Church Planting: Is it Reproduction or Cloning?
Posted by Doug Foltz on May 17, 2010 in Church Planting, Discipleship, Missional | 3 commentsNeil Cole says that only 4% of Southern Baptist churches will plant a church. In his book Organic Church, Neil says on p. 119
Imagine the headlines if suddenly it was discovered that 96% of the women in America were no longer fertile and could not have babies. We would instantly know two things: this is not natural so there is something wrong with their health. We would also know that our future is in serious jeopardy.
I believe our reaction to that would be simple. We would quickly turn to the field of science for answers. With such a widespread problem, my guess is that survival instincts would kick in and quickly the world would be ok with cloning. The mantra would be clone or die.
Take that analogy over to the church. My question is are we truly reproducing churches or are we cloning them? Has the survival instinct kicked in for the church and led us down the road of cloning? I’ve noticed that many churches across different denominations are all starting to look very similar. They have a rock band style worship, excellent fun-based children’s ministry and relevant preaching. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I just think that reproduction produces diversity in nature and should in the church as well. What happens when the culture moves again; and it will? Suddenly the majority of the “contemporary churches” will be irrelevant. This will and is happening faster than we would like to think. In nature, if you clone the danger is a virus will come in and wipe out the species. The changing culture could be the virus that wipes out our cloned churches.
Alan Hirsch talks about how Christology determines missiology which determines ecclesiology. (The Forgotten Ways p. 143) Put simply we start with our understanding of Christ. Jesus becomes our starting point and determines the mission. Our mission then determines the style and functions of the church. Cloning reverses this process. It starts with a template for what church is. It then lays that template over the culture. Hirsch suggests that such an approach requires the non-believer to do the work of contextualization rather than the Christians in the church. We need to adopt a missionary posture both as church planters and Christians. We need to remember our roots in the “sent” nature of Jesus. This needs to be our foundation rather than a chosen mode of church. The starting place makes a significant difference.
When we start with ecclesiology, we quickly wrap our identity around the worship service. It becomes the starting point and informs how we do or if we do anything else. The ecclesiology then determines mission. Evangelism simply becomes inviting those who don’t have a relationship with God to attend the worship services rather than inviting them into a relationship with Jesus. Mission is typically seen not as something all Christians participate in, but something that the paid clergy do. When mission is viewed in this way it ultimately impacts our understanding of Jesus. What does it communicate to people that we track religiously the number of people in attendance at the worship service, but have no real way of measuring if someone is becoming more like our Lord and Savior, Jesus? I believe we lose the sense of the incarnation, that Jesus is real and moving among us. When we don’t participate in his mission we lose intimacy with our Lord. Jesus is no longer who we strive to be like. Again, the starting point is important.
Church planting has been good because it has stripped the building out of our mandatory understanding of church. Perhaps, the missional movement will be good in that it strips the large Sunday morning gathering out of our mandatory understanding of church. Let me be clear, I don’t think either of those are bad. They are both incredible tools to spread the gospel. They just make lousy starting points.
What do you think?
Good post, Doug. Gailyn VanRheenen with Mission Alive is constantly emphasizing that theology should precede practice, and Hirsch’s point about christology to missiology to ecclesiology seems an expansion of that same idea. I totally agree. We start with who Jesus is and why he came. That leads us to understand our calling as his followers on his mission. Missional writers like to say that “the mission has a church” rather than “the church has a mission”–that is, God’s mission in the world called the church into existence to help accomplish that mission, rather than mission work just being one of the various tasks and ministries of a church. Therefore, what we are to be and do as a church must flow out of our understanding of God’s mission (which is also our mission).
To some degree, I would almost say that you could start with missiology, in the sense that we start with God’s mission in the world which led to the sending of Christ into the world. So in some sense, missiology (as the study of God’s mission, not just ours) is integrally related to and maybe even points to Christology. But that probably would just confuse the subject, since missiology is generally understood to refer to the church’s mission.
I think you’re right about attractional models of church planting generally beginning with ecclesiology. That’s not entirely fair, since I think church growth architects like Wagner and McGavran did begin with theological reflection on God’s mission. But the tasks of church planting and church growth often seem to be more driven by pragmatic concerns (and therefore focus on the practical aspects of ecclesiology) than by theology (christology or missiology, or even the theological aspects of ecclesiology). I think this was especially seen in their promotion of the principle of homogeneity, which is very pragmatic, but I think is contrary to good theology (Christology, missiology, AND ecclesiology).
Rob
This was great! And so on target! We often speak of this and there are still so many people that just don’t understand the truth of these cloned churches… and I believe the truth is, is that they are so wrapped up in their number count and their programs (not that programs are bad… but they are not to overshadow worship!) that they forget their purpose. (or maybe some of them have a different purpose)
While on vacation, my husband and I visited a mega-church with our daughter and one of her in-law relatives one Christmas eve a couple years ago in CA. This relative just thinks the world of this church and so we agreed to go to please her. The place was packed… must have been 3 or 4 thousand in attendance. So here we are up in the nose-bleed section looking down on this HUGE church congregation. The pastor comes out and is just as excited as can be and begins to talk about the great works of the church, the year coming to an end, etc… and then in his enthusiasm, shouts out to the congregation asking them, “Whoever of you brought someone to the Lord this past year… I want you to come on down here and join me on the platform!” (which, by the way was bigger than a Mercedes showroom!) Doug, I kid you not, 7 or 8 people went up there. My husband and I just looked at each other and said, “what’s wrong with this picture?”
I don’t know that pastor… but I can only pray that was a wake-up call for him.
I’m not knocking the mega-churches… I just see many of them cloning others. They spring up like mushrooms and develop all the similar characteristics of the other mushrooms… some are just a little shorter, or taller, lighter or darker. There is one inparticular that many seem to be cloning… this is a hugely user friendly, ear tickling church down south who’s pastor actually stood up at a pastor’s convention and said, “I will never preach the cross or the blood because it offends people.” We are still shell-shocked by that statement to this day!
I think we as church planters are running into the after-effects of cloning. Either there are people who are gun-shy and leary of new churches because they have seen so many of them… or there is the flip-side, that once they find out we have no intention of tickling anyone… they move on.
Thanks again for a great post!
Debi
Here’s what I think about Reproduction (skip the first one minute and 42 seconds to miss announcements):
http://blip.tv/file/3127867/