Church Planting: Targeting Lost People

By Robin G. Jordan

In his article, “Two Grids Every Church Pastor/Planter/Missionary Must Use: Missiological Grid,” Ed Stetzer makes a very important point:

Church planters cannot simply go out into the world and say, "Look! I've got a theological grid. Who agrees with me?" At that point, we are essentially preaching to the choir. We have become distributors of religious goods and services catered to our specific theological clientele. That is not the same thing as engaging lost people for the cause of Christ.

Stetzer's article made me think about the church planting that went on in the Episcopal Church in the last half of the twentieth century and the church planting that is going on in the Anglican Church in North America in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. In his article Stetzer relates how he as a seminary professor turned down a request for help in planting a new church because the would-be church planter was not from missiological viewpoint trying to reach lost people. He wanted to plant a church for students who shared his theology.

In the 1980s I was involved in the planting of a new church in the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. I served on the mission committee of the sponsoring church and on the launch team itself. The church was one of two new churches that were planted in the diocese during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Both were planted in areas that were experiencing rapid population growth. One was planted in Harvey, a community on the West Bank, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans; the other in Mandeville, a community on the North Shore, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

Both communities were seeing growth in the affluent, educated middle class segment of their population residing in new housing. This population segment Wayne Schwab, then head of the Episcopal Church’s Office of Evangelism Ministries, would identify as the population segment that the Episcopal Church could expect the most success in reaching.

What sticks in my mind was that the main reason the new church was started in Mandeville was not to reach lost people. Rather it was thought that due to the rapid population growth at the west end of St. Tammany Parish the area needed a second Episcopal church to accommodate Episcopalians moving into the area. It was also thought that a new church might attract other families and individuals who were new to the area and who were looking for a new church home. The new church was essentially planted for churchgoers.

The new church would become a distributer for religious goods and services primarily catered to married couples with children. What goods and services, to whom they would be catered, and how they would be financed would eventually create tensions in the church. They would lead to a church split in 2001. At the center of this split was disagreement over the leadership of the church’s longtime pastor and his vision for the church and the finances of the church.

The farthest thing from the minds of most people in the church, including the pastor, was reaching lost people. The pastor’s explanation for the launching of a third service on Sunday mornings was to ease the congestion in the church parking lot at the other two services. The service was launched not to reach new people but to serve the existing congregation. A number of the church members had been lobbying for a third service that featured contemporary music and a more free-flowing style of worship.  They were disappointed as the service did not meet their expectations. The music and style of worship were similar to that at the second service. They had been led to believe that the music would be contemporary and the worship style more free-flowing.

No real planning had gone into the launching of the new service. No thought was given to how the church members who had lobbied for the service might be used as the nucleus of a new congregation and how the service might be targeted at new ministry groups in the community.

The church split would cost the church at least a third of its member households. It would reduce the base of support of the church both financially and in terms of people inviting friends, colleagues, neighbors, and relatives to church. It did ease the congestion in the church parking lot. The third service was dropped after the split.

The election and consecration of an openly gay man as the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 would further have a negative impact upon the growth of the church. Mandeville is a predominantly socially and politically conservative community. Already in debt for the construction of the original multipurpose building and an education center, the church would become overextended financially with the construction of a parish life center and the conversion of the multipurpose building into a permanent worship center. The pastor would resign in 2007. The church is now a mission again.

A year after the church split a third Episcopal church was launched at the west end of St. Tammany Parish. It was planted for charismatic Episcopalians in the Mandeville-Covington area. The church would be officially recognized as a preaching station of a charismatic Episcopal church in Baton Rouge. The pastor of that church would work to shift the focus of the new church to engaging lost people. At the time of Gene Robinson’s election and consecration the new church was using the Alpha course to reach lost people. The congregation has never recovered from the loss of members resulting from Robinson’s election and consecration. It has maintained a tenuous existence since that time.

Robinson’s election and consecration would negatively impact most of the churches in the diocese. The church in Harvey lost so many members that it became a mission again. A new work started in East Baton Rouge had to be abandoned.

These two experiences and my involvement at various stages in the planting of five other new churches prompts me to wonder to what extent reaching the lost is motivating the Anglican Church in North America’s church planting efforts. A substantial number of the people forming ACNA churches are disaffected Episcopalians. In many cases the churches they have planted have been to provide themselves and people like themselves with a new church home. I wonder to what extent they have been able to shift their focus to engaging lost people. It is much easier to make a church mission-shaped and its members mission-minded at the outset than it is later on.

New churches that were planted for purpose of distributing religious goods and services to a particular constituency may grow. But they lack durability over the long term. They are vulnerable to changes in the demographics of an area, shifts in the economy, and other external factors. The consumers of their religious goods and services may abandon them for churches that offer more and better quality goods and services. They are also susceptible to the vagaries of religious fads.

The example Stetzer uses in his article may suggest that by the term “specific theological clientele” he is referring to a ministry target group with a distinct theology. This is not the point that he is making. Rather his concern as a missiologist was that the student wanted to target the ministry of the new church at a group of people who were believing Christians and churchgoers. They might be attending a church but would be happier in a church that shared their theological outlook. They might be visiting churches in search of a new church home.

Stetzer’s point is that in a church committed to fulfilling the great commission its primary focus must be reaching lost people. This does not mean that the church ignores believers who for one reason or another are not a part of a church but they are not its principal ministry target group. When they do become a church’s principal ministry target group, the church will lose its focus upon engaging lost people or it will never develop such a focus.

The church is also focusing on attracting a group of people that is going to diminish in size over time because the church is not fulfilling its chief task—to make disciples. It is leaving this task to other churches and then taking advantage of the fruits of their efforts. This is a very dangerous course to take. If an increasing number of churches maintains a parasitic existence on a few churches that do make disciples, a decline in Christianity in a particular region is inevitable. If a church fails to do its part in fulfilling the great commission, making disciples in its community and supporting missionary work outside its community, the church is contributing to this decline. It is not being faithful to its Lord.