A Church Planting Success Story
By Robin G. Jordan
Before I relocated to western Kentucky in 2007, I was also
involved in two successful church plants in Louisiana—a United Methodist Church plant in
Madisonville and Southern Baptist plant in Waldheim. Madisonville was at one
time a sleepy little town at the mouth of the Tchefuncta River where the river
flows into Lake Pontchartrain. Like the neighboring communities of Covington
and Mandeville, Madisonville began to experience rapid growth in its population
as new subdivisions were built along the highways linking the town to Covington
and Mandeville and Pontchatoula.
As the population of the town grew, the Louisiana Conference
of the United Methodist Church would conduct a study of the area’s potential
for the site of a new UMC church. The conference concluded from the study that
a new UMC church planted in the area would have a high chance of success and
allocated funds for a church plant in that area. The bishop for the Louisiana
Conference enlisted the youth pastor at a large Baton Rouge UMC church to serve
as the church planter/founding pastor for the new church. The pastor in
question enjoyed a reputation of being a highly popular preacher with all ages.
Land would also be purchased for the new church.
The model used to start the new church was a variation of
the Hiving Off Model. The UMC churches within reasonable driving distance of
the future site of the new church agreed to let the church planter recruit the
nucleus of the new church from their congregations. One or more community
interest meetings were also held.
After a core-group was gathered, the new church launched its
first service of public worship, meeting in the chapel of an area funeral home.
The church planter would negotiate with the board of a local maritime museum for
the use of its facilities. The museum’s board agreed to let new church rent the
meeting rooms and other space in its building for use on Sunday with the
understanding that would be constructing its own building in the near future
and its use of museum’s facilities was not long-term.
When I became involved in the church, it had moved to the maritime museum and had begun a new phase in its ministry. The church planter was pursuing three goals—to
grow the congregation, to raise money for the construction of a building on the
land that the conference had purchased for the new church, and to construct the
building. During the two odd years that I was involved in the church, the
church planter met these goals. The new church would move into its own
building.
My arrival at the church coincided with the arrival of an
influx of area Methodists who had been attending a large UMC church in a nearby
community. The church had changed pastors and this change had precipitated an
exodus of its members. Their arrival would boost the size of the congregation.
It would also impact the worship of the new church as a number of these people
and myself had been involved in music ministry. The church planter recruited a
choir director from the new arrivals and formed a choir. Before their arrival
and the formation of the choir the church planter himself had been leading the
congregational singing. He had enlisted his father to play the musical
accompaniment for the hymns on the piano. With the formation of the choir the
selection of music for the services would include newer worship songs from a
UMC hymnal supplement as well as traditional hymns from the UMC hymnal.
For the two odd years I was involved in the church, its worship
music would be an eclectic blend of contemporary and traditional music. Area churches
that were blended or contemporary in their worship music were generally
experiencing more growth than those that were traditional. However, the use of
this particular blend of music was not intentional. It was simply one of the
outcomes of the expansion of the church’s music program. At the time I left the
church, it had acquired a new choir director who was a professor of choral
music at a university in New Orleans. She would move the worship music in a
more classical and traditional direction. One of the initial results of this
change was that more people from outside of the church would join the choir. They
apparently followed the choir director from her previous church. I do not know
how the change impacted the growth of the church. A large choir and a popular
preacher were major drawing cards for area Methodists. The church’s growth was
largely if not exclusively transfer growth.
During my two-odd-year sojourn with that church I identified
a number of problem areas that I believe impeded the growth of the church. The
first of these problem areas was that the church planter had difficulty in
delegating leadership responsibilities to others. As a consequence the church’s
leadership circle was quite small. During that period no new leaders were added
to the leadership circle. It was the same group of people who had been with the
church planter from the outset.
The pastor’s reluctance to delegate leadership
responsibilities to others had two major effects. He overextended himself,
doing what others could have done. For example, he led the church’s youth
group, taught the Bible class for older children and teens, and led the
church’s CARE team. Or he did not undertake a new ministry that might have
benefited the church because it would mean—as he saw it—the addition of
something more on his plate.
While the central role that the United Methodist Church assigns
to its pastors in the life, ministry, and worship of the local church may have
been a contributing factor, the pastor’s inability to delegate was mainly a
personality issue.
The recruitment and development of more leaders is essential
to the growth of a new church. Delegating leadership responsibilities to
newcomers is also one way of assimilating them into a congregation.
A second problem area was that the church planter did not
view people outside of the membership circle of the church as his pastoral
responsibility. For example, he sent a get-well card to a small child whose
parents were church members when she suffered an ant bite at a church picnic
but he did not attempt to reach out to my niece when her second oldest son was
diagnosed with leukemia. He was acquainted with the boy as I brought him and
his older brother with me to church services.
An empathetic, supportive response from a pastor would not
only have helped my niece in a difficult time in her life but also it might
have encouraged her to start attending church again. She would have benefited
from the emotional support of caring Christians. However, she was not a church
member and therefore she was not in his estimation his concern. He saw the
provision of this kind of support as a service extended only to church members
and as one of the benefits of church membership.
One way that a church reaches and engages unchurched people
is to be there for them when they are facing a crisis. They may or may not
become a part of the church. The church, however, is being faithful to the
Great Commandment, loving those outside its fellowship as well as those within
the congregation. Such caring may have an accumulative effect and the
unchurched people to whom it is shown may in time become Christians.
The church under his leadership would respond generously to
appeals from the bishop but undertook very few initiatives of its own. The
church from what I could see did not do a lot of bridge-building with the
community. During the two odd years that I sojourned with the church, I would
not describe it as leaving a large foot print in the community.
Indeed I became aware of the church’s existence purely by
accident. My oldest grandnephew and I were driving around Madisonville when we
spied the large sign the church had erected on its future site.
Building bridges to the community and having sizable impact
on the community are musts if a new church is going to have a strong connection
to its community. It also fosters a positive image of the church within the
community. This is particularly important today as the culture in North America
becomes increasingly unfriendly toward Christians.
A third problem area was that the church also had no small
group ministry. This was in part due to the pastor’s reluctance to delegate
leadership responsibilities to others. Small groups meeting in homes and
similar venues would have provided additional entry points into the
congregation. The only point of entry was the one service of public worship on
Sunday mornings.
While a single entry point is often typically of small
churches, this particular church was actually a medium-sized church, pointing
to a not uncommon dynamic of medium-sized churches. While they are no longer
small, they still think and act like they are a small church.
Even small churches can benefit from small groups. As we shall see in “Church Pioneering in the
Sportman’s Paradise—Part 3,” small groups can play an important role in the gathering
of the nucleus of a new congregation.
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