ConvergeUSA Blog

When Does Planting Stop and Pastoring Start? by Jonathan Dodson

Jonathan Dodson who is planting Austin City Life in Austin, Texas asks a great question that every church planter wrestles with: When does planting stop and pastoring start?

Here is his post on the subject:

Inevitably there comes a point in the life of a church planter in which you begin to pastor more than you “plant”. Is this bad? How do we continue to cultivate a missional church, while also attending to the growing pastoral needs of our communities? When does planting stop and pastoring start?

When to Pastor in a Plant?

An honest answer to this question will serve you well. Only then will a theoretical answer begin to bear fruit. Another way to get at this issue is to ask when does pastoring start in the life of a planter? I believe it should start immediately. Too many planters fail their churches because they plant not pastor. Planters are apostles but they are also elder-pastors. To be sure, not all apostles are static traditional pastors and not all pastors are church planting apostles. However, true apostles have the capacity to pastor, at least for a season. Check out Paul, Peter, Epaphras. They all planted and they all pastored. They loved the whole life of the church, not just birthing her. Pastors are called to shepherd apostolic—sent—communities, so they should be able to function missionally.

Equipping for Pastoral and Missional Community

As our communities’ needs grow, how do we effectively live, lead, and serve in the tension between pastoring and planting, between community and mission? JR Woodward offers some practical help in his forthcoming book Re-Sketching the Church. He argues for the centrality of “equippers” for effective missional church life. Ephesians 4 is his locus classicus for equipping the missional church, a good choice. In Ephesians 4 the various equipping gifts are laid out for the purpose of equipping “the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Though the purpose of these equippers for building up the internal church—community—is frequently noted, the external dimension of being the church—mission—is often overlooked in these roles. Woodward picks up on this absence of a mission. Quoting Frost and Hirsch, he notes that the five equippers are: “the very mechanism for achieving mission and ministry effectiveness as well as Christian maturity.” Alan Roxburgh makes a very similar point in his chapter in Missional Leader. Here’s the point—leaders are not only to be missional leaders; they are to equip and release missional leaders through, at least, five different roles with various missional “destinations” or expressions. In other words, if the success of your church being missional relies mainly upon you, then you don’t have a missional church.

Missional Equippers

Woodward has contextualized the five roles of apostle, prophet, pastor, evangelist, and teacher, calling them: heart revealer, dream awakener, soul healer, story teller, and light giver. All sounds a bit new age, but Woodward stays pretty close to the biblical meanings. Noting a great insight by Marcus Barth, he points out that all but one of these roles had vocational equivalents in the Greco-Roman context. This means that anything but a prophet had a cultural outlet for missional expression. There was a socially accepted place for teachers, apostles, evangelists, and pastors. And so it is today. Consider your role and your equippers’ roles in this light. If you are a teacher, how can you teach in service of the city, as well as in service of the church? Run with it.

Perhaps the planting versus pastoring dilemma can be solved by raising up disciples who are pastors and missionaries, pastors who are missional and missionaries who are pastoral. This, of course, requires leadership and equipping. Taking Woodward (and Paul)’s cue, we do well to look for and cultivate the “five equippers” in our own churches to advance both community and mission. In short, cultivate missional equippers.

When does planting stop and pastoring start? Never. Planters should plant reproducing churches and planters should always pastor. How? Raise up missional equippers that “pastor” and “plant” your church, that lead in community and mission. Pastoring and planting should start and stop together, when you are regenerated and when you die.  HT

Attractional or Missional? - Jeff Gauss

Not too long ago I was an assessor at an assessment center for potential church planters. One of the candidates shared in his philosophy of ministry about how his church was going to have this big multi-media production on Sundays and have grass-roots-based neighborhood ministries during the week. It didn’t strike me at all as odd, but my fellow assessors jumped all over him, peppering him with critical questions like, How can you be attractional and missional at the same time? “Obviously, you haven’t really thought much about this,” was the insinuation. (And in this case, he hadn’t really thought it through). But are attractional and missional really two mutually exclusive ministry philosophies?

Missional is the new buzzword in pastoral ministry. It is the kinder, gentler cousin of emergent. Like any buzzword, missional has been co-opted and used to mean many divergent ideas, but its original idea is that the church is “a sent people” (see Missional Church, ed. Darrell Guder). Conversely, attractional (many people use this word disparagingly, but I don’t mean to do so) is the seeker-sensitive movement all grown up, although the language from the 1980’s has shifted mildly from Sunday entertainment to Sunday experiences.

The attractional philosophy is associated with getting people to come to church, while missional is depicted as getting the church to go to the people.

Attractional is associated with mega-churches that are surfacy and shallow, while missional churches are often self-described micro-churches that are authentic and genuine.

Attractional churches are accused of focusing on programs, while missional churches focus on people.

Attractional churches are charged with being guilty of producing consumers, while missional churches boast of producing disciples.

Given the descriptors above, one can easily see why missional is gaining ground and why it would be considered to be the antithesis of the attractional model (thrust into the same debate as traditional vs. contemporary and modern vs. postmodern). But I suggest that church can and needs to be both attractional and missional.

Why can’t a church be attractional on Sundays and missional the other six days of the week? Why can’t a church be focused on people, yet have good programs? After all, most people are consumers before they become producers. So is it incompatible to think that we can be both mega in the sense of attracting crowds, while maintaining micro in our mission. Just like we live in a culture that is both modern and postmodern at the same time, we can reach people by being both attractional and missional. The two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They are what you make of them. They will either compete with each other or compliment each other depending on what you emphasize and how you implement them.

Our church will probably never be mega (we are in a community of 8,000), but we still want to attract a crowd. So we do a lot of advertising and events and put many of our resources into our facilities (we meet in a constantly-renovating gas station). But attracting a crowd is not our goal. It is only a means to an end. Our goal is to take every person in the crowd and move them to the core by equipping them to be missionaries in their social networks (family, friends, neighborhood, work, school, etc.). We emphasize kindness, service and generosity as tangible expressions of loving people that can’t or won’t love you back.

Jesus walked from town to town and healed people, but he also sat on a hillside and let people come to him as he taught them. Jesus attracted crowds and he went to the crowds. He did both. So can we. HT

Jeff Gauss is a church planting pastor of Epiphany Station in Thief River Falls, MN.

ConvergeUSA Sponsors - Exponential '09

ConvergeUSA is a proud to be a sponsor of one of the Largest Gathering of Church Planting Leaders in North America! Check out our booth and our hospitality room on Tuesday Night.

• 15 Preconference Intensives
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The Exponential Conference held in Orlando, FL, April 20-23, targets leaders of new churches and movements of church planting. Leaders from around the globe will share astounding stories about how God is moving in church planting--stories top leaders in North America will apply to the immense need for planting new churches here. Practical workshop tracks themed by pre-launch, post-launch, multi-ethnic planting, missional planting, reproducing movements, as well as the "nuts and bolts" of church planting and a special track for church planting spouses complement powerful main sessions lead by Erwin McManus, Craig Groeschel, Tim Keller, Bob Roberts, and Francis Chan.  Over 80 speakers from around the world!

Day 2 Reflections of Connect09 - Mark Doebler

Day two of Connect 09 has come and gone but memories will linger. There is something about being in the presence of so many dreamers, so many people who are willing to go to the mat for the cause of Christ that simply inspires me to commit more fully to him.

We heard in the early morning from a planter who began a church in Chandler, AZ 10 years ago and has watched it grow to over 5000 in attendance. But far from sounding like a “mega-church” pastor, he sounded like the church planter he was and clearly still is. As he retold the familiar story of Jonathan taking on an enemy unit alone with his armor bearer, one truth came ringing through loud and clear:

The great stories of the Bible that we love to tell almost ALWAYS COME ON THE OTHER SIDE OF RISK!!!!

Do you get the importance of that? The stories that we love to tell of who God is and how awesome he is comes after someone has laid it on the line to follow Christ. How many times have you heard someone say…. “Someone should do something!” That’s sort of God’s way of saying “Why don’t YOU do something?” Is it frightening? Yes! Will any of us have all the answers to make it work? NO! But when someone takes a risk for God, it allows God to do his thing. It really isn’t about the brilliance of the plan… Jonathan told his armor bearer “Perhaps God will work on our behalf”. What kind of plan is that? It’s really no plan at all… other than to say “Let’s take a chance and see if God will show up!”

All of life is a risk. I’m tired of trying to eliminate all the risk out of life. I’m tired of trying to make everything perfectly safe before we do something. It truly never will be. I pray that the church I lead will become full of people who are ready to set safety aside to see God show up on the other side of a risk. Then and only then will any of us be truly alive. Then and only then will we know the fullness of God. Then and only then will the world see who God really is as he reveals himself through our lives.

I pray that God unleashes through all of these planters here an wave of risk-taking that grows into a tsunami of God’s power revealed in the world. We are ready to multiply our efforts and see God show up in mighty ways and I’m thankful to be a small part of what God is doing.  HT

Day 1 Reflections of Connect09 - Mark Doebler

Lesley and I are in Orlando, Fl at the Coronado Springs Resort for a church-planter’s conference with our association called Connect 09. Church planting is a completely different animal than leading a pre-existing church and requires a different set of skills and contains a different set of challenges. This conference is designed to address those differences with the church-planting families who have taken it on.

Day one of Connect 09 is now in the bag. Last night Dr Jerry Shevland, president of our association, addressed all of the church planters and brought a powerful message from Hebrews chapter 12. In his message, he related the recent loss of his wife to cancer and how “messed” up he has been in trying to work through the grief. He talked about the “messiness” of ministry and how if we’re ever truly going to preach the gospel, it will require dealing with a lot of messes. But the beauty of the scripture he shared was that in those messes, Jesus Christ will come along beside us and be “ENOUGH”. Jesus may not make everything “right” the way that we would like to see it, but he will be enough for us to work through our trials and testing. And make no mistake about it… as you read Hebrews 12, THERE WILL BE HARDSHIP! But what a wonderful comfort to know that Jesus will be enough in those moments.

Later in the evening, our conference center was buzzing with the news that all of the American Idol contestants were arriving, along with hosts and judges for a party celebrating the opening of a Disney attraction built around American Idol. The amount of security was really surprising, and although they were in a “private party” in the Rix Lounge, the security people kept trying to move everyone further and further back from the common areas in the hotel. Very weird and a bit irritating.

As I let my thoughts on the evening sort themselves out, I was amazed at how quickly we, I can shift gears from being deeply challenged by the grace and the power of the Word of God into being totally focused on entertainment. 15 minutes before the arrival of all the AI 09 folks, I was being blessed and confronted with the truth of the Word. And in a skinny minute, it was all gone from focus and I was excited about the possibility of seeing all the AI people.

I will continue to thoroughly enjoy AI, but maybe I need to recheck my values a bit.  HT

Five Trends in the Church Today - D A Carson

Five Trends in the Church Today

By D A Carson, September 26, 2008

1. It is important to observe contradictory trends.

Interestingly, Don encouraged us to recognize the good things in our current culture. He said we have a lot more good commentaries available to us than we did fifty years ago. Yet, mainline churches have fewer conversions than ever before. This is a contradictory trend, according to Carson.

I understand this to mean that we know more and have access to more information, but it is not resulting in more conversions. We apparently know more about God, but less about His mission to seek and to save those who are lost. Our mainline churches are focusing on the minutia difference between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, for example, but are ignoring the call to both know God and to follow his sending us to our neighbor's house. There should be a constant tension between group Bible studies and sharing of one's faith. Otherwise we end up in a holy huddle somewhere arguing about non-essentials.

2. Current evangelical fragments are moving into a new phase -- into polarized "clumps."

Don said evangelicals are identifying themselves in clump-like expressions of evangelicalism (Health/Wealth clump, Openness clump, Arminian clump, etc.). Carson said the National Pastor's Conference (NPC) is as inclusive as possible -- some speakers are stellar while others are simply heretical -- but they include as many unique tribal representatives as possible.  "Even Reformed circles are clumping," said Carson, "and the center is emptying out in favor of vague, dilute evangelicalism."

Carson astutely said that old-time gospel would be around until Jesus comes while he believes (as Don humorously put it, "not as a prophet or the son of a prophet, but one who works for a non-profit") that in 25 years nobody will be calling themselves "emergent" but many will still be centralized in the gospel.

I wonder what will replace the center as the varied subcultures of evangelicalism move to the fringes. For orthodox confessionalists, the center is the perfect place for the gospel. We need pastors who call their people "back" to the inner city of the gospel without relenting to the flight to the suburbs of dilute evangelicalism, as Carson put it.

3. The most dangerous trends in any age are the trends that most people do not see.

Orthodoxy is always focused on the past but the new expressions of evangelicalism are the most dangerous. Carson recalled the once Christian colleges like Princeton and Yale that were led by pastor/theologians but became so big that they hired administrators who were not as discerning of current trends; only of past. A formally orthodox leader will head into trouble if he is not astute toward current trends in evangelicalism.

Carson made the case that 1920's liberalism is no longer the issue-even though some churches are still fighting that shadow. Today's issues like justification, inerrancy, primacy of family, gender roles, sexuality, pornography, modesty, race relations (very few race-integrated churches), tolerance, consumerism and human flourishing are the current issues at hand.

I think most church planters are men who grew tired of fighting for bygone issues in their churches while people are losing the wars against the current issues of today. In my opinion, mainline churches will continue to lose their best men who want to be warriors in a real war, not in the reenactments of the religious wars of the last forty years. As long as we continue to address these modernist battles, Satan and his demonic force will rule the ground in our churches with diversion tactics that consume our energy.

4. There is a trend in our churches to be consumed by social concern.

In the most intriguing point of his talk, Don said that the Gospel plus caring for the poor was an inseparable couplet. He cautioned that if the gospel was merely assumed (and not clearly articulated), our passion for social justice would overshadow the gospel. While we are not intentionally exalting social concern over the gospel, people learn what we are excited about (gospel over caring for the poor). Carson warned, "Our passion must first be the gospel and not assume it to be understood." He continued, "We must be careful to keep the gospel central and not turn our responses to the gospel as the main target."

Furthermore, Carson exhorted these Christian leaders to spend our time on prayer and the ministry of the Word and allow our people to begin and maintain efforts in social concern. He said we must distinguish between what the church as church must do and what the community of believers in the church must do (I did not personally see the difference but it seemed to suggest that the pastor was exempt from exemplifying an outpouring of the gospel into the community through social efforts).

Our calling, Carson said is to do good in the city (Jer. 29), because the person has an eternal destiny and we care for them. We are all poor beggars telling other poor beggars where they can find bread. Don concluded this section by warning us not to make the issues of gospel and social concern antithetical.

5. There is a trend in our churches to emphasize discipleship over the gospel.

Carson emphasized teaching the whole council of God centering on Christ crucified as the power of the gospel and salvation. If we see the gospel as what "saves" us and if we see discipleship as the actual place where real transformation takes place, it is not a biblical approach. Carson said this trend has a tendency to lead us to see discipleship as legalism; as what pleases God.

It is disturbing to me that some churches see discipleship as a formulaic course of study instead of a lifelong journey as a sinner saved by grace. Following Jesus is not accomplished by completing 8 classes in the basement of a church. It is a complete abandonment of our self in favor of the person, work and mission of Jesus.

We need to be aware of the current trends in the church today and pastor our church with an emphasis on the gospel. Anything less leads to narcissistic religion and away from Jesus. 

If you ever want to feel like you have the intelligence of a NASCAR fan that just finished off a six-pack (I think it's a Red Neck law), then listen to D.A. Carson talk about, well, anything. Don is fluent in something like 7 languages and has written over 45 books. He is the esteemed Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago. For instance, Carson said in his talk to us, "To be a non-perspectivalist is to be omniscient." Nobody in the room was smart enough to argue with him over that.

Don spoke at a luncheon at Bethlehem Baptist Church (John Piper) on Friday September 26, 2008 just before the Desiring God Conference. I attended this lunch with about 40 other church leaders. Don spoke for an hour about five trends in the American church that are troubling to him.  (HT)

Improving Church Plant Survivability

Wal Moser, Director of Church Planting, Heartland Baptist District, made some great observations from the Leadership Network's report on the state of church planting USA titled "Improving the Health and Survivability of New Churches".

“Certain factors, when present, correlate with higher baptisms (the report does not suggest baptism is a mean of salvation, but is using it as a mean of measuring a decision and some spiritual growth). Over 100 factors were tested and the following were found to be statistically significant:
- Engaging in ministry evangelism (i.e. food banks, shelter, drug/alcohol recover)
- Starting at least one daughter church within three years of the church plant
- Having a proactive stewardship development plan enabling the church to be financially self-sufficient
- Conducting a mid-week children’s program
- Sending out mailers for invitation to services and church events
- Conducting a block party as an outreach activity
- Conducting a new member class for new church members
- Conducting leadership training for church members
- Receiving church-planting training in terms of a boot camp or basic training by the church planter
- Working full-time over part-time as the church planter
- Being assed prior to the beginning of the church plan as the church planter
- Delegating leadership roles to church members.

“Interestingly, the chance of survivability increases by over 400% when the church planter has a ‘realistic’ understanding and expectation of the church-planting experience. On the other hand, conducting door-to-door or cold-calling evangelism in church planting decreases the odds of survivability by 59%.”

“The NAMB study also focused on the value of peer groups. Odds of survivability increase by 135% when the church planter meets with a group of church planting peers.”

Stephen Gray is a researcher who compared 60 fast-growing church plants with 52 struggling church plants. Here is some of what he found (his book is Planting Fast Growing Churches)
- 88% have church planting teams
- 63% have a core group of 26 to 75 people
- 75% use a contemporary style of worship
- 80% put ten percent or more of their budget toward outreach and evangelism
- 16% have a higher rate of full-time pastors than struggling church plants
- 63% of planters leading fast-growing plants raise additional funding, compared to 23% of those that are struggling.
- 74% of fast-growing church planters receive one or two weeks of training.
- Over 90% of struggling churches work with only one paid staff member. Only 17% of fast-growing plants started with only one paid staff member. HT