Critical Issue #5 Stress on the Family

Critical Issue #4 The Challenge of Contextualization

Critical Issue #3 Turfish and Apathetic Churches

Critical Issue #2 Need for Leaders

And Critical Issue #1 is. . .

That’s right.  You guessed it.  The most commonly mentioned critical issue among 190 participants was money.  To be exact, 50% of them mentioned it.  While this may not sound like a high percentage, you need to remember the research methodology:  I only asked one question, and it was open ended.  That means, the respondents were not given a list of possible critical issues from which to select five.  They were simply asked the question and allowed to write anything they desired.  Of these responses, the topic of money broke down into two categories:

Start Up Costs

Many of the respondents noted that they were needing more money to assist them with ministry expenses.  Rental fees for property, equipment purchases, Bibles, tracts, and a multitude of other items would fall into this category. 

Personal Finances

By far, the most common category was that of the church planter’s personal income.  Also, the most emotionally charged responses came from planters when they wrote about the lack of personal finances.   Here are few comments received:

“I am so gracious for the financial support that I am receiving. . . but it is just too little and too short.  My net income from [denominational entity] is less than $1000 per month, and in Northern California where I live you cannot get a one-bedroom apartment for this amount.  It is very tough for someone like myself with a family.”

“My personal finances have been a struggle.  What I am paid to be a church planter is not enough to survive in the area in which I am to minister. . . . I cannot afford to live in the area/housing of which I minister, which is a hindrance.” (from a church planter in Utah)

“We are supported, at this point, far better than the majority of the planters in this area.  However, the duration of the support being three to five years is simply not long enough for most plants.” (from a church planter in New York)

I was in a conversation with a church planter in Indiana who shared with me how this issue affected him and his church planting strategy.  He told me that his funding would soon cease, and while he loathed the thought of reaching poeple so that the church could financially support him, he confessed that such a reality was in the back of his mind. 

(At this point, I want to offer you something to chew on–I hope to blog about it in the future:  Could critical issue #1 be a reason that many church planters are settling for planting churches via transfer growth?  Think about it. . . . If you are laboring among a soil that is apathetic to the gospel, then it is going to take a long time to see people come from the harvest field and covenant together as a local church–a timeframe that extends well beyond the typical financial support of most church planters.  Could critical issue #1 be a reason that most church planting in North America is not primarily defined as evangelism that results in new churches?) 

Is It Really the Most Critical Issue?

Of all the leaders in the Kingdom who should receive compensation for their labors, missionaries rank at the top of the list. These church planters are on the front lines of Kingdom advancement, laboring in trenches where the enemy is the most ferocious.  There is clear biblical support that speaks on matters related to supporting those doing such apostolic labors.  Therefore, I want you to know that I fully believe that is good and proper to provide financial support to missionaries.    

As a missiologist, I do believe money is the most critical issue facing U. S. and Canadian church planters, when it comes to felt needs.  Let’s face it. . . people have to eat.  Children need clothes.  And electric bills must be paid.  But as a missiologist, I also believe that critical issue #1 actually stems from a much deeper critical issue. 

A few years ago, I wrote an article for Theology for Ministry in which I argue the most critical issue today is a theological issue, particularly an ecclesiological issue.  And a related paper, I presented at the Evangelical Theological Society can be found HERE.  How we answer the question, ”What is the church (universal and local)?” will affect everything we do in church planting.  It will affect our methods and our strategy. It will affect the way we raise up leaders.  It will affect who can be a leader.  It will affect how we define church planter.   

And yes, our theology will affect how much money we believe is necessary to plant churches.

Let me give you an illustration.  I once asked a group of guys, “How much money is necessary to plant a church?”  One church planter in the group immediately responded, “$110,000. . . If you want to do it right.”  To which I asked the question, “What is your definition of ‘right’?” 

As people who think missiologically, we must think about critical issue #1, especially in light of the fact that over four billion people in the world do not know Jesus.

Practical Matters to Keep in Mind

1) Be aware of critical issue #1, and discuss it with your family before you begin your work.

2) Answer the question, “What is the church?”  Is your answer supported by the Scriptures, or does it contain a heavy dose of extra-biblical, culturally preferred aspects?  While the latter may not necessarily be bad, they may be hindering you from preaching the gospel in the fields and rapidly multiplying churches from the harvest.

3) Develop a theology of tentmaking (The Bible has much to say about this topic. Check out Paul’s perspective.). Are you called to be a tentmaker?  You may want to read an article that I wrote HERE.  Or consider being a bivocational church planter (HERE is an outstanding free book on bivocational church planting from the North American Mission Board, written by Steve Nerger.).  I tell church planters that even if they have full financial support for the first two or three years, they need to be working in the marketplace for theological, missiological, and strategic reasons(at least for the first year or two).  If you are a young college or high school student reading this blog, I want to encourage you to consider prayerfully getting a marketable skill and/or degree that will put you in contact with many unbelievers, from which you can plant churches.

4) Be realistic in your strategy development.  Before you start, answer the questions:  What will I do a few years into this work if my financial support expires and the church is not able to support me?  What will happen to the work if after a few years into it, that I have to shift from giving 40-60+ hours per week to taking on a another form of employment for 20-30 of those hours?

5) Determine now that you will not turn from your calling when your financial support ends.  I once was working with a church planter who said, “If God calls, He will provide.”  To which, I agreed and added, ”and sometimes God provides by giving you two hands, a mind, and a strong back so that you can get a job.”

6) Determine now that as a minister in God’s Kingdom that you are going to work to make sure that critical issue #1 is not so critical for future church planters.

7) If you are supervising, coaching, or mentoring church planters, you may want to read an article that I wrote based on these critical issues: “Five Things Church Planters Wished Their Supervisors Knew.”

Church planters are finding out that it is very difficult to locate solid leaders who are willing to assist them in the church planting task.  They are also discovering that many challenges come with raising up leaders as well. They recognize the need for healthy leadership, but struggle in obtaining or developing those leaders.

Few of us have been taught the value of multiplying leaders.  And even less have been taught how to do it.  This limitation may come from the contemporary leadership training model that most of us know:  develop leaders in a classroom.  Unfortunately, this paradigm is woefully inadequate for raising up leaders for both churches and church planting teams.

We reproduce what we know.  And we know what is modeled before us.  And church planters will tell you that leaders cannot be developed in a classroom.  Of course, there is a component of knowledge that is necessary for leadership development.  But, we must not forget that along with knowledge leaders must develop passion and skills.

Whenever we search for resources to assist church planers in developing leaders, we find that few exist. Sure there are a multitude of resources available addressing leadership development.  Yet, most of these are written to either the corporate world of business leadership or established church leadership. Therefore, if you are starting a business or if you are pastoring a church, there are some outstanding resources to assist you. But resources are very limited for missionaries needing assistance in leadership development.

Here are the best resources that I have found to date, written with the church planter in mind. A few years ago, Bob Logan and Neil Cole produced a very valuable resource, Raising Leaders for the Harvest. Dick Scoggins, wrote the books Building Effective Church Planting Teams: A Handbook for Team Leaders and Mentors and Leadership Development Guide. Both of Scoggins’ books are available for free (click on the links). 

It was out of my concern for healthy church planting teams that I wrote The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices for Church Planting Team Members. Drawing from the life of Barnabas, I show that team members must manifest the following practices:

1. Walks with the Lord
2. Maintains an Outstanding Character
3. Serves the Local Church
4. Remains Faithful to the Call
5. Shares the Gospel Regularly
6. Raises up Leaders
7. Encourages with Speech and Action
8. Responds Appropriately to Conflict

I also provide a guide for evaluating potential team members in light of these eight practices.

While the main purpose of this post is to reveal to you critical issue #2, I also wanted to extend a challenge to other church planters. Resources are desperately needed to assist church planters in developing leaders.  You need to write such resources and tell us how to be more effective in this area.

Now let’s review: Critical Issue #5, Critical Issue #4, and Critical Issue #3

We now come to critical issue #1. . .  and I bet you can guess what it is. . . . Stay tuned!

Church planters in the study noted that Critical Issue #3 involved the reality of turfish and/or apathetic churches (and church leaders) in their contexts.   

Turfish churches are those who believe the community (always undefined) is their “turf,” and they are going to reach everyone in the community with the gospel (though they are not really reaching many people at the moment), and will fight against anyone who wants to come into their community to tell others about Jesus.

Apathetic churches are those who are so busy with their labors they really do not care about the work of any church planters.  They are not opposed to such missionary efforts, just apathetic. 

The church planters in my study were very surprised at the responses they received from other churches, responses that ranged from anger to apathy.  They were also very surprised at the number of churches with large amounts of resources (e.g., people, money) who had no desire to partner with anyone entering into their communities. 

Few churches in the U.S. and Canada are presently involved in church planting.  While there has been a growing interest in church planting in the past five years, the numbers are still very low.     

At a recent presentation, Ed Stetzer shared that only 28% of all Protestant churches are involved in church planting in some way, with that stat dropping to 3% when we only look at churches who are the primary sponsoring churches.

There are a few reasons why I believe this critical issue is the present reality.  Keep in mind some of these reasons are brought on by church planters themselves. 

Some churches are ignorant as to what is biblical church planting.  They believe church planters are coming into their communities to “compete” against them.  Granted, some church planters have done (and are doing) this ungodly practice.  Some churches believe church planting is about intentional sheep-stealing.  Granted, many church planters have done (and are doing) this ungodly practice.  Other churches lack a Kingdom vision, and fail to have a theology and missiology that includes church planting.  Some churches are in a maintenance mode and are so inwardly focused they are concerned with their survival alone.  Other churches are already so involved in reaching their communities that partnering with another ministry would result in a loss of focus and a lack of effectiveness.   

Practical Matters to Keep in Mind

1) Do not be surprised if established churches in the community do not welcome you and your team with open arms.  If they do, that is wonderful!

2) Do not act inappropriately toward the turfish and apathetic churches.  Remember, such churches make up the Bride of Christ.  The Groom does not appreciate it when others do not act appropriately toward the Bride.  Remain Christ-like.  Remember the words of Paul, “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10, ESV).

3) Do what the Lord has called you to do, remembering the biblical expression of church planting is evangelism that results in new churches, not sheep-stealing. 

4) Attempt to befriend and work with evangelical churches in the area, and let them know your Ethical Guidelines.

5) Be thankful for the churches who will partner with you.  If you have a great partnering church, know that a large number of church planters would love to have that support.

6) If you are leading an established church, don’t be turfish or apathetic.  While you may not be able to participate, please be encouraging to the church planters.

7) If you are considering leading your church to be involved in church planting, you may want to read a couple of articles that I’ve written HERE and HERE.

Now we come to Critical Issue #4: The Challenge of Contextualization.  When the church planters noted this issue they were referring to the difficulties experienced in effectively communicating the gospel and planting churches in diverse contexts.

They found out that church planting methods as advocated in the books of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and shared in the conferences, were not as applicable to the 21st century as thought.  Such discrepancy also resulted in conflict between those in the trenches and their supervisors who had planted churches 5, 10, 15 years prior, and expected their church planters to be able to do likewise.

Remember, the gospel is always relevant to every people, in any location, at any time. . . . But we’re not.

While I did not study the ethnic breakdown of the church planters or the ethic composition of the people to whom they were evangelizing, my guess is that the overwhelming majority were Anglo and working primarily among an Anglo, middle class demographic.  If such was the case, it is likely that these church planters were also struggling with the receptivity to the gospel among their population segment.

Why, do I think such was the case?

Based on personal experience, anecdotal evidence, and the experience of others, I am coming to believe that the Anglo, middle class, majority of the U. S. population is not as receptive to the gospel as they were from the 1950s-1990s (I know some of you are not surprised at this statement.).  I have sensed a growing apathy toward the gospel among this group.  And growing apathy usually means a greater resistance to the gospel.  And greater resistance means fewer and fewer conversions.  And few conversions mean that it takes a long time to plant a church among this population segment (Of course, I’m not talking about transfer growth church planting here, but a biblical model of church planting.  I’ll save my transfer church planting discussion for a future post.)

Note:  Do you see how Critical Issue #4 and Critical Issue #5 may be related?

Practical Matters to Keep in Mind

1) Church planting is more art than science.  You can only learn so much in a book (even in my books) or a classroom (even in my classes).

2) Contextualization can be very challenging.  How well do you know your people group or population segment geographically, demographically, culturally, spiritually, historically, politically, and linguistically?

3) If you are supervising, coaching, directing church planters, make sure you recognize that since they are presently in the trenches (allow me to assume you are not), they are the experts on their contexts and the challenges in communicating the gospel.  Hold them accountable, but be patient with them.  Allow them flexibility and freedom, but be a wise steward with your calling as well.

4) If you are attempting to evangelize the U. S., Anglo, majority and plant churches from out of the harvest with them, then recognize that you may be going to serve among an apathetic soil.  If such is the case in your area, then be prepared, trust in the Holy Spirit’s timing, and don’t limit your labors on a 2-3 year time frame.

My desire was to find out what were the five most critical issues church planters were facing at that moment in time.  I wanted to know what they felt were the most pressing matters.

My research methodology was a very simple one.  I emailed them one question: “What do you believe are the five most critical issues in North American church planting?”  Remember, I said this was an informal study (But, hey, when you are working with a research budget of $0, and no research team, you have to start somewhere.).     

Since the time of the study, I have continued to ask the same question to church planters, denominational leaders, those coaching church planters, etc.  And their responses are either the same as the findings from my study, or very close.

While I have discussed the findings of this study in different publications, this is the first time I have blogged about it.  I am starting this series today for three reasons:

1) I want you to know the major issues pressing on church planters in the United States and Canada today. 

As a church planter, you need to be aware of these matters, long before you and your team enter the field.  If you are already on the field, you need to be aware of these matters and strategize accordingly.  If you are supervising, mentoring, shepherding church planters, in order to better minister to them, you need to know what is on their minds–even if they are not verbally communicating these to you. 

2) I want to extend a call to others to take up the challenge to do a better, and up-to-date study on the critical issues facing church planters.   

We need to know the challenges and how best to equip others for such labors.  Find out if my informal findings are still true.  If not, what are the new critical issues?

3) I want to challenge us to develop new resources to assist church planters in these areas.

So, today we begin with critical issue #5–Stress on the Family (Yes, I’m counting down, so you will have to stay tuned for the other issues.).

The fifth-most common response that I heard from the field was the amount of pressure placed on the church planting family.  Here are a few of responses from the field:

“Relational stress on families is great.  Church planters often move into areas where they have no relational support networks.  Mother churches often do not embrace the church planter’s family.  Couples with young children are especially vulnerable, since they depend on support networks to cope with the daily challenges of parenting.” 

“Young parents often miss out on opportunities to refresh themselves as a couple because they have no one with whom to leave their children.  Many of our young church planters arrive on the scene as ‘double income, no kids’ couples.  Yet the kids come; the wife has to quit her job; the family is left with one income.  And you’d be amazed how often this happens just as the church plant’s outside support is coming to an end.”

“Burning out for Jesus stinks, especially when it is not just the church planters who burn out but their wife and kids, too. . . . My wife and kids come before my ministry and always will.  After God, they are my highest priority.  The people who plant with me need to see this demonstrated.”

“The planter must at all costs take care of his/her family.  Church planting can be the worst thing that could ever happen to a family.  A planter must have as much of a plan for nurturing his family as he does for growing a church. It’s a shame that planters can be the very ones who turn those closest to themselves away from God.”

Two resources I believe will be of some assistance, particularly to those of you who are going to be planting and pastoring churches, are from the North American Mission Board.  The Board did a very insightful and helpful study on church planting wives (the best research on this topic to date).  You should read the report HERE.  I find that it compliments and provides insight to critical issue #5.  Out of their research, they published the outstanding book My Husband Wants to be a Church Planter. . . So What will that Make Me?  You can download it for FREE HERE. 

Another helpful resource, found HERE, is a video from my great friend and pastor, Dustin Neeley.  A portion of it addresses pastoring the family (begins at 2:40).  Check it out. 

These resources will provide assistance to you and your family as you begin to talk about and plan for critical issue #5.

Practical Matters to Keep in Mind:

1) Don’t neglect your daily time with the Father.

2) Home life does not have to be perfect. . . just next to perfect.   (remember, the world and new believers are watching us in our good times and bad times)

3) If your family falls, the missionary work falls even harder.   (remember, the ripple effect on the lives of new believers, new churches, and unbelievers in the community)

4) Take days of rest to be with your family.

5) Develop a family strategy for nurturing your family and bringing them along in the journey.