VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.– Church planting was a hot topic a the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia’s annual gathering, held March 11-12 at First Baptist Church in Virginia Beach.
Emergent church guru Brian McLauren, featured in a live Skype dialogue at the Thursday afternoon session of the two-day meeting, emphasized that church starting is about disciple-making.
The subject of starting new churches surfaced again during the next morning in a breakout session on the subject led by Bo Prosser, coordinator of congregational life for the national CBF. In response to a question Prosser posed about what one thing the CBF staff needed to hear, Troy Petty, a retired pastor and member of Crossroads Community Church in Keswick, responded, “We need to try to establish a new culture in the CBF to include church starts. We need to find ways to make that happen.”
Rick Clore, pastor of Orange Baptist Church in Orange, agreed. “We need to call churches in the CBFV to bless starting new churches.”
But all agree that that may be easier said than done.
“In churches I’ve been in it was hard enough to start a new Sunday school class. Now we are asking people to start new churches,” remarked Prosser with a lighthearted, but serious comment. The issues of change and existing churches feeling threatened were acknowledged.
Prosser used an example from the fast food industry to illustrate that the fear of competition is misguided and that new church plants can actually help existing churches. “When a community finally gets a McDonalds, in no time it will have a Burger King, a Wendy’s and a Hardee’s. It seems like competition, but they work together to change the eating culture of a whole community.”
But churches feel threatened for other reasons as well they agreed. “The read I’m getting,” said Brian Hotaling of Charles Town Baptist Church in Charles Town, W. Va., is that I see a generation of folks older than me whose entire Christian experience is ‘be nicer, sin less, and walk on golden streets when you die.’ I see a lot of younger people who have a bigger view of what it means to be Christian.”
Hotaling emphasized that he is not being critical of the existing church — after all, he said, he is the pastor of one — but he believes that change in the order of a new reformation is coming. “I think we are standing on the edge of something phenomenally big.”
Clore agreed: “A new wind is blowing and if we have our sails up, we can catch it. The challenge for church leaders is to explain to the existing church ad nauseum why we need to trust the next generation, why we can trust the Spirit of Christ and the calling of new followers of Christ. I believe the existing church can change.”
Along with the need for new churches is a desire for passionate evangelism. Clore continued. “Jesus called the disciples to become fishers of men. Luke uses the word ‘catchers’ of men. The word used in that context is zoë. I was never comfortable with the idea that we ‘hooked’ people and reeled them in. The ideal of ‘catching’ men is not so much about getting them into heaven but getting heaven into them — ‘I’m doing you a favor by telling you what Jesus can do in your life. Sure, you will go to heaven, but the here and now message is that it will bless you immeasurably.’ Now that’s the kind of evangelism I can get really excited about. Catch and release to new life.”
Petty, too, believed that greater passion is needed, and lamented that the existing church has become preoccupied with institutional issues. Younger people and people not in churches just aren’t concerned about the survival of existing churches. He mused to those around him that the term “church” may have become so tainted that another term could be needed to authentically describe the body of Christ in the world.
Hotaling noted that existing churches are often “sick,” but he sees hope in leadership. “Like so much of what we do, it rises or falls with leadership” he said.
“A leadership that blesses a culture of new church starts and restarts” is what is needed, concluded Clore.
Jim White is editor of the Religious Herald.