By Anne Bosarge
In my role as Director of Leadership Strategies and Local Church Resources, I have the privilege of leading our SGAUMC’s Congregational Development team. In the last year, South Georgia has put a lot of effort and energy into church planting and revitalization. It’s an exciting time to be doing this work as we reimagine what church can look like in the future and dream of ways we can empower laity to be disciples who make disciples.
When I have meetings with groups of people who are discerning their next steps after disaffiliation, I find myself answering the same question: “When will you give us a building, a pastor, and a checkbook with funding to start a church?” What they think they need is version 2.0 of what they had. But what we have discovered is that the churches they left weren’t always as healthy and strong as they thought they were. If we want something more effective and missional than what we had before, we must do something different. A building, pastor, and a checkbook are no longer effective ways to make disciples who make disciples. We must make a change in the way we plant churches and train leaders to get different results.
With that in mind, here are five changes we are making in church planting here in South Georgia to be sure we plant new things with a healthy culture that empowers laity as disciples and is focused on mission and outreach.
- Build the church from within, not without. We used to identify a town where there wasn’t a UMC and then send a pastor equipped with money for advertising and building rental. We would ask this community outsider to connect with the people there to start something new. The new pastor would have to research and learn about the community and try to make connections with people there. Now, we are looking for passionate laity already in the community who know the people they are seeking to connect with. We want to build the church from within the community, not sending someone who isn’t a part of the community to build something from without.
- Laity as leaders, pastors as guides. In the past, the majority of the planting efforts would come from a clergy leader and a few key lay leaders. This core group of people would be the ones shouldering the load of the church planting work. The focus was on getting new people to “attend” so they could be discipled. This top-down approach burned out many clergy and the staff of program-driven church plants, which in some cases resulted in a culture where laity learned to sit and be served instead of engaging and leading. We want to establish laity as the leaders within the church and bring in pastoral leadership to guide so laity can use their gifts in leadership and service.
- Struggle is a catalyst for growth. On the heels of disaffiliations, we are left with areas of South Georgia with no UMC presence in close proximity. Since we have already stated that a building, pastor, and a checkbook are not enough, let’s explore one reason why. Doing that is like giving the keys of your brand-new car to someone from another country who drives on the other side of the road and has different traffic rules, signage, and culture. Yes, they know how to drive in their country, but driving in the US is different. Real damage could be done unless you spend the time learning how to drive in a new country with different ways of operating. Involvement in a church start is very different than being in an established, program-driven church. In an established church, there are rules, procedures, and structures set in place that just don’t work in a new church start. Just because you know how to be part of an established church doesn’t mean you know how to start a new church. You must change the way you think and try new things. You can’t follow the same procedures, committee structures, and policies you had before. Overfunding and overstaffing new church starts prevents people from reaching out to the community and causes them to spiral into the program-generation mindset instead of focusing on reaching people. As they learn from their struggle, new churches grow.
- We are urgent but not rushed. Here in South Georgia we are not in a competition to plant the most and biggest churches in a specific amount of time. Our focus is on the health and longevity of the churches we are planting. We want them to be healthy, disciple-making engines that have a lasting kingdom impact. While there is an urgency in our mission to make disciples, we do not want to rush the process of discipleship within the people we are working with and for. We want to work with God, not ahead of God. The Spirit’s work in the lives of people takes time. As our launch teams form to plant new things, we don’t want to rush the planting process and prevent them from learning and growing gradually over time. We encourage them to move at the speed God is working in their group. Some will move more quickly than others based on the discipleship needs of the people in the group and community they are called to reach.
- We must be incarnational instead of attractional. In the past, many church plants began with worship and quickly added programs to attract people from within the community who would come to experience the latest and greatest methods for reaching people. Church planters assumed the way to reach people for Christ was to attract them to the church with something new, innovative, and creative. The hope was if we could get them to attend an event, they would join the church and become active, tithing members of the congregation. As events in culture get more and more spectacular and harder to compete with, the church needs to stop focusing on attractional programming and instead be doing the relational work Jesus did as He met people along the byways of life. Jesus walked with people, met them at the depth of their need, and offered life, hope, and a consistent presence. That is what it means to be incarnational – that we, like Jesus, meet others in their moments of need, walking with them, listening to their stories, and seeking to understand their experiences so we can show them how Jesus is the answer to their need. The days of attractional church and overscheduled church calendars are gone. We are called to be incarnational and walk beside people – just like Jesus did for us.
If a building, a pastor, and a checkbook aren’t the answer, what is? Discernment, patience, a willingness to step outside of our comfort zones, a passion for people living without Jesus, and an attentiveness to the community God is calling us to reach – that is the good work we are doing in South Georgia, and I’m thankful to be doing this work with you.
If you’d like to know more about SGAUMC’s approach to church planting,
click here for a training on planting strategy and steps for how to join us in this church planting work we are doing.
Anne Bosarge serves as the Director of Leadership Strategies and Local Church Resources for the South Georgia Conference. Email her at abosarge@sgaumc.com.
