t.  Let’s do missions in his image – by sending a person not money.  Maybe this is a good time for your church’s missions committee to consider something new (ancient?).  The next church that your congregation starts doesn’t have to cost you money.  Commission one or more of your own church members to start new churches in homes of their unbelieving friends and tell them not to leave their day jobs to do it!  

This is what we’re doing in East Hollywood.  As a full-time guy, I’ve been hired to be a coordinator for a laity-driven ministry.  I’m not setting out to start and pastor a new church.  I’m attempting to raise up such workers from the harvest.  The future leaders of the churches in East Hollywood are not going to be seminary trained.  They are going to be ordinary people.  We are doing this for many, many reasons – most of which are more important than the bottom line – but I do think it is a wise investment of kingdom resources.

To set the example, joining Meredith and me in this effort are Ed and Katie, two lay people who are not employed by a church but simply are the church.  They are on mission with Jesus wherever they go in life.  And for this season of their life they are choosing to start new churches with us. 

When I asked Ed and Katie to join us in this effort, they wanted to know what the time commitment would be.  I told them, “Give to this missionary effort the same number of hours you would normally give to an established congregation as a highly involved member of that congregation.”  That is what they have done. 

Side note: We are noticing that we are not burning out like we used to when we were highly involved members of a traditional congregation.  No longer are we responsible for keeping a myriad of programs running or recruiting Christians to fill those slots.  No longer are we responsible for preparing and delivering sermons and planning a big, complex Sunday event.  We’ve been commissioned to take the hours we used to pour into making the Sunday event happen, and pouring that into engaging the community and making disciples.  In their wisdom, the churches we came from didn’t send us out to clone them, as healthy as these supporting churches are.  They sent us out to start new churches.  And new churches for new people are going to look different. 

When we talk about starting new churches, we’re not talking about buildings, worship services, and the like.  We’re actually talking about making new disciples of Jesus and training these ordinary people to hear from God and obey him.  As this happens, these disciples make new disciples and together they form and lead communities of faith, centered around loving and obeying Jesus and transforming their communities.  These churches gather anywhere and everywhere – in homes, parks and everyday places.  If at some point they decide to hire one of their own to be a paid minister, or they decide to purchase or rent a building (something we wouldn’t recommend for the sake of the church planting movement), that decision is up to them, not us.  The new leaders of the churches (who came from the harvest) will decide if that is something they want to do.  And if so, they will fund it themselves.  Our part is not to fund everything and create dependency on “outside” support.  Our role is to reproduce more churches (communities of faith).  Not church buildings and church staff.  Churches. 

While it is not bad to pay a “church planter”, there are all sorts of reasons not to.  The point is, you should not feel obligated to pay your next church planter.  Nor should you let a financial crunch stop your church from participating with God in his mission on this planet!  ”Lay leaders” are biblical.  Lay leaders are easily reproducible across cultural, economic and national borders.  Lay leaders, who have a regular job, don’t have to worry about giving an off-putting response to the question, “So what do you do for a living?”  I could go on. 

If you really want to pay someone with your Missions/Outreach budget, pay a person to train lay people to reproduce disciples, leaders and churches.  In the long run, that will greatly decrease your bottom line, and your church will have a long lasting and wide-reaching impact through a laity-driven movement. 

That paid person could help you start a lay movement, asking questions like: Who on your pew has a heart for being missionaries in their own backyard?  Then train them and send them out to start new churches.  Give them permission to stop doing church with you and be church as a way of life, as long as they will teach the new disciples they make to do the same. 

They don’t need to bring a large group of already Christians with them.  Tell them their task is to focus on loving and influencing people who lack the joys of a life surrendered to Jesus.  Most of these people won’t come to a traditional church anyway because they’re fed up with church and religion. 

Here’s a tip: When you commission your next church planter, make it your default setting not to pick one of your ministers or a seminary-trained person in your midst.  They’re more likely to mess it up.  Send members in your congregation who are ordinary Jesus-followers who have already demonstrated they are taking the church to the people and leading them to Jesus.  They don’t have to be young.  And they don’t have to be college-educated.  Just send who God anoints. 

Then include them as a legitimate line item on your Missions/Outreach budget… with a proud “$0.00″ next to it! 

Categories: the how
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