The church where we currently serve started as an additional site for a city wide, larger church. Then, in 2019, the sites were launched out as autonomous churches with their own elders. Of the three smaller churches, one struggled for various reasons through the pandemic season and sadly had to close, one saw a lot of encouragement and grew through conversions. The third struggled during the pandemic and lost people. However, at the time we joined, we were seeing an influx of new people. Quite a few came together and new each other, however they didn’t stay. Soon after, we saw another cohort of people joining us although for various reasons, there are people who had been with the church longer term who have moved on for various reasons.
The result is that it feels like we are a very different church to the one that went into the pandemic but also different again to the church of two years ago. It might be suggested that the church has been re-planted at least twice. I suspect that we are not alone in our experience, especially among new, smaller churches and especially in our kind of context. It was true of Nueva Vida and arguable of our experience with each of our congregations in Bearwood. Sunday Night Church definitely went through a serious of iterations, a congregation drawn from young people who had come through our youth clubs, a congregation of single mums from the local flats and then a congregation of homeless people.
This helps us to think about a few things. First of all, we cannot assume that people will be well embedded into our DNA and understand who we are and where we have come from. Secondly, it means that visiting speakers may be caught on the hop. Some will realise that the church is different and so adapt their teaching and preaching but not all will get this. Be careful if you are a visiting preacher that you don’t speak to the church that you spoke to 6 years ago rather than the church in front of you.
Thirdly, I think it helps us to understand some of the challenges when we try to build church planting into the DNA of a church. WE are asking people to plant again but this is something they have been continuously doing. We think they are being asked to join something new but this feels like all they have known and it feels exhausting. It means that in small to medium sized churches, when you decide to plant by conventional means that people feel as though they have no option, they will be part of a plant whether or not they like it. This includes those who stay at the sending church. They feel like they will never get to comfortable breathing space. Maybe we shouldn’t offer that anyway, I’m no evaluating those feelings here, I’m simply describing them.
Now, I’m fully committed to church planting still. I am still excited about seeing churches planted that go on to plant churches. None of this should be seen as an argument against church planting. However, it helps to be alert to the challenges and should encourage us o think about how, when and why we plant.
Faithroots 