The insanity of some church planting …

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You’ve likely heard the old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome.

In that case, could it be some of our church planting methods are insane?

In many instances, what we call church planting is launching a new plant comprised of as many people as possible who are already Christians; starting with a “core group” that is large enough to be a small church.

With such a “large” start, what often happens is this little congregation (that came together without any evangelistic effort) is excited about it’s new life at first, but quickly becomes program-oriented. Why? Because you already have enough people to be tempted to turn inward to minister to an existing congregation. The evangelistic impact of this kind of church planting is nominal.

By planting a full-sized church (in America, the average church is less than 90 people; many church plants start with a core group that size or larger), we are often simply starting another church that is more inwardly focused than it is mission focused.

Now here’s a novel idea: What if we did more church planting like that done in the New Testament? Where smaller teams were sent out to proclaim the Gospel and the work was about building a new body of believers from among the lost in the community being served? This is how we often approach “foreign missions” work, but not at all how we work at expanding God’s kingdom here at home.

Maybe that’s why we routinely get reports of lives saved and hundreds or thousands of baptisms from the foreign field, and continue to see churches closing their doors here at home.

Perhaps if we changed our method of planting a small church full of Christians, and sent teams into communities to build relationships from which they could share the Gospel, we would see more lost people come to Christ right here in our own towns and cities.

Or we could just keep planting full-sized churches that turn inward shortly after being planted.

Doesn’t that sound insane?

Scotty