I am looking for some anecdotes on y’all’s experience with mission church planting. Our church has been discussing church planting off and on for the last few years, and we’re at a point where in God’s providence, a few prospects have come up recently that have generated more serious discussion on this front than ever.
For a little context, we are a reformed baptist church that’s about 16 years old, and collectively, we don’t really have any real experience in the area of church planting. The church, itself, began as a botched Methodist church plant, which had its pastor abdicate within the first year or so, and a number of families leaving. Those who remained sought out to hire a pastor, and ended up getting – somewhat to their surprise – a Wesleyan (turning reformed) man, who had been commended to the search committee by his home church for consideration for the pastorate. The result, years later, is basically a first generation reformed baptist church, now outgrowing her building, with a fair amount of resources, but no real experience for how to reproduce itself carefully and in good order.
We’ve all seen too many church plants get off on poor footing, without the protection or foresight of an established eldership, having no coherent membership, and so forth. We don’t want that, and so we’re trying to approach this topic very cautiously.
I’ve read the Evangel Presbytery BCO sections 5-6 on the organization of a particular church. While we’re not presbyterian, I find the framework presented there to be very instructive and helpful. There’s a lot there that matches what I think we’d envision doing, with the exception that the end goal for us would be an autonomous particular church, without the formal tie to a presbytery. I’m not looking to discuss presbyterianism vs. local church autonomy here, but just sharing a bit about what’s in my own head right now .
For the purposes of this thread, I’d really kinda just like to hear some stories from folks who have been involved in church plants that have been “successful.” I’d like to hear things like:
What was the impetus for church plants you’ve been a part of? Did your congregation outgrow your location? Did you have a number of families living a bit too far away? Or was it a missional church plant that was trying to target a specific community?
How did the initial church polity work out? Were you under the oversight of a sending church? Formally or informally?
How was church membership handled in the infancy stages of the church?
What is the biggest advice you would offer to churches considering this for the first time?
The Reformed Baptist church I grew up in did a church plant probably 13 years ago. One reason was to be able to focus ministry on another local town, but I think the primary one was that we were getting large enough that we were becoming a bit unwieldy. That’s probably not the right word for it. We weren’t really outgrowing our meeting location, but we were big enough that it was hard to operate as one body - for elders to have relationships with all the members, and for all the members to have relationships with each other.
The church plant was done in a way that is probably a bit unusual for congregational churches. The membership was divided (I think initially but it may have been a bit later on) but the elders were not. There were three elders at the time and one was going to church plant. So to maintain a plurality of elders, the three elders remained over both churches. Basically a mini-presbytery.
This arrangement lasted five years, until it was dissolved suddenly. What happened was church discipline issues came up between the elders in the original church, so it was agreed by all at the time to formally separate the church plant to avoid getting them involved. (Whether or not that was a good idea is a whole separate discussion). The situation ended with a church split, unfortunately a very common way to plant churches…
How well did it work out? There’s probably mixed opinions on it. My dad (one of the elders) thought it worked out ok. My perspective is that it is very hard for elders to really be overseers and shepherds of a church when they aren’t going to its meetings on a weekly basis. Intentional effort can help overcome this, but I’m not sure it can completely. I wouldn’t jump to repeat it without careful thought.
I think the biggest surprise was how quickly the churches diverged and developed different cultures in small but significant ways. Not what we expected with the same theology and homogenous mix of memberships.
I’ll chime in with my experience in two church plants of Evangel.
Number 1:
This was a church that had dwindled in the PCUSA and had entered the PCA after the full legalizing of gay pastors in the PCUSA. It had no local elders and had been a “church plant” of the PCA for 3 years when that planting pastor resigned.
I went to cover the pulpit which eventually led that congregation to petition Evangel to accept them as a congregation wishing to be particularized and with me as the pastor. We had a session of elders from within Evangel. The long distance of some of the elders was noted and a new session was formed after 2.5 years.
It ended a short time later in two factions and the vast majority of the congregation voting to leave Evangel. I resigned.
Number 2:
Trinity Reformed Church decided to plant a church in Columbus, IN (about an hour away.) This was due to a family living there that desired a church closer to home. They called a man from the PCA (Andy Halsey) who transferred into Evangel and moved in 2020 to plant the church. One additional family moved to Columbus - giving three families to the work.
I moved to Columbus to assist as pastor after 3 years. We are ruled by three elders within Evangel.
Both churches handled membership as a normal church: examined by the elders or pastors and with the standard vows.
Advice:
Close proximity to ruling elders is important. They need to be close enough to visit sometimes and know the people. (Joshua mentioned this, too.)
Planting as a solo pastor (both in my experience at the first plant and Andy for three years in Columbus) is very hard and should be avoided.
The church I’m part of , with a rollcall of several hundred, has on two occasions in the past released people to ‘graft into’ church plants. Lessons:
Make clear from the start why you are doing this (which was done). In one case, it was to merge a large homegroup some distance out of the area with three smaller (<20 in each case) Episcopal congregations in that area. That plant is thriving.
In the other case, we released people to set up a congregation whose mission was to work with some very poor people in the area. This hasn’t worked nearly as well (=funding, and the fact that with the best will in the world, it turned the plant into something like a welfare agency).
Our context isn’t Reformed/Presbyterian, but the lessons seem applicable.
I know of a church that was started this way. It remained a perpetual mission at least until the area it was in gentrified. As far as I knew, they had come to the conclusion that it would remain a mission and the wealthy home church would simply keep helping fund it.
Agreed.
I know another situation like this. They determined that they were unable to provide the actual oversight and shepherding that the second church needed, so they turned it loose. I don’t know if they got a plurality of elders in place first, but they did get a pastor in place.
I personally have planted two churches. I always had the help of at least one other pastor. Neither time was in the same community as the planting church. The original impetus in both cases was feeling a call to plant (though not wanting to), but not even having a specific location in mind. We evaluated places where we had connections, gauged interest, and chose a place, seeking to stay close enough to the home church where we could both receive and give help.
I’ve also been on the session of a church plant that was formed in a similar manner.
In all three of those cases, the session was made up of elders and pastors from other connected churches. That meant in practice that the session largely relied on what the pastors told them. If the pastors recommend something, the session almost always agrees. However, at least in the cases where I was pastoring, the elders (though remote) were invaluable. Their wisdom and experience and even their being outsiders, gave us much that was necessary.
We also informally augmented the elders board by inviting a man who was part of the church, who would obviously be an elder candidate when the time came, to attend all our meetings. This was also a benefit.
My ability to give advice is limited by the fact that these plant locations were always 1-3 hours away. The circumstances obviously differ from what you are considering, @jander.