Biblical Recorder - Convention committed to planting new churches

4. May 2009 by Norman Jameson, BR Editor

It’s easy to start a new church.

It’s hard to do it right.

North Carolina Baptists as a convention of churches, and many North Carolina Baptist churches on their own, are investing significant time, money, training, focus and efforts on starting new churches because there is a commitment to the idea that — per capita — new churches reach more people than do existing churches.

And there is a commitment to the idea that we’d better get busy about the business of reaching people because we’re losing ground. If estimates are true that one half the population is lost that would mean North Carolina’s lost population is larger than the total population of 85 nations.

Of course, if half the population is lost, that means half is saved. And if the saved half each won one person to Christ…

Instead, our 4,100 North Carolina Baptist churches typically baptize 25,000 each year. And the population grew 196,000 in 2007. The faster we go, the behinder we get.

Existing churches, some in North Carolina more than 200 years old, and hundreds more than 100 years old, tend to grow a crust around them that becomes hard for new people to break through.

Think of the Sunday School classes in your church that are not really open to new members. There is no sign on the door that says “full” but it is easy for a visitor to pick up the vibe that he or she would never fit.

My wife and I had been visiting a class at a new church in a new town for months when one Sunday we were about the only ones who showed up. We learned later everyone else was at the annual camping trip. We never heard about it.

I once learned from a former staffer that during W.A. Criswell’s tenure at First Baptist Church in Dallas each member of one men’s class had his own recliner in the classroom.

Try breaking into that class as a new member!

Experts say that various people groups speak 180 languages in our state. Yet North Carolina Baptists are overwhelmingly English speaking Anglos.

Because Christians most often reach people that look and talk like ourselves, we must be very intentional about finding, training and supporting potential ministers who don’t look like us, but who can reach members of those groups with which they have ethnic or language affinity.

Church planting is capturing the imagination of seminary students to the extent that in some classes, when asked who was preparing to go into an established church, not a single hand goes up. Some directors of missions and other church planners have expressed concern that a shortage of pastors for established churches is looming in the next generation.

But young, fired up ministers would rather be with a church in the delivery room that carries some of their own DNA, than to wrestle in the emergency room with a patient that won’t take the medicines he prescribes.

While a shortage of pastors would be tragic from our perspective today, in the context of the Church universal sometimes a seed must die so that a tree can grow. The Biblical Recorder ran a beautiful story in the previous issue about a dying Charlotte church that sold its facilities below market value to a growing black congregation.

What was lost and what was gained?

We have in several areas many tiny churches established 100 to 150 years ago three to five miles apart, a good hour’s walk. The same length of time today in a car will carry you past dozens of churches. If such churches continue as independent entities in the future they will find creative ways to share a pastor.

In the midst of a strong commitment to church planting, Baptist State Convention Executive Director-treasurer Milton A. Hollifield Jr. says the Convention remains vitally committed to the health of existing congregations. No existing church’s needs will be lost in the emphasis on church planting.

Just as “grandparents” are said to be the biggest hindrance to young couples committing to overseas missions, it is a public secret that existing churches often resist new churches being planted “in their areas.”

In truth there are living around many existing churches people groups that simply will not be interested in attending a church that is unlike themselves.

Craig Bailey, director of missions for Buncombe Association around Asheville, fields calls every week from people interested in starting a new church there. Ken Baker left Union Valley Baptist in Whiteville to start a church and wanted to go to the Myrtle Beach area.

The director of missions there already had six plants getting started, so Ken went to Oak Island.

Bob Roberts of Northwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, leads a church that has helped to start hundreds of others, all over the world. He brought the Convention sermon in 2006 and fanned the flame to start not just churches, but a church planting movement.

David Phelps, director of missions in Atlantic Association, just returned from the international Exponential meeting of church planters in Florida and said he has never been so excited about the future of the Church.

The International Mission Board reports new churches in China are starting at a rate turning viral — thousands a year — and growing faster than leadership can be trained so new Christians are taking on the responsibility themselves.

Ironically, at a time when denominationalism is waning, the convention of North Carolina Baptists churches is proving its value by marshalling resources to accomplish a task that requires a cooperative effort.

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