How Do You Fit Into Church Planting?

Church Planting: Brad Brisco
Friday, February 25, 2005

One of the greatest opportunities in reaching the world for Christ is mobilizing lay people in the area of church planting. Most lay people are looking for a place of ministry where they can invest their life and make a real difference in the lives of others. This week I read a wonderful article on lay church planting by Van Kicklighter, a member of the Church Planting Group at the North American Mission Board. I hope you will take the time to be challenged by the following excerpt from his article.

The use of lay people in helping to plant churches has become an increasingly more frequent and popular topic. As we struggle with rapidly expanding lostness all across North America, the need for people to be engaged in evangelistic church planting activities has never been greater. While seminaries and Bible colleges are training and graduating greater numbers of church planters, the need is expanding faster than our ability to address it using just these kinds of leaders. Not only is the need great, but the desire of lay people to be actively engaged in mission work is phenomenal. The exploding numbers of lay people serving as mission volunteers is evidence of this deepening passion.

While the contemporary interest in lay church planting seems novel, it is not really all that new. Jesus lived in a world full of trained, religious professionals – people that we would call "clergy" today. Yet, when selecting his first disciples, he chose common working men. Paul, the apostle, had formal religious training but most of his missionary colleagues were lay people.

Even in more recent days, lay people have made a tremendous impact in the planting of churches in North America. Virtually all of the church planting done in the early days of the westward expansion of America was carried out by lay people. It was the Baptist "farmer- preacher" that took the Gospel with him as America expanded to the west and led in the birthing of thousands of Baptist churches from Kentucky all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

So, what does lay-led church planting look like for the twenty-first century? I would suggest that it looks very much like it did in the first and nineteenth centuries: missions at the edges - on the frontier. The contemporary frontier is not necessarily geographic. It is those frontiers where lost people have little access to the gospel and where mission work is most needed. For example, it would include rural settings where mainline churches are closing their doors, often due to lack of leadership, or where population and economics will not support a fully funded pastor or church planter. It also includes the inner city and urban core of our larger cities. In these urban places, the cost of land and buildings is prohibitive to traditional church planting methods and the culture responds best to someone with existing relationships within that context.

Millions of people live in multi-housing communities (apartments, condos, manufactured housing). People living in these communities typically will not attend churches, which means we will need to take the church to them, right in the communities where they live. Imagine how many Southern Baptists live in multi-housing communities like these and have firsthand access to people living there! These folks could help in the establishment of new Bible studies, new ministries and/or solid, biblical New Testament churches.

If you have questions about how YOU can be involved in reaching the world for Christ through church planting, call me at the associational office at 943-3446. I look forward to hearing from you!