Friday, November 04, 2011
Here's A Thought
MMI quotes David Fitch calling for American missionaries, not church planters:
Secondly, it is hard to find a community in American anymore that is short on churches. It may be short of church goers, but there are buildings and staffs aplenty. What is needed is a way to draw people into those churches. If churches are freed from the need to reach out and instead learn how to be better churches, then the new converts just might stick around.
Today, in the changing environments of N American post Christendom, this approach to church planting is insane. For it not only assumes an already Christianized population to draw on , it puts enormous pressure on the church planter to secure already well-heeled Christians as bodies for the seats on Sunday morning. This in itself undercuts the engagement of the hurting, lost peoples God is bringing to Himself in Christ.This makes a lot of sense to me and not just becasue of the cost effectiveness arguments primarily advanced by Fitch. Rather, with the advent of growth orientation, "Seeker sensitive" services, etc. the church is rapidly transforming into more mission organization than church anyway. There is little question that our increasingly secular society needs missionaries.
Instead of funding one entrepreneurial pastor, preacher and organizer to go in and organize a center for Christian goods and services, let us fund three or four leader/ or leader couples to go in as a team to an under-churched context (Most often these places are the not rich all white suburbs where evangelicals have done well planting churches).
Secondly, it is hard to find a community in American anymore that is short on churches. It may be short of church goers, but there are buildings and staffs aplenty. What is needed is a way to draw people into those churches. If churches are freed from the need to reach out and instead learn how to be better churches, then the new converts just might stick around.
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