In the work that I do in my day job as Regional Minister for Church Planting here with The United Church on the west coast of Canada, I’m often asked the question: Why should we bother starting new communities of faith?
After all, much of the church in my context appears to be dying these days. With a few notable exceptions – most of these due to immigration – the church as we’ve known it is in massive decline in North America.
A few decades ago that was primarily true in the mainline church. Now – and again with the exception of immigration from the global south and a few other anomalies – and in spite of anecdotal rumblings of revival and renewal in small ways, it’s true across the board.
That question often comes from folk in established communities who are struggling with the current situation, I’ve found that behind that question of why there is often profound grief around the loss of what has been – or even an anger or jealousy that new communities get denominational support in different ways from institutions than established ones do – especially when resources are perceived to be lacking across the board.
This tends to be the elephant in the room in much of the work that I do.
Sometimes I’ve even heard it said that new communities or church plants are little more than ‘the flavour of the month’ or not true to the best or apostolic expressions of church – that is, the established congregation / parish.
With that, I’d like to share a few thoughts on why I believe that it’s a good and beautiful thing to be supporting folk to start new communities of faith.
Here, in no particular order, are my reasons:
New Communities can welcome in different ways than inherited ones. Sometimes, those of us in established communities, in spite of our platitudes of ‘all are welcome’ don’t realise the limitations to our welcome. Sometimes this is because of cultures that have developed over time – decades or even centuries – and which manifest in (usually) unintentional micro-aggressions to newcomers or a felt sense from those who aren’t yet part of the church that ‘I don’t fit here’. New communities have a capacity to create diverse cultures which can welcome people without some of the barriers that exist in more established congregations.
Everything has a life cycle. As amazing and important as inherited / established faith communities are (and should thus be supported!), most will inevitably come to an end of their lives at some point. As noted above, this is happening en masse right now. When that happens, I believe that the most faithful thing to do is to end well – and to prayerfully explore what passing on the legacy and DNA of that community might mean. What might it mean to let go and to support and nurture something new as it emerges – even amidst the grief of loss? This is the way of ecology – of composting – and it should be the way of the Church. If we think our tradition / denomination / expression of the Jesus Way has ‘jewels’ to share and that are worth preserving, why would we not be ‘re-seeding’ that DNA in new ways rather than just letting it die off?1
It is our history. Chances are that your inherited / established church – whether it’s 20 or 100 or 1000 years old – was once a new community / church plant. That might have been because of immigration patterns or perhaps because there was a specific need for a faith expression in a place that someone or some person or group had a vision for. It goes back to the birth of our movement in Acts 2 as we evolved from our roots as a Jewish movement and were subsequently planted in diverse ways in diverse contexts. Why would we stop that flow at this point in history?
Not every minister is called to be a traditional (congregational/parish) minister. Much of the mainstream of Christendom church has focused on the ‘congregational’ or ‘parish’ minister / priest / pastor as the normative way of leading in a local church. But not everyone who is called to vocational ministry holds that expression as their vocation – even though our church systems often squeeze most folk into that box. To hold this limitation is not being true to the diversity of expressions of Christian leadership throughout history – nor to how leadership is framed and practiced in early Christian scriptures. To empower and embolden planters/starters or even entrepreneurs to engage a Spirit-filled vision for a new community is being faithful to the diverse prophetic, pastoral, apostolic, evangelistic, teaching gifts of Christian leadership and to the history of starting new communities going back to our origins.
Racism and Colonialism. This one is pretty specific – but I often see newcomers to a country or context unable to enter into the worship expressions of established churches (especially ‘euro-tribal’ ones, as one person called them); that is those rooted in the theologies, music, language of a dominant culture. By starting new migrant/diasporic churches, a beautiful diversity of expression from around the world can take root in ways that it can’t in many existing congregations.
Theology. The inability to imagine and encourage new and emerging expressions of the gospel of Jesus Christ betrays our lack of confidence in the truth of our sacred story. To not trust in our story (and its Christological scandal of particularity) causes us and to lose our impetus to do new things and reimagine church for the sake of those who are not yet its members. In other words, if we trusted that that Story of Jesus was truly redemptive and life-changing, if we actually experienced and believed that ourselves, wouldn’t we be doing every creative we could thing to tell that story that ‘good news’ to others -and to invite others into it’s joy and love and beauty?2 The passion for planting that emerges through a Resurrection hope compels us to do this work.
- I would want to note here that, in spite of what I see in a lot of liberal communities, these jewels should have what I would call an ecelesial centre; that is, elements of sacrament and worship and not merely a deeding of our spaces without the particularities of historic Christian praxis. Yes, putting up housing or a food bank in your former church building is good, but how much better is it if there is a deep beloved community of spirituality and justice (ie church) at the heart of that. ↩︎
- But a caveat: I’ve often seen institutions plant churches not because of the Story, but out of a desire for self-preservation. This just doesn’t work – the walls of this wrong intention will collapse within themselves ↩︎