Pre-fab church or cosy coffee table chat? - Walking the line in church planting…

Let me lay my cards on the table.

I am persuaded that the local Christian community (church) is God’s strategy for mission… That Christians are called to be as a city on a hill shining before men… That we are to live in communities which declare the wisdom of God to the watching world (Deut 4v6-8)… That we are to be communities of light shining like stars as we hold out the word of truth (Phil 2v15-16)… That corporately we are to declare God’s marvellous deeds to the wider community (Psalm 96v3). Church is the appropriate expression of the Christian identity as those made to be a kingdom by Christ’s blood (Rev 1v5-6).

I’m 100% persuaded that church planting is a good thing...  Multiplying communities of light… Filling and subduing the world & culture with groups of image-bearers… I’m all for that. 

But here’s the thing...

There are ways and ways of church planting.  Let me paint two grotesque caricatures to make the point:

Caricature #1: Pre-fab church:

With an undergirding of prayer, this church plant’s priority is to establish a church meeting (which then gives the scope of the church community). Their model is the sending church’s meetings, but they lack the economies of scale that their larger sending church enjoyed. The time and energies of the small planting team are consumed with the practicalities of the main meetings. They set up, take down, mount programmes, do admin, and produce a meeting which mirrors their parent church’s in form, language, right down to the type-face. 

The “bringers” within the team struggle to bring because they are pulled into the church rotas at the expense of spending time with non-Christians in the wider community. The meetings and Bible teaching prove inaccessible for a wider community whose cultural defeaters, use of language and forms of worship are very different to the sending church whose model the plant follows. 

Caricature #2: Coffee table church:

The church planting team place huge importance on relationship and community formation within the team (Jn 13v33-35). They are concerned to get to know one another well in order to commend the depth and quality of Christian relationships to the watching world. They are anxious not to run before they can walk - taking plenty of time to get a feel for the area they are planting into, in order that they might contextualise the gospel when they go on to meet publicly. For the time being however, their “meetings” are preparatory - focussing on prayer and equipping, and largely invisible to the world around them.  Meantime, they work hard to build relationships with members of the local community through which they can share the gospel, and over time introduce people to Christian community.  

The team fails to recognise that for many people they encounter, the intensity of their community is a turn-off, whereas a more conventional church service would provide a culturally acceptable pathway into the church community.

Harsh & not fair... but helpful

These are obvious and harsh caricatures. I have never encountered plants that are this extreme or ill-fitting to their context. But polar opposites highlight the issues… They reveal some of the strengths and weaknesses of the two extremes.

More helpful terms would be Community-led Plants and Meeting-led Plants to imply a gentle emphasis or bias in a plant rather than an overwhelming preoccupation.  This seems right as both will always be present to a greater or lesser extent.  Christian community will inevitably meet… meetings will create community.  Ideally a plant will create a wonderful feedback loop between community and meeting with the each being shaped and being challenged by the other.  e.g. 

• The community will critique/challenge the church’s practices where they are cultural imports (or not functionally gospel). 
  
• The gospel word proclaimed and applied will critique/challenge both the church subculture and wider culture.  
  

Meetings and community will both provide pathways into Christian community of varying appropriateness...  They are both necessary and inevitable.  

The question is where to focus energies in the early stages.

As the caricatures highlight, I think it is possible for church planting to be a less good thing than it can be.  It is not clear to me that church planting is always a good thing where this tension between meeting and community is not rightly held.  However, I think for every situation there is a church planting model (walking the line between the extremes) that is good. 

Here are some brief thoughts as to when each might be more appropriate. 

For me, the question to ask boils down to:

How wide is the cultural gap between the planting team and each of: 

(i) the local churched culture, and 

(ii) the local unchurched culture.

a) Community-led plants

The cultural gap is significant. The watching world is largely unchurched and requires time to have their misunderstandings and stereotypes addressed through the sharing of lives (1 Thess 2v8-9). In this context, church meetings ("services") are not a fruitful point of contact or a suitable pathway into church community and the proclamation of the gospel.  People will not walk in off the street. Time is required to contextualise the communication of the gospel and the church’s practices, which will then shape the public meetings as they emerge. 

b) Meeting-led plants

The cultural gap to either the local churched or unchurched cultures is not great. Church is an appropriate pathway for some in the community, allowing the planted community to expand quickly and rapidly spread through the wider culture (initially through transfer). 

• Where the wider cultural gap is significant the church will need to listen to the local joiners and be critiqued by them. The perennial question will be: “Which differences are "gospel" and which are not?”  (i.e. people don't have to become like me in every way to become like Christ.  Then certainly don't have to become middle class!).
  
• Where the cultural gap between the planted community and the wider community is not great, it may be appropriate to more closely mirror the practices of the planting church. Some risk of cultural inertia may exist (never questioning forms, language or style) through being blind to the differences which will exist however small.
  

Under God, a right balance between these two foci will mean a plant can always be a good thing!  But it seems to me we only make life harder for ourselves if we are inappropriately wedded to one or the other.