Imagine the following scenario. A church plant starts up. It has sound expository preaching, the right administration of the sacraments, biblical church discipline, regular evangelism, and joyful fellowship, but many empty seats.
A year later, the situation looks similar. The growth is slow, almost a whisper. Pressure begins to mount. Funds are drying up. The seats need to be filled. Then the reality sets in: The old way is not working. Remember the Waylon Jennings song: “Did old Hank really do it this way?” Well, the church planter may start to ask, “Did Paul really do it this way? Because it doesn’t seem very effective. We need something more up-to-date. We need something that will attract people. Something that will produce a spark.”
Are there any church planters who can resonate with this story?
Depending on where you live, it may seem like few people are hungry for the gospel. According to recent statistics, only 10 to 29 percent of people in Europe believe in God. In America, 65 percent of adult professing Christians believe that “everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God,” and 56 percent believe “God accepts the worship of all religions.” We’re not seeing three thousand people added to the church following a single sermon. We don’t see crowds of secular souls rushing to join biblical churches.
Don’t get me wrong. We have families and individuals in our network of church plants who are growing rapidly in their devotion to the Lord Jesus. We have seen people converted, relationships restored, sin put to death, and leaders raised up. We have witnessed God answer prayers in remarkable ways.
But in general, people aren’t flocking to the church in waves. There aren’t copious amounts of conversions. This lack of hunger is disappointing for all Christians, but it can create a significant problem for the church planter.
Numbers, Numbers, Numbers
All church planters feel a pressure to grow numerically. To put it bluntly, people must show up if a church plant is to survive. But what do we do when spiritual apathy surrounds us? What do we use to attract people if it appears the gospel is not “working”? What happens when the ordinary means of grace — such as preaching, prayer, evangelism, the sacraments, and genuine fellowship — don’t seem like enough to grow a church? How the church planter answers will determine the direction of the church plant, for better or worse.
Perhaps this is why many church-planting books and workshops tend to be formulaic and pragmatic. “Kids’ programs,” “music style,” “team dynamics,” and “seeker-friendly attractions” are popular buzzwords when it comes to church planting; these are purported ways to draw people in the doors. While matters such as music and how to educate children are crucial to consider, are these really what made the apostolic church so effective?
Let’s turn to the pages of the Bible to find out what made the early Christians tick. How did the apostles plant and grow their churches? What gave them such power?
The Secret Is in the Sovereign
The first question a wise church planter asks before he plants is, “Who is head of this church?” Is it me? Is it my denomination? Is it the congregation? Any planter worth his salt will answer none of the above. It is Christ’s church!
But who is this Christ? Do we see him as the King of the cosmos, the One who has all authority and power and dominion in heaven and on earth? Do we operate in light of this reality? It’s one thing to say we believe this theologically, but often our actions say something else. Do we admit that Christ is King but then feel forced to muster up our own strength, wisdom, ingenuity, or gimmicks in order to establish the church we are planting? Do we feel the need to rely on sociology, pragmatism, or carnal attractions in order to get people in the doors? Do we feel like the message of the cross won’t work in today’s society, and thus that we need to lay the foundation with something else?
When commissioning the disciples to go to the nations, Christ didn’t just say, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” but also that he has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18, 20). The reign of Christ is present tense, not future. He reigns right now! The writer of Hebrews says, “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3). The phrase “right hand” is a reference to present power and honor.
Christ has been endowed with an absolute kingly power. He is not merely King of the church but King of the galaxy. And because this is true, we should expect certain consequences — one of them being his aid in church planting. We trust that Christ is going to marshal all of the resources, help, power, and open doors that we need when planting his church. He’s going to bring in the right people and keep away the wrong people. When it comes to spiritual warfare, no matter how fierce the struggle, we can count on Christ to subdue all of his enemies. We can be optimistic that Christ will come through for us in our church planting efforts — assuming we are doing it his way, not ours. It is his church, after all. He cares for it. He will defend it. But he also has a specific way in which he wants it planted.
Sole Source of Power
This leads us to our second set of questions. How does Christ intend for his churches to be planted? What was the way of the early church? What we find in the pages of Scripture is the powerful movement of the Holy Spirit, which led to effective evangelism, preaching, fellowship, and Christian love. That is the order. Without the Holy Spirit, the early church would have been helpless.
Perhaps the reason we feel the need to resort to pragmatism is because we lack power from the Holy Spirit. When the gospel doesn’t seem to be “working,” we often feel compelled to try something else, especially in the growth-focused world of church planting. But when we resort to other measures, we are no longer acting in dependence on God’s Spirit, and we are no longer planting churches in the apostolic way. Soon, we may find our spiritual power further withered, causing us to depend even more on worldly strategies.
So, how do we get more power or, as the old guys used to say, more “unction” from the Spirit? Well, the early church prayed. Is it any surprise that in the book of Acts we find corporate prayer meetings in almost every chapter? Is it any wonder we find individuals praying on rooftops, in homes, in jails, and by the seaside? Vital to the early church’s power was prayer.
Nearly every church planter readily admits the importance of prayer, but in comparison to all of the theories and formulas out there for planting a church, why is prayer typically so far down on our functional priorities? We emphasize launches, meeting people, branding, and other thin tactics. Too often, we neglect prayer and the Holy Spirit. Yet where the Holy Spirit is at work, branding and expensive lights become almost irrelevant.
As church planters, maybe we would accomplish more if we ceased our busy rounds of activity and strategizing for a season and simply waited on God in prayer. What if we shut down our extraneous events and activities and held more prayer meetings? It may be that the Father who sees us in secret would reward us (Matthew 6:6).
Doing the Impossible
If you had looked at the church plants in the first couple centuries after Christ, what chance would you have given them for survival? Would you have guessed that Christianity would spread throughout the Roman Empire into Europe and even modern-day India — into some of the darkest, most brutally superstitious territories on earth? Almost surely not.
But by AD 150, there were some 40,000 Christians. In AD 200, there were about 218,000. By AD 250, the number rose to over a million. In the third century, Tertullian (155–240) could remark that Christians filled “cities, villages, markets, the camp itself, town councils, the palace, the senate, the forum. . . . Nearly all the citizens of all your cities are Christians.”
Did they grow like this with fancy buildings and pragmatism, or was it the simple message of the cross attended by the power of the Holy Spirit? Time and again, when things are bleakest, our Lord shakes the status quo and upends the nations through healthy, biblical churches that operate by his word and Spirit moving in the regular life of the church.
What do you say, church planter? Look at the landscape today: People are in dire need of Christ. But planting a church can feel impossible. The devil hates new churches. So, what you need is not more sociology, charisma, psychology, and man-centered plans. You need a fresh glimpse of the King of kings.
