Church Planting 2.0: A Permission Slip for the Lost
If you have been reading any of Asbury’s publications in recent years, you will know that church planting is a major new focus of the seminary. Of course, we have been producing church planters since our founding in 1923, but today it has become more strategic and intentional.
Church planting at Asbury now has the second highest student enrollment of any degree other than the M.Div. And we are just starting this degree! Our most strategic church planting initiatives still lay in the future. Our certificate-based, church-planting institutes are still to come, and our plan to network our alumni in church planting is coming soon. We have even raised funding to help our alumni start new churches after they graduate!
Why all this emphasis on church planting?
As I speak to our alumni across the country, I meet many of you who are extremely enthusiastic about this initiative. Others have questions and maybe even a healthy dose of skepticism.
Some of the questions I have heard are: “Why should we plant more churches when there are already so many?” or “I am in a denomination that is closing churches, why should we start new ones?”
However, when you think about church planting, you should understand that this is not your parent’s idea of church planting.
This is church planting 2.0.
In the older model, church planting generally meant going to areas where there are many new housing developments, buying a piece of property, building a new building, and then employing a range of strategies to get people to come to the new church. While this model is still essential, it is not the core strategy behind church planting 2.0.
The new model of church planting involves the recognition that the dominant strategy of evangelism in the existing church is, what I call, “passive congeniality.” You are all very familiar with this model. We tell our congregations to turn and greet those around them and if they see a visitor, they should be very warm and welcoming. Some churches even give special gift bags to first time visitors, or staff a “welcome center.”
All of that is, of course, helpful and should be continued.
However, the vast majority of people who do not know Jesus Christ will never walk into your church or mine and see how friendly our people are. They will never hear our amazing sermons or experience the well-run programs of our churches.
They are the “nones.’ They have no faith, and, unlike a previous generation of unbelievers, they are not particularly unsettled by their unbelief. They are quite satisfied and comfortable. They are not looking for a church home. Even if they are miserable and dissatisfied with their lives, they would not readily recognize that “going to church,” much less “inviting Jesus into their heart,” might be the solution.
Church planting 2.0 is fundamentally missional. It spawns new micro-communities of faith exploration by going to the lost, rather than asking them to come to us. We start these micro-communities in pubs, in malls, in theaters, in coffee shops, and other non-traditional locations. In other words, we go where the lost are already gathering.
I know the break room at Home Depot doesn’t have quite the appeal to our sensitivities as a beautiful structure with stained glass windows and a pipe organ. But, welcome to life on the fastest growing mission field in the world: North America. These humble micro-communities are eventually linked with new services from existing churches especially designed for these new seekers and believers who arise out of the micro-communities. These gatherings may not take place on Sunday morning. They may be on Saturday night, or whatever time is organic to that micro-community. Church planting 2.0 is more about missional engagement with the culture than buying a piece of property and building a building. Church Planting 2.0 is the recognition that we are in an increasingly post-Christian culture and our voice in the culture has become marginalized.
Church planting 2.0 is a cultural “permission slip.” There are people who will discover in these new initiatives an open doorway—a “permission slip”— to explore the claims of Jesus Christ, which is far less intimidating and far more contextual to their lives than walking into church. Of course, it is essential that these micro-communities be shaped to love the global church of Jesus Christ throughout the world and back through time. These new initiatives are about establishing new doorways and are not to be confused with the house itself.
Church planting 2.0 is about re-missioning the existing church. This is another wonderful result of church planting. It ends up transforming the church from passive Christians to active, missional evangelists for the gospel and our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been lulled into a kind of nominal, half-baked Christianity. The growing unbelief in our culture is actually a “wake up call” to the church!
Church planting 2.0 learned a great deal from the Alpha course, a very fruitful ten-week evangelistic outreach for post-modern millennials, among others. Alpha is not without flaws. However, Alpha has learned how to talk to people about the faith in fresh ways. Alpha grasped that having some friends over to your home for a meal, followed by a discussion about Christianity is a “permission slip” for many people new to Christianity.
Church planting 2.0 is like the Alpha Course on steroids. It introduces the faith within the context of community. That is, after all, what church planting is: community evangelism, instead of the one to one approach which we have experienced.
A Billy Graham crusade was the perfect instrument for early to mid 20th century evangelism. It assumed a more Christian culture and many people saw a Billy Graham crusade as a once in a lifetime “permission slip” to publicly profess their faith and come to Christ. Church planting approaches evangelism differently. Rather than a large rally with a solitary speaker, we see smaller gatherings, micro-communities which form and allow for discussion and dialogue. In Church Planting 2.0 you can ask questions, voice your doubts, see the lived faith of other believers, and so forth.
Are you sensing a bit more about what is happening at Asbury on the church-planting front?
In the years ahead we will not have the luxury of sending a M.Div. trained graduate to pastor a single church. Our future graduates will not only be pastoring churches, they will be overseeing new networks of micro-communities – little ecclesial incubators – and thereby create fresh new streams of faith, which will renew our land and help a whole new generation of believers to, in the words of Wesley quoting John the Baptist, “flee from the wrath to come.”
I am an 87 year old grad of Asbury Seminary…1955! This program excites me! I spent 35 years of my 50 year career working with the Deaf.
I like this new model. It will revive today’s church. te new life will be refreshing!
I love the term ‘community evangelism’. Inspiring article Dr. Tennent. Thank you.
RIGHT ON! THIS is “what is next” for the Christian church in North America! …what I have been PRAYING FOR and ABOUT for a decade++!
I am a retired clergy (A.T.S. 1972) who struggled for (United Methodist) churches which I served to take the “next step” at THAT time (1970’s–80’s–90’s–2000s): to loosen up their worship & organizational styles for more energy, flexibility, creativity, and Holy-Spirit-Joy in conveying the timeless Gospel.
I only wish that I could take a more active part in this …Alas, my age, energy level, et. al. preclude it. But I am praying !!!!
—EdP, Retired Elder, PNW Annual Conference, UMC.
Great article, Tim! I want to get you down here to see and influence the good stuff happening in Houston, through Houston’s Church Planting Network. New things!
Very well communicated, Dr. Tennent. From my perspective, the focus on Church Planting 2.0 is crucial, but 1.0 is still needed and working . . . with contextualization.
Buddy Rampey, Alum and DS in The Wesleyan Church