Have you been asked to support church planting because of what it will do for your church or denomination (or your non-denomination as the case may be)?  I used to give these well-intended presentations, but now I’m skeptical.  They go something like this: “Our brand of church is in a state of decline compared to other denominations and the U.S. population growth rate. If we don’t do something, our brand is liable to become obsolete!  We’ll lose our identity.  Let’s not lose our slice of the Churched Population Pie. We need to reach more people to keep our brand of church from going extinct.  The way to do this is by starting more of our kind of churches!  We’ll get to know our neighbors and meet their felt needs.  They’ll see how caring we are and our brand of church will become more attractive.  When they come to our newly planted churches, we’ll win them to Jesus.  Imagine it.  Lost people will be saved, and our brand of church will stay relevant in the 21st century.  That’s why we need to plant churches!”

I get it, but then I don’t get it.  Really, why do we need to keep our slice of the pie?  Why focus our energies on preserving our brand of church?  Jesus Christ said the church he builds will not be stopped (Matthew 16:18).  He didn’t make this promise for your brand of church.  The Church will live on, but maybe church brands, denominations and non-denominations have life cycles.   

But even if your and my brands of church are here to stay, is preserving them really the goal of joining God in mission?  Our “bigger slice of the pie” presentations have emphasized a self-serving reason for Christians to engage their communities, and I think this will come back to haunt us.   Your community desperately needs you to show them the Selfless Savior, not the Self-Preserving Church.  So you want to introduce lost and broken people to the person and hope of Christ.  In the process, God may ask you to give up traditions dear to your heart to show His kind of love to your community.  Jesus’ teachings were full of such ironies.  Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and the humble will be exalted.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Holding onto life leads to death, and dying to oneself leads to life.  For those of us who have grown attached to our ways of doing church, maybe the way to hold onto our church identity is to let go of it.  To borrow another analogy from Jesus Christ, you may be required to let the kernel of wheat fall to the ground and die so that new life can sprout where you are (John 12).  Are you willing to let go of finding your identity inyour church brand and find it in Christ alone?  What wouldn’t you give up so that others could know Him, too?

Go ahead, form new communities of faith, but do it out of sacrificial love.  And spur others on to do the same.  Live this way because you have wild love for God and people, not because church planting could preserve our brand of church and make us successful.  You are preaching Christ and him crucified, not your way of doing church.  The road to becoming a risk-taking, outward-focused church is not paved with self-preservation.

Categories: the why
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