I recently ran into an old friend that I have not seen in a long time. I had attended church with him and he asked me where I attended church to which I gave my answer. This friend told me that he was looking for a church home but after telling me this the conversation got very interesting.
He began telling me about something he experienced recently concerning a church he visited. He told me that he was invited by a leader and went one Sunday morning to a church that was being held in a person’s home that was officially affiliated and under the accountability of a major U.S. Christian ministry to hear a representative of that ministry speak. I was rather surprised to realize that this ‘church’ was still meeting in someone’s house after knowing that this church plant under the accountability of a major U.S. Christian ministry had been around this city for at least eight years. In fact, he had discussed a fact that I had forgotten concerning a fellow friend who was in real estate had told us that the major U.S. Christian ministry tried to purchase a prime piece of real estate in our area many years ago to build a building.
This made me really think about the modern church’s approach to church planting. My friend was telling me that after the service, he asked why after eight years has the church not procured a building, have a listed phone number, nor advertised in the newspaper. I was shocked when he told me that ‘they felt they were not ready to be publically known’ and that ‘God’s proper leadership’ needed to be firmly rooted before publically announcing you are a church.’ He explained that this church leader told him that everything had to be right before announcing to the world that we are a new church because of the people who love to visit new churches looking for power positions thinking they would lead the church.
I began to research church planting techniques and found them to be very similar to market demographic research. Many resourses online tell church planting pastors to ‘establish your target market’, analyze the age demographic makeup of the city, and go specifically after that particular segment of people. many of these documents went as far as to state that it could take many years of analysis before moving to the city. Some resources stated that church planting is a team effort to the point where before moving, the elders, deacons, worship leaders, etc. should be based out of the original church and be sent out after the demographic research was done with leadership already in place.
When reading the Apostle Paul, I never saw this. He immediately went where the Holy Spirit told him to go. Paul never did a demographic analysis of a city beforehand. Paul never made weekend excursions to do spiritual warfare over a particular city before going there to establish a church. Paul went to a city, preached the Gospel, discipled the saved, and set up leaders amongst the saved people of that particular city instead of sending in a pre-prepared leadership team with structure already in order. After seeing the contrasted difference, I wonder if demographics has replaced ‘thus saith the Lord’?
