Your Church Can Grow

According to Jim Griffith, himself not a Methodist, The United Methodist Church is the only denomination that has an intentional, systematic plan to plant new churches among the mainline churches in the United States. It is heartening to see how this is being lived out in several Annual Conferences. Last night I met Mark Appleyard, an Australian. The Western North Carolina Annual Conference has recruited Mark to plant the third campus of one of their healthy, growing congregations. When churches and conferences begin to search far and wide to achieve the goal of planting new churches, we are on the right track. The movement for planting churches is gaining steam. It needs to. Jim Griffith also said that the decade between 2010-2020 will show a steep decline in attendance and giving in existing churches.

Six of us from the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference traveled southward to Richmond, Virginia, on Sunday, November 8th to participate in the New Church Planter Leadership Institute. This is a training event that attempts to answer the question, “Is new church planting for me?”

The training started this morning with worship led by the Rev. Matt Poole of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference. Matt preached on the 5 excuses of Moses (Exodus 3).
1. Why me? What makes you think I could ever go to Pharoah and the lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?
A. God answers: “I’ll be with you.”
2. What do I tell them? (I.e. I don’t know what to tell them).
A. Tell, “I am who I am.”
3. They won’t trust me. They won’t listen to me (4:1)
A. God asks him what he has in his hand (a shepherd’s staff), i.e. use the gifts you already have.
4. I don’t talk well. I’ve never been good with words. I stutter and stammer.
A. I’ll be there with you–in your mouth. I’ll be there to teach you what to say.
5. Please, send somebody else!
A. You’ve got brother Aaron who can help you.

What is our excuse?

One of the most exciting initiatives to come out of our General Church is the Lay Missionary Planter Network. The idea is to train up laity to start new churches and reach new constituencies for Christ. We in Greater New Jersey are fortunate to be one of five Annual Conferences chosen to partner with the Path One team to identify, train and deploy laity for the purpose of starting new churches or new ministries. Not all of those trained will start a new church. Some will help by being part of a “Launch Team” for a new church plant. Read more about the LMPN . . .

Dr. Lovett Weems, head of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, sent an update today on how new church planting has made a significant difference for mainline churches. Among the insightful findings: “After years of declining new church starts, in the last ten years the number of new churches has reached the same high level as the 1950s . . . More than 70 percent of new congregations formed in the past ten years are comprised primarily of people of color, reversing the pattern of ethnicity found in churches started during the first ten years of the study period . . . Decline in membership and finances in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s can be seen as a result of the failure to begin new churches . . . Despite recent high numbers of new church starts, there will need to be higher levels of such starts to show growth.” (from Update, a monthly report to subscribers of Leading Ideas on the work of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. To read Weems complete article click here.

The 2008 Greater New Jersey Annual Conference approved the goal of starting at least one new church per year. This coincides with one of the four foci of our United Methodist Bishops of “creating new places for people” to worship God and live out their discipleship. There are many ways this can happen. A church could start a satellite campus or create a totally new worship service targeting a new group of people. A church could help start a new daughter church. The healthiest of churches are ones that reproduce!

There was a time in our United Methodist history that we started a new church every day–365 per year. Today our denomination starts approximately 75 new churches per year, but it closes as many. If we are to keep pace with population growth in the country and to maintain the current ratio of Methodists to the general population, we would need to start at least 250 new churches per year that average 200 in worship. The Bishops of The United Methodist Church have cast a vision for doing just that. They have articulated seven pathways for the church, the first of which is to start new congregations. To reach the goal of 250 new church plants per year we need to change our mindset. We need to embrace the idea of reaching (in the words of Lovett Weems) more people, younger people and more diverse people. Are we up to the challenge? In Greater New Jersey we hope to start at least two new churches within a given three year span. This is a modest goal, but achievable–especially if laity and clergy embrace the idea of planting new churches. Through the years experience has indicated that new church plants have the best chance to reach new constituencies of people–the new, younger, more diverse people we seek. What do you think?

An incubator for developing new faith communities.