Stop Funding Church Plants
Posted by Todd Rhoades in Leadership on Jul 6th, 2011 | 12 commentsDavid Fitch writes: Â This is an idea whose time has come. It is easy, simple, saves money, and I think it seeds the mission of God in N America for generations to come: STOP FUNDING TRADITIONAL CHURCH PLANTS and instead fund missionaries to inhabit contexts all across the new mission fields of N America.
Traditionally denominations have funded church plants. They do this by providing a.) a full time salary plus benefits for three years, and b.) start-up funds for equipment, building rental etc. to a well-assessed church planter (read entrepreneur). The goal is a self-sustaining church in three years paying its own pastor’s salary and assorted sundry costs of running the church’s services. The costs are astounding, perhaps 300-400,000 dollars or more to get a church plant going.
Today, in the changing environments of N American post Christendom, this approach to church planting is insane. For it not only assumes an already Christianized population to draw on , it puts enormous pressure on the church planter to secure already well-heeled Christians as bodies for the seats on Sunday morning. This in itself undercuts the engagement of the hurting, lost peoples God is bringing to Himself in Christ.
Instead of funding one entrepreneurial pastor, preacher and organizer to go in and organize a center for Christian goods and services, let us fund three or four leader/ or leader couples to go in as a team to an under-churched context (Most often these places are the not rich all white suburbs where evangelicals have done well planting churches).
Fund these leader/leader couples for two years instead of three. Fund them only with health insurance (in the States) and a reasonable stipend for housing. This gives them space to get a job on the ground floor of a company, at the bottom of the pay scale, learning a skill, proving themselves. They can do this because they have certain benefits and a place to live for two years.
The goal here is NOT (I REPEAT NOT) to have self-sustaining church organization in three years. It is to have three to four leader/leader couples working together with jobs each that can offer 15 hours of labor to work together to organize and form a gospel expression way in their context. They will be self sustaining in that they all have jobs. They will be committed to this context/neighborhood for ten years.
Hmmm… thoughts?
Todd
12 Responses to “ “Stop Funding Church Plants”
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I like the idea of looking at church planters as missionaries, especially those in an urban context… but I am a little leery of totally dictating methods to the person who is going to be on the field. Some planters need to get a job in the community in order to be able to fully reach their context, others need the freedom to not work, and invest themselves in other ways. I agree that the idea should not be financial sustainability (at least not in a three year time period) but should be developing a healthy ministry that is spiritually sustainable. It will take longer to be financially sustainable this way, but the community will be better served for it.
As a church planter in the Evangelical Free Church of America, the methods you described are not at all the way we do it. I’ve been involved with a number of other church planters in the EFCA and none of them (the ones I know) are funded by the denomination. Where there is funding, it from supporting churches or individuals. Many of my church planting colleagues hold down secular jobs and have the support of other couples that share the vision and passion of the church planter. Several church plants I know have partnered up leadership while they build the church.
One of the inherent difficulties is that as the lead planter works his secular job, there is little time to do the work of the ministry. When I was called into this church (we’re no longer considered a church plant) four years ago, I swung a hammer as a self-employed contractor. I had the flexibility to meet with people and develop relationships in the community without being confined to an office. One of the downsides was that at the end of the day when I did most of the work of the ministry, I was dog tired. My wife and I would visit with people in their homes and share our vision to make real disciples. Some people shared the vision, others did not.
Planters are most definitely missionaries. Church planting is not for the faint of heart. It can be tiring and discouraging and exhilarating and exciting at the same time. The real question is are we planting churches for Christians to transfer to or are we seeing conversions? Now there’s a great question.
Dear Todd,
This is my first connection to you and I immediately sensed a kindred heart. I believe your proposal, if followed, will advance the mission exponentially!
Dr. Jonathan Stairs
Missionary with Christ and His Church
Calvary Baptist Church, Oshawa, ON, Canada
Even though I like Fitch’s idea, I believe that a diversity of Christ-honoring methods is the order of the day. Planters come from all sorts of background but God has always been able to raise up churches in different ways.
Why does it have to be an either/or situation? If we bash one method to promote another, are we really promoting unity. I like both the traditional church plant model and the missional community model. Both reach people for Christ and both can be effective. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. Let’s not forget that.
I understand bold statements in writing and I realize that we all make them. Perhaps we shoul also all stop having children and only support orphans. I mean think of all the funds spent on birthing children, training doctors, newborn supplies. Instead we should just fund couples who want to adopt orphans. This whol having babies thing is just an idea whose time has come.
Or could we do both. In fact what if church plants also sent missionaries into the culture and trained very attendee to be that self-supporting couple.
Church works. Lets not stop producing them – let’s just do it better.
This is a very naive concept for one simple reason. Numbers. In order for this to be accepted, you have to change denominational definitions of success. What you’re proposing doesn’t produce the numbers that officials need to justify the spending. Our society, and the Church in America doesn’t have patience or maturity for this approach…
Or maybe I’m just a cynical church planter…
We did some inverse funding–planters moved into an area, got work, became part of community, as they gathered people funding began a little at a time. After 3-4 years, funding increased to point that they would intentionally take jobs like bus driver because now they had enough funding they only needed part-time church salary; they chose jobs that got them out in the community meeting people (bus driver, Wal Mart greeter, for example). Tended to ground them in the community better.
So that’s the case? Quite a revleiaton that is.
This sounds like an argument for a house church movement if you ask me (and maybe it is, I don’t know who David Fitch is). But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. We certainly need to rethink how we plant churches. But by this logic, we should probably just pay all of our church members to go and be missionaries.
Insurance assistance would definitely be helpful to a church plant. My husband and I started a church plant two years ago and with no financial assistance from the organization, except for a couple of one-time donations. We are working in the private industry full-time and the church is far from being self-sufficient. Our trust is in God and his calling. If we don’t work, we don’t eat…
Having planted three churches myself, I must say that unless it is designed to reach unchurched people the plant won’t gain converts. Launching large as this blog mentions has more to do with where the method is being applied than the method itself. It works best in the South where there are more Christians to draw from and reach sustainability faster. Launching large is less effective at evangelism, mainly because sustainability looms so large that the planter is more inclined to focus on people who will donate to the church rather than the people who need the help and are less likely to give. Its a difficult situation because those who are evangelistic have little to no concern for sustainability and those who are more concerned with sustainability tend to focus less on the missional aspect. That is why you must use lots of approaches and just keep trying!!!