CP4DbD – Where do we plant?

That’s one of the questions I probably get asked more than any other when it comes to planting.  And it’s a valid question.  Most of us can probably think of 5-10 areas of our towns or cities, or adjacent towns that are needy for the gospel straight away.  In our own case when we were thinking about planting there were a number of areas we drew briefings up about and they were all needy.  We could have planted a church in any, or all of them, without stepping on another gospel churches toes.

And to answer the question honestly, but you may think unhelpfully, I don’t think you do know where to plant.  You pray, you plan, you prepare and you pray lots more.  We began by planting into one area, but despite some fruit there, it became obvious over time that we were seeing more fruit in a different area, which became where we moved the church to after a few years; where we are now in Hayfield.  It was one of our plant area’s we looked at but various reasons meant we initially planted elsewhere, and God gave us fruit in terms of conversions in that area, but it gradually became obvious that God was moving us on through various pulls, pushes, and convictions.

Do I think we got it wrong?  No.  I genuinely don’t.  I think sometimes we want to reduce things down to binary decisions of right or wrong, 1 or 0, black or white, when God is actually doing something different, and teaching us to trust him and not our plans as he works and gradually leads us.

Having said all that there are three things I think we need to give careful thought to.  Firstly; we all have unconscious bias.  Things that we’re predisposed towards and against, that’s true of us as individuals and of us as groups, organisations and churches.  It will mean there are probably areas you are predisposed towards and against, we need to be aware of those and work through and name the reasons why that is and then pray them through, repenting as necessary about our prejudices and hard heartedness.

Here’s the second thing to think through.  It’s helpful to step back.  If you think of your city or town as a clock face and then plot gospel teaching churches onto the clock face you often find they are clustered between say 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock or 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock, with very little outside of that.  It’s well worth doing that activity with a map.  That simply activity helps you spot the potentially ‘gospel-less’ holes which need more research and ought to form the initial list of potential plant areas.

I love Paul’s missionary strategy, that was actually his church planting strategy: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.  Rather, as it is written:

Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” Romans 15v20-22

Those verses ought to weigh on us, especially as we look at the UK and the vast tracts of the country (especially the North and deprived areas) that get forgotten when we think about planting.  It also ought to weigh heavily on us as we think about our counties, cities, towns and villages.  Our goal in planting isn’t to successfully plant a church that will be filled with transfer growth; it’s to take the gospel in word and deed to where it has not gone.  That simple gospel imperative ought to rule out some parts of the town or city where there are other gospel churches, no matter how attractive those areas mat seem in terms of planting potential and quickly building a church.

Gospel need ought to be our primary criteria as we think about planting and where to go.

The third thing I think needs careful consideration, and probably more so now than when we planted, is where will we meet?  Many of the churches planted over the last twenty years meet in schools and that has been a valuable and fruitful partnership.  But we need to be honest about the pros and cons of doing so.  We also need to be honest about the fragility of such an arrangement; all it would take is a change in school leadership and that relationship could change dramatically and see any church ousted from a school and looking for a new place to meet, and they often aren’t easy to come by.

With that in mind I think we need to give careful consideration to areas where there is gospel need and where there are available buildings.  Tragically many churches are shutting for the last time, or are in desperate need of help with small numbers of older saints who are now frail but faithful.  I think, going forward, one of the things we need to think about is redeeming these gospel assets for new works as we plant.

If there was a gospel-less area with a potentially available building or a congregation willing to undergo a gospel transfusion and revitalization I would certainly want to give that the weight it’s due when weighing up and praying up where God is calling us to plant.