How to Plant a Church

It is not hard to see why someone like Knight would be captivated by the idea of glory. The church planting movement in modern America all too often makes it seem like personal glory is the whole point of planting a church.

Consider the familiar template. Christians are told that God wants his church to grow, which is obviously true. Then some statistics are trotted out to show that there are a whole lot of unchurched areas, places where there are lots of people who do not regularly go to church. A crying need! Isaiah is quoted: “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?’” (ESV) Will you be Isaiah and say “Here I am! Send me” or will you continue to live your safe life? Answer the call!

Then when you do, you find an entire set of resources at your disposal. Endless books and videos and conferences to give you the secrets to successfully planting a church in the 21^st century. You need these resources because you don’t want your new church to fail, do you?

The industry that has sprung up around the best practices for planting a church has a strange feature. It looks a whole lot like the industry that has sprung up around the best practices for starting a business. To be a church planter, you are encouraged to get the church equivalent of an MBA.

Indeed, as I thought about this, I realized that it is rather surprising that some entrepreneurial college has not launched a Masters in Church Administration (MCA) program, where aspiring church planters can go learn the latest techniques. Then I googled it, and, of course, there are such masters programs. Masters in Church Management seems to be the preferred moniker, though, presumably to mask the fact that it is just a spiritual MBA program.

Knight takes this entire way of thinking about church planting to task.

I wanted to write this book because I can’t help but notice the absence of the church in most church-planting resources. I’ve read more than a dozen books on church planting. I’ve watched talks online. I’ve read blog posts, I’ve listened to podcasts, and I’ve attended conferences and assessments. I’ve talked with “strategists,” and I’ve met with future planters. And you know what? Ecclesiology is hardly mentioned!

Ah, yes, ecclesiology, that branch of theology related to the church. Let’s face it, the theology of the church is really boring compared to that breezy feel-good tome offering the latest techniques on mounting a successful ad campaign for your church. Why bother studying Acts or the letters of Paul?

Knight begins the book by noting the errors of church planters who think about the four S’s: “size, speed, sufficiency and spread.” That is the list of traits of a successful commercial establishment. Instead, Knight encourages church planters to think about the four C’s: “character, capability, conviction, and compassion.” The C’s are the marks of a faithful Christians, not the marks of an entrepreneur.

The corruptions arising from thinking about starting a church in the same way we think about starting a business are legion. Knight catalogs all sorts of errors. Consider the “Target Group.” If you want to build a successful business, you obviously need to identify your customer base and then target your advertising to that set of people. So, if you are starting a church, who is your target audience? Millennials? Young families? Singles? Military families? Liberals or Conservatives (obviously not both)? Pick your target and build your church!

Except…as Paul would be quick to tell you, there is One Church. Does the gospel message only apply to a subset of humanity? Is the church family just people who share your characteristics? As Knight puts it, “Each person with his or her myriad of backgrounds and experiences collected together as one united family in Christ is unlike anything else in all the world.” Does the world need another cultural gathering of like-minded people? Isn’t the point of church that there are all these people who are different from you and that you are all working together for the common aim of bringing glory to God?

At times Knight seems to relish in not even trying to follow the advice of church planting gurus. He tells the story of a man who once told him in a room full of people, “I thought your sermon was boring.” Knight (rather churlishly) replied, “Do you believe it is my job as a pastor to entertain you?” He then goes on: “The conversation that followed centered on the preacher’s need to not be boring, yet still faithful. As Martin Lloyd-Jones said, “The preacher must never be dull, and he must never be boring.… How can a man be dull when he is handling such themes?’”

As Knight goes on to argue, he really can’t help it that he is boring. He has no idea how to put a sermon together. He is not a performer. And yet:

These folks endured my boring preaching. Some of them still endure it! Why? Because as I opened and explained and applied God’s word, they smelled the aroma of life—not only from the pulpit but over meals in restaurants and during walks around the block.…Faithfulness may not be flashy, and it might look quite boring. But it leads to fruitfulness—every time.

Be Boring Boldly! Knight is onto something here. The apostles were not celebrities when they were called to spread the gospel. Yet, the gospel spread. Churches popped up all over the place, despite the fact that nobody in that era had ever read a book on church planting. How is that possible? It’s almost like the power of the gospel message doesn’t need the help of the very model of the modern major-general.

The message of Knight’s book is thus quite solid, and I suspect that there are quite a few prospective and active church planters who will benefit immensely from learning that if they want to be successful, they should toss the help manual and instead read the Bible itself and model themselves after Christ. Mixing metaphors, Knight points out that Christ is the Great Shepherd and God wants shepherds to plant churches. If you are starting a church and are more focused on numbers than on the needs of the person right in front of you, then you are missing the whole point of being a church planter.

In one way, though, Knight’s book is quite depressing. There really is not anything particularly deep or profound in this book. That is not an insult. Knight agrees:

I assume no faithful follower of Jesus will disagree with anything I’ve said. So why say it? My burden comes down to a matter of emphasis. What I’m trying to do in this book is to emphasize various essentials that are often assumed or taken for granted.

If a church planter or a pastor in quest of more resources to help them figure out what to do picks up Planting by Pastoring instead of the latest crypto-MBA manual, then some good will have been done. It would be nice to live in a world where church planters did not need to be reminded that those neighbors they should be loving are the people they meet on the side of the road and not the target group of an ad campaign. We don’t live in that world.

The local congregation of which I am a part was started almost thirty years ago. It is still going strong. One of the most important things I ever learned about church was from a conversation with one of the gentleman, Marv Kuipers, who helped start the church. The church planters spent countless hours thinking about how to start the church, working out the details of what was truly important and how the church would be managed. I was talking with Marv a few months after the first service, raising the question of how long this new church plant would be around. He said, “It will be here as long as God wants it to be here.” As long as this local congregation is faithfully doing the work of God, then none of us really needed to worry about the rest. God can take care of whether the church grows or dies out. Our job was much simpler: be faithful Christians and glorify God.

Related Posts:
Jethani, Skye What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? “Is Your Church a Company or a Family?”
Beaty, Katelyn Celebrities for Jesus “The Celebrity-Industrial Complex”

(The legalese: Crossway sent me a copy of the book to review. It would be nice to live in a world where this notice was not legally required. Alas, there are people who write nice things about products just to get more free products. So, this legal bit is required. Don’t you feel better now that I have fulfilled my legal obligation?)