What’s the goal of planting a church?
by Andy Mason on Jul.19, 2010, under Church
Now I guess that this might seem like a rather obvious kind of question to ask! Surely the point is to build a new local congregation in an area where there wasn’t one?!!But as I think of it, that can’t really be the goal because it would seem to imply that any old congregation would do. As long as people are gathered together in ‘church’ that would be enough…. even if there was much sin, heresy and unbelief!
I find it personally helpful to keep asking myself this question because it clarifies what we are really about in church planting: we are about the glory of God. We want to see the worth and wonder of God displayed to the local area through the congregation. And, of course, this affects everything! It means that simply gathering people (i.e. the growth of the congregation) is not really a true indication of whether the goal is being reached. Yet, how often am I tempted to assess our ministry in regards to that issue!!
The real question we need to keep asking is whether or not the gathering is glorifying to God. Do we have a congregation that is becoming more mature and holy and pure? Do we have people who are serving and loving each other? Do we suffer with joy? Now, of course, people are always growing and many have to hear the gospel many times before they trust in Christ. But, we need to remind ourselves, for the sake of our own spiritual sanity, that the success of a church plant can only be assessed by the spiritual fruit it produces in the lives of new people – and not simply by the presence of new people. It’s even conceivable that numerical growth might, at times, even be a bad thing (!) if a church is only gathering in the long term and not converting. It may, conversely, be good for a congregation to diminish in numbers so that Christ will be honoured.
For leaders in big congregations this is perhaps easier to practice. But when your congregation is small and you’re desperate for it to grow there is a very subtle pressure to compromise on this. You just want to show that something’s happening where you’re working!!! Those of us trying to pioneer new work need to learn to bite the bullet on this and trust God for His church. We want real spiritual growth and not artificial growth through numbers.
