What A Church Plant Does

On Monday, September 22, Mike Newman and I were installed as Texas District Mission and Ministry Facilitators. The Texas Board of Directors set time aside in their agenda for this. The Texas District staff was in attendance and I am very grateful to all. Rev. Robert Preece was the liturgist and Rev. Ken Hennings installed us. Mike is serving Area C and I am serving Area A. Areas B and D are served by Paul Krentz and Lou Jander respectively.

The sermon text was Jonah. Yes, the book of Jonah. Robert read through the book and commented along the way. I indeed learned some things and saw this event from a different angle. For that I am very grateful.

Rev. Preece also made mention that the Bible is filled with the idea of planting churches.

Well, one thought leads to another and my thinking at that point went like this.

There is a biblical principle of planting churches.
A metaphor that describes a church is a plant.
The church has been described with the biological metaphor of a plant.

What does a plant do?

A plant can be decorative.
A plant, to be healthy, needs to be trimmed.
A plant can provide food.
A plant can provide shade (as in the case of Jonah).
A plant can reproduce (there are those you can't stop like bind weed or "bullheads" which have thorns that hurt like the dickens).

What does a plant need?

A plant needs water.
A plant needs nutrition.

What does a plant give?

In other words, without a human being using a plant for some purpose listed above, what is the function of a plant?
Well, I recall that plants convert (deliberate use) poison (Carbon Dioxide) into oxygen. That is what it does.

The plant may or may not be decorative or healthy or a source of food. It may not provide shade, but one thing it cannot help but do is convert CO2 into Oxygen. In other words, without plants we would die. But plants give life. And for all the other things about plants, this particular contribution is one that most of us take for granted.

But there it is. The purpose of the church. The purpose is to give life to a world that is suffocating. Without the oxygen of the Gospel, people die. And that oxygen is available from plants about which books are written for their size or beauty, all things to celebrate. But that oxygen is also available from plants that are not noticed. Size is not the issue. Beauty is not the issue. Location is not the issue.

As one of my professors pointed out, metaphors break down when it comes to describing the Living, Triune God and so also describing His body, the church. This metaphor is no exception. But I think that we need to recall that what we do in our words and actions, as members of the body of Christ, brings life to the world through Jesus' death and resurrection. Words filled with grace, patience applied, forgiveness extended; these done in joyful response to salvation given from the cross alone are a breath of fresh air full of Life.

Thanks, Robert, for stimulating the thinking. And I did hear what you said.

"Going" to West Texas

I just ordered two books to read in the coming week. One is by Joel Rainey. The title is Planting Churches in the Real World. The subtitle is, "If you are a planter drunk with vision, this will sober you up." I am not sure what Rainey will say about this, but what I know is there is a real tendency in the church to look for the "silver bullet" or "key" to something. It was true with me early in my ministry. I was looking for the "key" to growth. We want to solve the problems of family, employment, finance, retirement, relationships, and growing a congregation in glorious and sweeping ways over a period of time characterized in, oh, say, an instant. We don't know patience as God knows patience, do we?

There is of course only one "key" as it were and the thing is, this "key" is instant and complete and total, without qualification. The "key" is called the Gospel. And the difficulty that human beings have with the Gospel (at least one aspect) is we cannot control how or where or when it does its thing. We know that the Gospel is connected with the Word, the Cross, repentance, forgiveness and that it is ours by God's grace through faith; but that work is God's doing. We, as God's people, have simply been called to go with this message to the world, to the nations, to our neighbors.

Even though we simply go, going is not so simple. How does this look? Does it look like a missionary with a pith helmet? Does it look like a pastor in a pulpit? Does it look like a person in shorts and sandals playing volleyball? How about if it looks like a Sunday School teacher who comes across a young student who wonders if his parents love him because the parents are getting a divorce? It looks like all of this and more to the end of time itself.

In the book of Acts there is a point where one commentator described God's people as "gossiping the gospel." It was like, "Did you hear about Jesus? No? You know they killed Him, right? Well, now He's alive!" Imagine that conversation over the backyard fence. The point is, the conversation was natural and even casual in nature, though the content was profoundly urgent and even unnatural for people.

Well, the picture of planting churches is often presented as grand and glorious. The reality is it is hard work. Rainey will say that the average new church is less than 100 after four years. He is talking about church plants in the city. And while such strategy of planting new churches for building the kingdom of God is certainly worthy of exploration it may not be feasible in some ministry contexts. Still the call to "go" is given and cannot be denied.

In my time on the Navajo Indian Reservation I learned some things about working in isolation. It's hard. It's lonely. Resources are limited. We could not buy whatever came to mind. There was a level of creativity called for in the lack of materials and in the presentation to a people and culture who looked at the world in a manner very different than this American German from Northern Minnesota. What a challenge. On the other hand, it was marvelous. The going with the Gospel called for a reliance on God's spirit to work through the conversations and the actions of ministry, all of which were covered with His grace and patience. Praise God, He did as He said. People did come to faith in those conversations. There would be no book written about it. There would be no seminar developed to find a new way to evangelize from it. But people had a new hope where before they were hopeless.

Parenthetically, I would point out that the rural community embraces values in ways that the urban community can only dream to realize. I am writing about that in my "West Texas Currents." The rural community has access to the awe-filled nature of God in creation, in relationships, in life and death issues, and in communities in measure that is frustrated in the city. I've been in both places. I digress.

As I read Rainey's book, I'll bring comments about it. The second book is by David T. Olson titled The American Church in Crisis. This is a study that developed a database of over 200,000 congregations in this country. In our communities, we have watched Sunday's becoming our second Saturday's. Numbers in the church have been unchanged and have even declined some while the population has exploded in some parts of the country. Olsen will confirm some of our local observations. I am hoping that it will be an interesting read.

Until next time and still working at it,

sjm