On Strategy and Other Men's Foundations
On a related note, Matt asked specifically if it’s “strategic enough” to plant churches in out-of-the-way places where the Gospel has not taken root. I think the answer to that question also is, Yes, that’s strategic. I would think if Paul had a choice between planting another church in Rome or planting one in a Spanish village, he’d take Spain in a heartbeat.
Which brings up another question, one I’d direct to my own denomination especially: If the biblical model and strategic thinking would tell us to plant churches in unchurched areas, why is that not happening? And why do we keep planting more and more and more churches where the gospel is already firmly established---or at least where there are already thousands of evangelical churches---when there are places in the country where there are almost none?
Take a look at this fascinating study done by the SBC’s North American Mission Board. I’ve only looked over it a little bit, but consider this: From 1990 to 2000, just to pull one statistic, the number of Southern Baptist churches in the 17 states of the South (including D.C.) rose from 30,690 to 33,119. That’s 2429 new churches in easily the most churched region of the country. With a population of 100.2 million, the South had one Southern Baptist church for every 3027 people.
Now take the six states of New England, population 14 million. From 1990 to 2000, the number of Southern Baptist churches rose from 112 to 157. Now, that’s a 40% increase, but it’s also a grand total of 45 new churches in ten whole years. All of which comes out to almost 89,000 people for every SB church in New England.
Quite a difference.
Now, I don’t want to speak rashly. There may be some very good reasons for all this, but it does just make me ask “Why?” Why, with that sort of disparity, are we still planting almost 250 new churches a year in the South, and only 45 a decade in New England? One possible answer I gleaned from reading the report is that even at that high rate of church planting in the South, we’re not keeping up with the population growth. So in 1990, there were only 2784 people for every Southern Baptist church (compared to 3027 in 2000). Apparently, we lost ground, and so goes the thinking I suppose, we should plant more churches to try to keep up.
Maybe. But even so, I wonder if our resources might not be better used in trying to knock that 89,000-people-per-church figure for New England down a bit, instead of planting another two thousand churches in the South (across the street from one another, presumably) in order to keep its people-to-churches ratio at 3027 rather than 3300 or something.
I'm sure this is a big discussion, and there may very well be good reasons for all this. But the report raised a few questions in my mind, questions which I have to hope are also being raised in the hearts and minds of NAMB leaders. In fact, I'd love to hear from someone who knows: What is the strategy behind continuing to plant so many churches in the relatively well-evangelized South, while basically leaving New England to itself? Is it that New England is too hard a place? Are churches just failing there? Is it a lack of interest among men who are wanting to plant churches? Is there some other reason? If anyone can throw some light on all this, I would really love to hear from you.
Greg, do you remember me from Youth Led Revivals back in '97 or '98? It has been a long time.
I see your point. No doubt that we should be planting more churches were there are none. However, I am involved in planting a church in a very churched area right now. There are a ton of churches in Wilson, NC. However, there is no gospel-loving churches here. All the SBC churches have gone the way of entertainment and purpose-driven. We saw a huge need for a Bible-saturated church in this area and we are seeing people come to us famished. The problem is not that there is a lack of churches. The problem is that the churches are losing their grip on the gospel.
Posted by: Justin Childers | Jul 9, 2007 1:45:33 PM
I tend to agree with Justin. I pastor a church in a mid-sized town in the midwest. There are probably 200 churches in and around our city. However, the vast majority of them are either apostate, heretical, man-centered, seeker-driven, or otherwise undesirable. So, while on paper this may appear to be an evangelized area, in reality, I'm fearful that there are precious few Bible-centered, Gospel-preaching churches in this "Christian" town. Statistics of this kind (i.e., how many churches in a given area) can be very misleading and unhelpful.
Posted by: Tim Raymond | Jul 9, 2007 1:59:50 PM
I would also chirp in to say that it may be an issue among some church planters (and pastors too) as to where they are really willing to go. Assuming everyone called to ministry is ready to minister "wherever He leads, I'll go" just isn't true of many pastors/planters. There are a lot of practical issues that tend to take a lot of weight for people in these decisions (how close to parents, grandma, old friends, climate, culture, etc.)
I couldn't begin to guess what % of our church planters have geography issues. My guess is that it is at least 20-30%. But I thank God for the men who are willing to go wherever the Lord leads- they are many as well.
Reason #2 I would offer is that when our churches plant other churches, they frequently tend to be on the other side of town, or the next town over, and there is some overlap of people from mother church to church plant. Practically, that is a lot easier to manage than going out of state, and easier to hold each other accountable. So heavily saturated church areas are going to be more prone to multiply faster than anywhere else. I have trouble seeing that dynamic changing, and I am not convinced it needs to change, particularly in situations like the one Justin describes.
Reason #3 I might offer is that in the Northeast, there could be more of a sense of hardening against evangelical Christianity because of the influence of Roman Catholicism. I know Baptist friends who tried serving there that were considered cultists by several Catholic families in that community. In the South, Baptists and some other evangelical denominations still maintain some level of cultural credibility, even among some of the lost.
Posted by: Brian Hamrick | Jul 9, 2007 3:27:01 PM
When your church planting strategy is built from and for a southern (baptist) culture, it flops in the Northeast (or the Midwest). It is much easier to telemarket disgruntled baptists in the south to get a 200+ attendance on the first day of a new SBC church plant (which one man came to Iowa to do) than to go out and "witness, win & baptize" 200 Iowans, steeped in the family tradition of a mainline denomination, who slowly contemplate their decisions.
Posted by: Eric Schumacher | Jul 9, 2007 4:26:54 PM
Those reading - please come! We Christian New Englanders are few, we are lonely, overworked, tired, harassed and often despised - we need you in New England!!! No excuses (there are lots of excuses) - please come!
Yes, I'm PCA - but we would love brothers and sisters in Christ up here in New England. It's a big mission field - and you don't need shots. Please come and plant churches.
Posted by: Chris Dattilo | Jul 9, 2007 7:28:49 PM
Greg,
I agree that something is amiss. To answer the question about NAMB's strategy...
1. Sometimes there is not much strategy behind what they do. Largely, it is a free for all. If you come to them, say you want to plant a church in Birmingham, and pass the tests...you go to Birmingham.
2. Where there is strategy, there is, many times, a woeful lack of support. When I was graduating seminary, Seattle was NAMB's focus city. I was pumped about it. I interviewed with a NAMB rep and here is what he told me:
"After you graduate, I suggest you move on up to the Puget Sound, get a job, figure out where you might want to start a church, and then contact us and we'll give you up to $10,000 in start-up money."
This was their idea of "strategic focus." No connection to an existing local church in the Pac NW. No salary. No real advice about HOW to do things. Just "move up there and see what happens." Tough to do when you live in Memphis and have no disposable income.
My point is this. We (the SBC) talk a lot about strategy. But, often, when the rubber meets the road, we leave our church planters out on a pretty weak limb (with the IMB as a marvelous exception!). Not very many NAMB church planters are adequately supported (which I think would surprise the average church member). And, I don't believe, many are strategically guided to the least reached areas.
I propose a radical restructuring at NAMB.
*Get out of the literature business (let Lifeway do their job) and the parachurch business (i.e. plant churches rather than ski-resort ministries, etc.).
*Slim down the administrative staff dramatically.
*Make sure that EVERY church planter has a solid, nearby church encouraging him, helping him, and holding him accountable.
*Devote 90% of total income to church-planting salaries.
*Put all church-planting money into church plants that are happening in the least-reached states (NE and Pac NW, especially).
Call it my five-star plan for reforming NAMB!
If we actually spent the bulk of the money on church plants in unreached areas...I guarantee we'd have planted more than 45 churches in New England in a ten year span!
My rant has ended. Hope it lights a few more fires to pray for and encourage changes in Alpharetta.
Posted by: Kurt Strassner | Jul 9, 2007 8:47:52 PM
I want to echo what Kurt said. This has been almost exactly my experience with NAMB.
In fact, when I approached the Nehemiah Project leader at one seminary and expressed interest in going to the Northeast, he told me that I would be "eaten alive" with my southern accent, and I should consider planting a church in the South.
So far, the message I've heard from NAMB is "We need to plant more churches! You want to be a church planter? Great! Go raise some money and do it. Let us know how that works out for you."
Posted by: Andy Chance | Jul 10, 2007 8:53:08 AM
One issue with which NAMB must deal is the cultural limitations NAMB puts on church planting.
Very few church planters to New England could succeed in New England while toeing the line on such extrabiblical NAMB mandates as Total Abstinence from alcohol.
Consider that the solid, reformed, baptist church of which I was a member back in New England had one elder who would invite folks over to his house for wine tastings, and another who brewed his own beer.
This in no way compromised the church's moral authority to discipline a member for drunken-ness, and hold him to a standard of total abstinence because he lacked control.
Southern Accents can definitely be a barrier to people opening their lives to you up north. Hudson Taylor dressed as a Chinese man to reach the chinese; SBC church planters can be intentional about gradually increasing the latitude of their accents, and most folks' accents "syncretize" with the local accent over time.
But Church Planting in New England is a slow process, and not for the impatient. In an SBC obsessed with numerical growth, Church Planting in New England is a black hole. Outside the Boston area, you're just not going to see megachurches. You'll see smaller churches that look and act like megachurches because that is their ministry paradigm, but there are no true megachurches outside of Boston. One statistic that I've heard is that it costs at least $250,000 to get a church off the ground, and if things go very well, that will mean that in 10 years' time, that church will have grown to 450 or so attending on a given sunday, and 300+ members. Church Planting in New England is expensive, and it is not sexy if you're enamored of numerical growth.
If the SBC wishes to overcome these obstacles, they could start by no longer proposing these ridiculous "non-binding" resolutions on non-biblical, cultural beliefs such as Total Abstinence from Alcohol, and passing one on accountability in church membership.
Those are two major institutional barriers to the SBC planting churches in New England. I don't see the situation getting better very soon.
Posted by: G. F. McDowell | Jul 11, 2007 9:54:45 AM
As a New England church planter (SBC) for the last 9 years, I'd say it's definitely harder to gather a crowd but in the end the converts you see are authentic and hungry to grow and change the world. It's taken us this long to break the 200 barrier and now we're dreaming of 50 churches of the same size by 2020.
Posted by: Robert Krumrey | May 14, 2008 8:38:16 PM