Church Planters: Entrepreneurs or Shepherds?

Wed, 2010-05-12 13:16 — Tim Bayly

Almost two decades ago, my wife and I had a houseguest for the weekend. He was a pastor friend from our days serving together in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA) who’d recently moved his credentials from the PC(USA) to the more evangelical Presbyterian Church in America. Our congregation had just made the same denominational transfer, so we’d invited him to fill our pulpit and speak to our congregational meeting about the culture of the PCA...

After coming into our kitchen and being introduced to Mary Lee, his first words were, “Bales! How could you stand living in this little Podunk town all these years?” Pardeeville hadn’t impressed him, and his disdain for our town didn’t endear him to my wife.

Later that weekend, we talked about his new job. He’d served in a southern metro area for years, but had left that position to plant a church funded by the PCA’s church planting organization. Denominational leaders wanted a flagship church in the northern city he’d moved to, so they were throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at him to exercise his entrepreneurial gifts.

We asked why he’d chosen church planting over serving an established church, and he answered: “If you accept a call to an established church, you inherit all the problems created by your predecessor. But if you plant your own church, you start from scratch.”

Later, Mary Lee commented to me, “He won’t have to deal with anyone else’s history, but the man following him will have to deal with his.”

In the twenty years since, my friend’s been proven a trendsetter. Small town established churches are now the job of last refuge. Everyone wants to do city-church startups and the techniques used bear little resemblance to the Apostle Paul’s in the book of Acts. Paul preached to the Areopagus about sin, righteousness, and judgment, but these church startup experts do focus groups, web development, demographics, venture capital, market research, managerial seminars, art galleries, Facebook, and Twitter.

The man headed to Athens, today, is weighed down by tons of money provided by family and friends, some rich denomination, or a mega-church. He’s been chosen by a church planter assessment center that scrutinized his entrepreneurial gifts and judged him capable of leading a startup business that sells some branded product to a specific market segment. He’s expected to stick to the business plan, solicit funding, and use that funding to survive the first few years of red ink.

Recently, a friend working to plant a metro area congregation gave me his business card. Under his name was printed this title: “Church Entrepreneur.”

Like business startups, church plants have a very large failure rate. But every now and then, a man hits the jackpot and he’s called up to the show. Watching him, other church entrepreneurs buy his sermons, read his books, copy his web site, and register for conferences where he’ll share the secrets to his success.

But, the cost: what are we paying for this focus on entrepreneurial methods and business techniques?

Recently, I read an essay on nineteenth century Scotsman, Thomas Carlyle, who warned of an error he called “Mechanism:”

Mechanism values process over substance, means over ends, technical know-how over wisdom. (Barton Swain, “Carlyle the Wise,” in The New Criterion, February 2010.)

Two centuries after Carlyle’s warning, our churches and denominations are drowning in Mechanism. We’re interested in building churches, but not in God. We value process over substance, means over ends, and technical know-how over wisdom.

The Holy Spirit reminded the Corinthians that the Lord did not send the Apostle Paul to baptize, but to preach the gospel—and not in cleverness of speech, since that would have stripped his preaching of any power. We need to hear this warning today.

God is still pleased to build His Church and to save men and women through the foolishness of preaching the simple message of the Cross. If the church of Corinth was not to trust in a clever message, why would we trust in hundreds of thousands of dollars in venture capital, or clever marketing?

Please pray for ClearNote Fellowship and ClearNote Pastors College, that God will send us men and their wives who aren’t clever, but rather love the Church and believe in the foolishness of preaching the simple and powerful Gospel of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Church Planting

Comments

Thu, 2010-05-13 09:47 — William Lynch

Amen....and Amen!

Thu, 2010-05-13 23:36 — steveprost

I just experienced deja vu,

I just experienced deja vu, realizing I would have to simply respond "Amen... and Amen" halfway thru this post until I saw it already done.

The PCA church-planting processes,
(at least to my admitted limited experiences in 2 metro areas church-planting processes and as a Covenant Seminary alum and current PCA Army chaplain that are perhaps too biased by coming from more old-fashioned fundamentalist backgrounds in less affluent Baptist and charismatic churches growing up and loving to read the 'dated' methods of the Great Awakening histories/biographies)
have always seemed to me kind of the antithesis of ideas as expressed in the title of John Piper's book, "Brothers We are Not Professionals".

I am all for using practical prudent Proverbs-wisdom principles in making sure we are making wise investments with our resources and making sure the ones sent are truly gifted for the call... but too often I see our denomination looking to business models and financial viability in cool demographic charts and graphs as we look for people fitting the "winsome" CEO-type or urbane artsy-smart mold rather than looking to evidence of where the need is and where the Spirit is and has supernaturally gifted and called some who often fit the "mold" or "demographic analysis" as well as a loud-mouthed too-outspoken Luthers, Whitefields or Knoxes or uncharismatic Calvins or among crude black-faced coal miners far from well-to-do viable start-up environs that led to open air preaching that sparked an awakening on the Old and New Continents.

Is there any place for the annointed fiery-eyed weeping evangelist willing to take to the streets and cry out loudly preaching straightforward old-fashioned need for repentance and the new birth in the support of our church processes in the PCA today? Were the nominal Christians of Paul's time or Wesley's day any more amenable to such messages that drew hostility and violence while simultaneously eventually drawing real crowds by the Spirit? Will we miss out on the next Great Awakening in this country as a denomination because our processes have efficiently and mechanistically excluded such misfit men characteristically chosen by God in the past because of our well-studied accomodation to the refined tastes of the popular neighborhoods of this age?

Fri, 2010-05-14 20:32 — Eric Rasmusen

We need to realize that just

We need to realize that just as good stewardship means saving money so as to spend it on good uses, not just saving money to get a big pile of money, so managing a church means canny planning to attract people so as to be able to get away with doing all the things that are the actual purpose of the church but repel people.

Wed, 2010-05-19 00:23 — Marshall

I don't understand that

I don't understand that comment about good stewardship by Eric. Please explain.

Wed, 2010-05-19 17:16 — Andrew Halsey

Ugly, lazy, and prudish are

Ugly, lazy, and prudish are bad. Beautiful, chipper and unfaithul is bad. The first draws nobody. The second draws, if possible, even the elect. What I think Eric was saying is that this is like prosperity. When we have, it is so that we can invest, which is to risk not having.

Tue, 2010-05-25 10:33 — Tabitha

Great Awakenings only occur

Great Awakenings only occur when there is sufficient prayer and lives that walk a path of surrender. We had a small awakening here about 40 years ago. What I remember is that two brothers spent hours and hours in prayer.
Secondly, I remember in church planting a story about a city church that wanted to establish a work in the inner city. They sent a well educated man to plant the church. It didn't happen. The church in analyzing then sent a man with an 8th grade education. That man was successful in establishing the work, because the people found it easier to relate to him and visa versa. Is this helpful?

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