Your Church Is Not Your City’s Savior

It’s the other tale as old as time. A young pastor comes into a city or town to plant a church, convinced he will be the next church-planting “success story.”

Intent on staking out his territory in the city’s ecclesial landscape, he takes potshots at other churches in his sermons, emphasizing how his is different from all the others in town.

This tendency can show itself in many ways. I recently heard one example from a suburban church “launching a new campus” in an economically depressed area of their city. The pastor triumphantly declared that they would “reach the drug dealers,” “end the crime,” and “be the local church” in this community. Sadly, no mention was made of the faithful decades of ministry carried out in this community by bivocational pastors who don’t have the educational and financial resources this large church possesses.

This unfortunate—but oft-repeated—scenario has played itself out in hundreds of places, with disastrous results for God’s kingdom.

Jesus did not say that the world would know we are his disciples by our competition with one another; he said they’d know us by our love for one another (John 13:34–35). Therefore, the forward movement of the gospel depends, in part, on gospel-believing churches walking in unity with each other. Read More