Why Church Planting Should Not Be Funded

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In a rather “accidental series,” I’ve written an evaluation of the church planting movement, followed by my thoughts on why your church won’t be able to find a pastor, and then gave some instructions on how to start a home church. Each of these articles had the common thread of the dismay over the condition of the church in our day. Now I’d like to complete these thoughts with a further word about church planting. I am convinced that the church planting movement, with all its failures, has been responsible for much of the sickness of the church today, and those who care about the health of the church should avoid the funding of church planting efforts, especially through networks and denominational agencies.

How Did We Get Here?

I think we have seminaries to blame. Somewhere, a generation ago, the seminaries and their professors grew an animosity for the local church, and thus for the “establishment pastor.” Perhaps this animosity grew because it was the pastors who sat on the Board of Trustees, and it was the board members who refused to allow the seminaries to go as leftist as the professors would have liked. Or perhaps it was because the churches themselves were “back woods” and not “academically sophisticated,” so the professors grew to dislike the local church. Their dislike could be seen in their lack of involvement (seminary professors and their students often make some of the worst churchmen) and it could also be heard in their comments in the classroom, comments which betrayed the cloaked animosity.

Over the years, more and more of the graduates captured the spirit of their professors and went a step farther, deciding before they ever got out of seminary that they would never pastor an established church. Rather, they would leave that old barge-of-a-church behind and start a sexy-speedboat-of-a-church and quickly change the world.

And, truthfully, that’s exactly what happened.

The Way It Was

Prior to the 1980s, there was no church planting movement. This movement was birthed in the 1980s, and Willow Creek and Saddleback are the now-aging grandparents of it all. These two churches wowed every young preacher. They went from zero to thousands of attendees, all within a decade. Seminarians jumped ship from the old barge and began to go out by the hundreds, then thousands, to plant new churches across America. I would venture to say that the largest churches in America today did not even exist 30 years ago.

But up until that time, as I’ve mentioned in my previous article, churches were planted by churches, and the DNA of the “daughter church” was the same as that of the “mother church.” And, even more striking, there were no church-planting networks or agencies. In that day, the mission boards for American denominations that had been tasked with missions in the United States did very little in church planting. For example, the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (an agency dissolved in 1997) was an agency that jointly funded literally thousands of missionaries who were serving life-long careers working with Native Americans, rural populations, urban neighborhood centers, campus ministries, and much more. The Home Mission Board had missionaries with long-term strategies for reaching the unreached language groups of America and strengthening struggling churches. Today, the North American Mission Board (successor to the HMB) doesn’t have long-term missionaries (almost 100% of the “missionaries” are actually church planters, jointly funded for two to three years), doesn’t have a Native American outreach, doesn’t provide long-term missionaries to language groups, and does very little in rural America. The emphasis of NAMB is large-city church planting, and over $78 million of its $127 million budget goes to this effort.

Churches Can Be Started Without Funding

I am convinced that church planting can be more effectively done without large-scale funding. Here’s why-

First, if churches are planted in homes and with a sponsor church, there is very little funding needed. The ministry will start as a home Bible study, which can literally be done for free. The best churches will be churches started by laymen and women, not by a carpet-bagger church-planter. What little expenses do come up can be covered by those in the home Bible study.

Second, when the home group gets large enough, it can call and pay for its own pastor. The sponsor church can, if needed, provide some short-term assistance. The pastor can also work some extra hours in a side job, or he can raise support from friends, family, and associates. (Incidentally, don’t be fooled into thinking that agencies like the North American Mission Board fully funds church planters: they raise their own support, and NAMB gives them an additional stipend).

Third, outside money is going to give a false sense of security and strength to the new church. Why do so many church plants fail after two or three years? Because that is when the funding stops! Rather than proving the need for more funding, this actually proves the need for less funding. The funding that is being given is an artificial mechanism that is moving the new churches ahead of where they can sustain themselves and then the rug is pulled out. The funding gives artificial strength, and so the church planter signs leases, buys equipment, and hires staff–then is unable to fulfill the obligations when the funding stops. If the funding never happened, the church would be much more wise in its commitments.

But what about those places where a home Bible study will never happen without a church planter being moved from another location? Honestly, I’m skeptical that these places exist in America. As someone who was raised in a Bible-belt environment, I used to hear about all those northern states that had almost no Christian witness. Now that I’m more well traveled and am out of the SBC bubble, I realize that what they meant was that those northern states don’t have very many Southern Baptist churches. They do, however, have very strong evangelical and fundamentalist churches whose ministries rival anything that can be found in the Bible belt. As I’ve now traveled outside of the SBC, I’ve found that there are some fabulous pockets of believers in every region of the United States.

What Goes Wrong When You Fund Church Planting

In short, here’s what goes wrong: we perpetuate a system that isn’t working. It isn’t working because so many churches fail (after huge financial investment) and the churches that do succeed are very often (possibly most often) aberrant to the values and ideals of the founding church.

Furthermore, when you fund a church plant, especially when you have little to no design of the church DNA, you are funding the spiritual/biblical demise of the broader church. If the church fails, it was probably because it was artificially propped up by outside money and was never sustainable in the first place. If the church succeeds, it will either be a “welfare church” that continually seeks another financial partner in order to keep afloat or a pragmatist church that continually seeks another new fad to keep new bodies (and their bucks) coming in the door. Neither is something you want to be part of.

What about the places that can never support a pastor but need one? There are two solutions. First, pastors can be either bi-vocational or can pastor several churches at once (a proven strategy of a bygone era). Second, the denominational entities that are spending over $78 million in church planting can shift their strategy and place career missionaries in these areas. Sadly, however, the career missionary in the United States is virtually non-existent, largely because all the funding has gone to church planting, and most of that funding will have nothing to show for it in just a few years.

Consider This Example

I live in Northern New Mexico, a place that has had 500 years of catholic missionary activity (which could arguably be considered some of the most successful missionary activity in history). Yet, in these 500 years, it has never had a strong non-catholic presence. Northern New Mexico is filled with small mountain villages that have no non-catholic churches whatsoever. Even in many of the larger towns (i.e., more than 1,000 residents), it would be very difficult for a fundamental or evangelical Bible-teaching pastor to ever survive in a church planting setting. If someone invests in church-planting here, using any kind of modern planting strategy, it will almost certainly fail.

Thirty years ago, there were long-term missionaries who lived here and worked with Native Americans or Spanish speaking populations. These missionaries translated scripture to the Tewa language or hosted home-based Bible studied in a dozen or more towns. All of these works have completely stopped, and agencies like the North American Mission Board have absolutly no strategy nor design for sending missionaries to areas like mine. The only model that will work in my area is a career missionary model, and nobody is doing career missions funding. The career missionary to hard-to-reach areas has been replaced by church planters being sent to America’s biggest cities (cities that are also home to America’s biggest churches).

What You Can Do

Here is my suggestion. With your missionary dollars (whether given individually or through your church), make sure you are supporting long-term career missionaries, not short-term church planters. The short-term planter can (and does) raise his own support, when needed, or can be funded through the church plant itself or by the sponsor church.

By forcing this missiological shift, you will strengthen missionary work in missionary areas like mine, and you will stop the flow of money into the endless cycle of church-planting-failure or success at the cost of doctrinal embarrassment.

Randy White Bio

Randy White Ministries began in 2011 as an online and radio Bible teaching ministry. Today, the ministry is focused on producing verse-by-verse Bible teaching resources for individuals. White has 25 years of pastoral experience—including 12 years at First Baptist Church of Katy, Texas, where he ministered to a large congregation and preached numerous times each week.

Discussion

Excerpt (speaking of church plants):

“In short, here’s what goes wrong: we perpetuate a system that isn’t working. It isn’t working because so many churches fail (after huge financial investment) and the churches that do succeed are very often (possibly most often) aberrant to the values and ideals of the founding church.”

––––––––––––––––––––––—

The church I belong to has planted seven (independent) churches, in 1971, 1979, 1986, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008.

Well, one of those churches (2004) was on shaky ground as far as finances goes when the recession of 2008 hit………and it very nearly folded. (Being an independent plant, they were no longer supported by us.)

Another plant (1979) has gone down some paths that aren’t a reflection of my church. For example, they have adopted a seeker-sensitive model/style of church services that we don’t condone, and they are now egalitarian in some of their pastoral positions.

So, as the OP article stated, we’ve seen some downsides to planting independent churches. Which are among the reasons we chose to instead launch a second site (a second campus) last year, and become a multi-site church.

As an already large church, we launched our second site on solid financial-footing. We calculated that it would require roughly $500,000 in funding (rent, salaries, equipment…) for the first two years of its operation, and our leadership presented this figure to the congregation to be raised. Within only about 4 or 5 weeks, something like $687,000 was raised specifically earmarked for this site–-so it was launched with over two years of its costs already raised.

Also, being a second-site, under the same elder board & pastoral leadership, there’s no risk that it’s going to wander off on any doctrinal tangents contrary to its founding church.

According to the former Baptist General Conference (now called Converge), their success rate of church planting is around 90% becoming self-supporting. This goes against the grain of Randy White’s main point, in that church planting is a failing endeavor. However, it must be noted that the majority of Converge’s church plants have taken place in growing suburban communities and urban hipster communities where there is economic stability and mobility. I wonder if these denominations with their church planting movements will ever get the vision to plant churches in impoverished urban and rural communities or even aging suburban communities (where many of the urban poor are fleeing to due to urban gentrification)?

Randy White, the author of the OP article, identifies this as being one problem with church planting:

“the churches that do succeed are very often (possibly most often) aberrant to the values and ideals of the founding church.”

––––––––––––-

As I mentioned in my last post above, my church has seen this occur in one or more of our seven independent church plants (dating from 1971 - 2008).

I also mentioned that our most recent effort (2016) at church planting became not an independent church plant but a second site/campus of our church, meaning that we became a multi-site church (i.e. one church that has more than one location).

How does this prevent the problem that White mentions above? it does so because be not making the new church site independent, it is not free to sooner or later go off on any tangents contrary to its founding church. Being under the same Statement of Faith, Constitution, Covenant, governance/leadership, and pastoral oversight as its founding church, direct accountability is maintained.

Is that always a guarantee of doctrinal soundness? Of course not. Another site will only be as orthodox as its predecessor site(s), but at least it will not be different.

[Joel Shaffer]

According to the former Baptist General Conference (now called Converge), their success rate of church planting is around 90% becoming self-supporting. This goes against the grain of Randy White’s main point, in that church planting is a failing endeavor. However, it must be noted that the majority of Converge’s church plants have taken place in growing suburban communities and urban hipster communities where there is economic stability and mobility. I wonder if these denominations with their church planting movements will ever get the vision to plant churches in impoverished urban and rural communities or even aging suburban communities (where many of the urban poor are fleeing to due to urban gentrification)?

…..that touches on a lot of Joel’s highlighted point above:

“Why Large Churches Should Target Urban Settings”

Excerpt:

“[O] ne of the hardest places to plant is in the heart of a big city’s urban core.

Obviously, there are a lot of reasons for this: Traditionally, it’s been more expensive to plant in the city. The people you tend to reach are either poor, (or simply less likely to give or be interested in church). Lastly, permanent land is harder to get the deeper you go into the city. Zoning discrimination is rampant in urban cores. Thus, if a church doesn’t have a lot of money and legal firepower, it can be hard for churches to acquire property.

Thus, for much of the last 40 years, churches have been abandoning the urban cores of most cities. For example, in Minneapolis/St. Paul (where I live), over 78 notable churches moved out of the city to the suburbs! I don’t believe that most of them did it for ethnic reasons as much as financial ones. But trends like this aren’t limited to the Twin Cities. Indeed, most U.S. cities have their fastest growing churches on the outer rims.”

http://www.peterhaas.org/?p=1985

NOTE: I’m not agreeing with every point the author makes in his article; these are his perspectives. It’s interesting that after he voices several arguments AGAINST planting in urban cores, the article concludes with several arguments FOR planting in urban cores–and an announcement that the church he pastors is (at the time of the article) doing exactly that.

It’s worth noting that most towns and cities have a number of church buildings which are no longer being used as churches, and since church architecture really doesn’t usually work well for other uses—ceilings are too high and all—that just might be a great way to get affordable buildings without the city screaming about lost tax revenue. They simply aren’t getting much from those sites to begin with.

Now parking….that’s a harder nut to crack! But re-using a dying church’s building worked well for Family Baptist and All Nations Baptist in Minneapolis, no?

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

[Larry Nelson]

Joel Shaffer wrote:

According to the former Baptist General Conference (now called Converge), their success rate of church planting is around 90% becoming self-supporting. This goes against the grain of Randy White’s main point, in that church planting is a failing endeavor. However, it must be noted that the majority of Converge’s church plants have taken place in growing suburban communities and urban hipster communities where there is economic stability and mobility. I wonder if these denominations with their church planting movements will ever get the vision to plant churches in impoverished urban and rural communities or even aging suburban communities (where many of the urban poor are fleeing to due to urban gentrification)?

…..that touches on a lot of Joel’s highlighted point above:

“Why Large Churches Should Target Urban Settings”

Excerpt:

“[O] ne of the hardest places to plant is in the heart of a big city’s urban core.

Obviously, there are a lot of reasons for this: Traditionally, it’s been more expensive to plant in the city. The people you tend to reach are either poor, (or simply less likely to give or be interested in church). Lastly, permanent land is harder to get the deeper you go into the city. Zoning discrimination is rampant in urban cores. Thus, if a church doesn’t have a lot of money and legal firepower, it can be hard for churches to acquire property.

Thus, for much of the last 40 years, churches have been abandoning the urban cores of most cities. For example, in Minneapolis/St. Paul (where I live), over 78 notable churches moved out of the city to the suburbs! I don’t believe that most of them did it for ethnic reasons as much as financial ones. But trends like this aren’t limited to the Twin Cities. Indeed, most U.S. cities have their fastest growing churches on the outer rims.”

http://www.peterhaas.org/?p=1985

NOTE: I’m not agreeing with every point the author makes in his article; these are his perspectives. It’s interesting that after he voices several arguments AGAINST planting in urban cores, the article concludes with several arguments FOR planting in urban cores–and an announcement that the church he pastors is (at the time of the article) doing exactly that.

I think the author makes some good points, but I also think the author is a little naive and even ignorant of all the social factors that went on with “White Flight.” In Grand Rapids MI, where I reside, there were 6 GARBC churches that moved (1 church moved 2x) out of the urban core-following their people out of the city due to white flight in the 60’s through the 80’s. There were alot of different factors taking place that led to white flight. Neighborhoods and schools were being forcefully desegregated, for example. In Grand Rapids, banks and real estate companies practiced redlining until the early 1970’s (which kept blacks in the ghetto and out of white neighborhoods) When blacks were finally able to move out of the ghetto and into white neighborhoods, many people fled the city because they were afraid their property values would go down. It became a self-fulfilling prophesy because so many people put up their houses for sale due to fear, that the housing value in GR plummeted greatly. Of course the newly formed housing developments in the suburbs weren’t plummeting because they didn’t have to deal with all of this social upheaval. Also, there were laws that bussed minorities from across the city into city schools which were primarily white and many whites either left the city or left those schools to start Christian schools. So of course churches and church plants in the suburbs exploded in numbers because there were so many people that migrated out of the city. Over the past 50 years or so, the evangelical church really hasn’t grown. Rather its only exchanged real estate.

To plant self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing churches in impoverished urban neighborhoods, they need to include business and economic training as part of their disciple-making strategy. In the latter 20th century, Fundamental churches and even some conservative evangelical churches shied away from urban church-planting among the poor because wholistic ministry that was needed seemed too much like the social gospel. I am glad, however, that many conservative evangelicals and even some fundamentalists are showing a greater amount of interest in church planting in urban/impoverished communities. For example, Dr. Ken Davis at Clark Summit University is doing a great job teaching seminary students how to do urban/multi-ethnic church planting in urban, impoverished neighborhoods. But even now, urban neighborhoods are changing. Many of the poor cannot afford to live in the urban core anymore and are flocking to aging suburbs and that is going to affect these suburban churches as they do ministry.

[Bert Perry]

It’s worth noting that most towns and cities have a number of church buildings which are no longer being used as churches, and since church architecture really doesn’t usually work well for other uses—ceilings are too high and all—that just might be a great way to get affordable buildings without the city screaming about lost tax revenue. They simply aren’t getting much from those sites to begin with.

Now parking….that’s a harder nut to crack! But re-using a dying church’s building worked well for Family Baptist and All Nations Baptist in Minneapolis, no?

Parking for churches is certainly an issue in dense urban locations. Bethelehem Baptist in downtown Minneapolis provides an example:

“Parking at the Downtown Campus:

We have more than adequate off-site parking, but on-site parking is very limited and therefore is restricted to first-time visitors, the elderly, and handicapped.

See our Downtown street map that highlights available parking for worship services and Wednesday evenings.

Summary of Available Parking

Lots North of Bethlehem: The North Lot between 6th Street & 7th Street (free during weekend & Wednesday services; tell attendant you’re going to Bethlehem)
Lot West of Bethlehem: Bethlehem Warehouse, ½ block West on 7th Street
Lot South of Bethlehem: Professional
Litho Lot, ½ block S 13th Ave (only during Sunday worship services & for other special events)”

https://www.hopeingod.org/about-us/intro-bethlehem/faqs#parking downtown

Bethlehem has on-site parking for just a fraction of their attendance–the majority of attendees have to park up to a few blocks away.

Their compact property also resulted in something unusual for a church: besides their sanctuary, they have a 5-story building (1 below ground, and 4 above ground). They needed to build UP to preserve even the limited amount of on-site parking spaces they do have:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/edkohler/4103646259/

Several years ago, my wife and I attended Tenth Presbyterian, Philadelphia, where her sister and husband were members. I don’t recall any parking lot. All parking was on the surrounding streets. When we returned to our car, I had a parking ticket. Apparently one must leave a 10th bulletin on the dash to avoid a parking violation, and Marti’s sister forgot to inform us. We returned to North Carolina, and it was months before we were able to get the parking ticket resolved.

G. N. Barkman