Dealing with Neighborhood Transitions in Your Church, Part 3

by: Ed Stetzer

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been discussing neighborhood transitions and what to do when a church and its community no longer share a socio-economic or ethnic makeup. Last week we looked at relocation as an option. While I do not think this is the best answer, it’s quite possibly the most frequent for churches. If you are going to do it, I suggested a few things to consider.

This week, we turn our attention to the hard work and commitment required to create a multicultural church. That, I think, is a better course of action.

While a neighborhood transition is a fantastic opportunity to create a multicultural church, most people who call for this have never actually been in, much less have successfully built, a multicultural church. Juan Sanchez has written a pair of blog posts about multicultural worship and multi-ethnic congregations here on the blog in the past few months. While his church didn’t face these exact circumstances, he provides some helpful suggestions.

First, we must understand that a multicultural church is a lot more than simply getting someone who is African-American by background, Latino by background and Asian by background and proudly saying, “We’re multicultural.”

If all those people live in the same geographic area, listen to the same music, and go to the same movie theaters and restaurants, they do not reflect true multiculturalism– where there is intentional embrace of cultures, not just the presence of people who come from certain ethnic backgrounds. More accurately, such churches reflect a mono-culture with different racial and ethnic backgrounds represented. This is not to belittle this development. I praise God for the development of churches containing multiple races and ethnicities.

However, to be truly multicultural, however, takes a lot more work. Now, I should not say that I am the expert on the subject– others have written more articulately on the subject. However, what I’ve learned personally was from a planting a multicultural church among the urban poor in the inner city of Buffalo, New York.

We learned a few things there, but a subsequent study illustrated more.

Here are a few things to consider (which I will flesh out later) on the transition:

1. A church needs a vision for a multicultural future— a passion to reflect the Kingdom in this way.
2. Leadership needs to embrace and model the change— including creating a multicultural leadership team.
3. Churches need to prepare for the challenges, conflicts, and opportunities that such transitions provide.

A multicultural church is more work than you think– everyone likes the hypothetical idea and complains about the lack of multiculturalism in the church, but are often not willing to make the transitions and pay the price needed.

We’ll talk more about them in the next post.

Read Part 2 of the series here; read Part 4 here.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Local Predicament, Multicultural, Recasting Vision

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Dealing with Neighborhood Transitions in Your Church, Part 2

by: Ed Stetzer

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We began a series last week dealing with the transitions churches go through in their life cycle as the community around them begins to change. As I stated last week, I see three primary options:

• congregational relocation to a context more in line with their congregation,
• intentional multicultural integration in one congregation, or
• multi-congregational partnership in one building.

When faced with neighborhood transition, a change in which some people have transitioned in and some people have transitioned out, one response often attempted is to relocate the building. Though this model sounds offensive to some, if the church body primarily consists of the people who have transitioned out of the community, why not start a new church that reflects the community where they once were? Since we believe theologically that people comprise the church, then, in all actuality, the church relocated long before.

In other words, when you move a church building, you often are simply moving the location where the church gathers (its new building location) to where the church lives (the people of the church live in a new place).

Other than church death, this may be the most common response to a transitioning neighborhood– especially when the neighborhood transition occurs in urban areas. I know of many congregations (and you likely do as well) who have relocated from historic urban settings to suburban ones within the last decade or two. I can think of several “Main Street Methodist” or “Elm Street Baptist” churches which are no longer on Main Street or Elm Street. They have kept their name, but not their location.

Sometimes these moves are for logistical reasons: both land and parking in urban centers are at a premium. Often congregations simply outgrow their space and moving is the logical response. However, more often than not, it is because the make-up of neighborhood no longer reflects that of the congregation. That requires a look at motivation and mission.

This is typically the genesis of the “should we really relocate the church?” discussion, and leads to the real question of “What are we going to do with the fact that the church has already relocated and yet its building remains in another community?” The real issue here is that we have tied our churches (gathered people) with buildings (sacred places), so when our people move and our buildings don’t, there is trouble.

I wish I had a hard and fast answer to those questions, but I don’t. Every church has a different set of circumstances and every church has a different type of people. I’d like to think most churches would embrace their local community and reach those around them. As such, relocation is not my first choice, but rather intentional multiculural transition is– which I will address soon. However, relocation is the most common choice (for surviving churches), and it can be done well.

My recommendation to churches contemplating a relocation is to consider five steps.

First, check your motives for relocation. When relocating a church, if your desire if simply to get away from the “undesirable,” you need to reconsider. Actually, you need to repent. God may have you there for a reason. Relocation to get away from people simply because they are different from you (culture, ethnicity, color, customs, etc.) is wrong. (I’ll have more to say on that later.)

Second, a relocating church must decide that their building is a tool for the gospel. (It’s a tool, not the goal, so make sure someone else gets use of the tool God gave you for awhile.) If a congregation is going to relocate its meeting space, it can (and should) ask, “How can we help another congregation start or thrive in our former space?” That might be an intentional church plant that is reaching, for example, a Korean population that has moved into the community.

Third, if some of the church members are not relocating, you might consider leaving behind a church plant that reflects its emerging context and community. This is particularly helpful when some of the members did not move to the new area and they want to be a part of a church where they live. They become core members along with your local leaders who are more reflective of the ethnicity there.

Fourth, you might also consider another location– going multisite-– and working through the wonderful opportunity to learn from other cultures and customs.

Fifth, a relocating church needs to engage its new community from the start– evangelizing, serving, engaging, etc. This will be a test– a church fleeing from one community often simply is looking for a place where they can remain customers of the religious goods and services they formerly received at their own location. The motives for moving were wrong, and that becomes evident when they don’t engage where they are going.

Relocation is always difficult. It is often (though not always) a retreat from a mission opportunity in a changed culture and context, engaging new ethnicities and peoples. However, there are times when it is simply acknowledgement that the church has ALREADY moved, and the meeting place needs to be near the living place.

What about you? Have you seen good relocations? What are you thoughts about relocations in general?

Read Part 1 of the series here; read part 3 of the series here.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Local Predicament, Recasting Vision

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The Culture Around Your Church Determines How Best to Reach It

by: George Hunter

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Emotional Relevance

A second principle behind contagious Christianity is emotional relevance.   The European Enlightenment taught that we human beings are unique creatures because we are rational creatures: while we still experience the emotions that we have inherited from our primitive forbears; education has come to lift us into the life of the mind.  With the fading of the Enlightenment, and the rise of postmodernity, it is becoming apparent that the Enlightenment was wrong by almost 180 degrees.  We are not basically rational creatures who sometimes feel; we are basically emotional creatures who sometimes think.  (Even what we think about is influenced by our background emotional state, and how we think about it is influenced by our feelings at the time.)

This discovery is more-or-less a re-discovery.  Even in the eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment’s onslaught seemed unstoppable, the romantics found ways to speak to, and awaken, the heart—through poetry, fiction, art, and music.  In that same century, Jonathan Edwards reflected upon the indispensable role of “religious affections” in Christian experience, and John Wesley defined Christianity as, substantially, a “religion of the heart.”

Today, we need a fuller recovery of a more holistic understanding of human nature, in part because many people in our communities are fighting an emotional war within, and they are being gradually destroyed by emotional forces—like pride, fear, sadness, anger, hate, jealousy, low self-esteem, and other feelings surging within them that are hijacking their lives.  Furthermore, authentic Christian conversion involves emotional healing, as well as deliverance from a destructive emotional world into the new emotional world of the Kingdom of God, in which such emotions as gratitude, love, humility, peace, healthy self-esteem, and joy enter the convert’s experience.

Effective churches begin where people are, including their emotional struggles and their aspirations for emotional freedom.  Teaching, counseling, preaching, liturgy, evangelism, and other ministries are expressed with emotional sensitivity and relevance.  Today, as the recovery ministries of many churches are learning to engage the emotional baggage that attaches to addiction, they are learning to minister to everyone with emotional relevance.

Tags: George Hunter III, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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The Culture Around Your Church Determines How Best to Reach It

by: George Hunter

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Radical Outreach

The contagion of culturally relevant Christianity and emotionally relevant Christianity are experienced fairly directly.  Take the case of a young man who is now one of our seminary students.  Eight years ago, two Christian friends initiated several conversations with him, and then they invited him to a youth service.  As he walked in, good news and hope were being celebrated through music that engaged him; the speaker spoke his language and seemed to under­stand people like him; and the message offered freedom from the “narcissism” and the “anger issues” that, as he reported, had “tied me up in knots.” He found himself responding, and he kept coming back, and he learned all he could; within several months, he was a man of faith.  The church’s culturally and emotionally relevant ministry engaged him directly.

Another cause of contagion, however, is experienced more indirectly.  I have called it Radical Outreach. This point begins very early in the Christian narrative.  Jesus and his disciples ministered to blind people and deaf people and lame people, to mentally handicapped people and possessed people, lepers and Samaritans, tax collectors and zealots, and others.  The establishment institutional religion of the Temple had written these people off.  Indeed, the Temple’s policy prohibited such people from even entering the temple.  Those populations, and others, were officially “hopeless.”  This is the point: Christianity was conceived in the radical outreach that engaged allegedly hopeless people. It typically begins when we visit their turf, and when begin where they are, rather than where we’d like them to be.

As the Christian movement spread to the cities of the Roman Empire, it gradually took a more institutional form, and in time became more like the Temple.  Rural populations were not urbane and were therefore hopeless.  The Goths, the Visigoths, the Franks, the Vandals, the Frisians, the Vikings, and all of the Celtic peoples, including the Irish, were not Latin speaking, Roman enculturated people. Obviously, all of those barbarians were not civilized enough to become “Christianized.”

This book of tragedy has many chapters, but we do not need to recount the whole volume.  Most churches today, in our nation and in our communities, assume that many types of people are unreachable; it would probably be impossible (they assume) for those people to become real Christians “like us”.   To be specific: For many (or most) churches, pre-literate people, “hard living people,” co-habiting couples, homeless people, bikers, Goths, jet setters, mentally-ill people, Mandarin speakers, people with tattoos, addictive people, introverts, and many others need not apply.

Perceptions, whether they are accurate or not, take on their own reality and, when acted upon over time, become self-fulfilling prophesies.

Using a metaphor borrowed from chemistry, consider “catalytic” growth. When an athlete takes in Creatine before a workout, the supplement catalyzes an energy source within muscles that permits two or three more bench presses, which in turn catalyzes more muscle growth.  In every society, there is an establishment population, and there are “fringe” populations whom the establishment people regard as “impossible” or “hopeless.”  Catalytic Christian movements begin when some of the “hopeless” people are reached, and some of those people experience transparent life change.  Such transformations catalyze spiritual openness in many other people, including establishment people, and the faith now spreads, contagiously.

Tags: George Hunter III, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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The Culture Around Your Church Determines How Best to Reach It

by: George Hunter

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What makes Christianity contagious?  We are sufficiently familiar with some of the answers: Contagious Christianity is imaginative, engaging, enthusiastic, and growing. Those four ways we know; but three others warrant some explanation.

Cultural Relevance

Culturally relevant expressions of Christianity are much more contagious than culturally alien expressions.  The very early Christian movement had to schedule its first “council” to clarify and settle this important strategic principle.  The first constellation of house churches—in Jerusalem, led by James, constituted a culturally Jewish expression of Christianity.  Most (or all) of the believers in Jerusalem were Jews who affirmed Jesus as the promised Messiah.  Keeping Judaism’s Sabbath laws and customs, and worshiping in Aramaic, were completely natural to them.  Gentiles were very welcome in the Jerusalem church, if they submitted to circumcision, gave up their Gentile culture and adopted Jewish ways, and learned the Aramaic language.

There was, however, a problem.  Up north in Antioch, Gentiles were becoming disciples and were not submitting to circumcision, and so on.  So, as reported in Acts 16, James called a meeting in Jerusalem to settle the matter once and for all. Paul advocated that the faith should not impose one language and one set of customs on other peoples; the faith was called to adapt to every tongue and culture on the face of the earth.

Paul’s case prevailed, and the principle of (what came to be called) “indig­enous” Christianity became the policy of the early Christian movement.  Acts 16 reports the most important decision ever made to facilitate the expansion of Christianity—in every cultural context, in every age.  But it would be an under­statement to say that the Church has not consistently followed the policy.

Often, the Judaizing principle operates in more informal ways, short of official policy, in which Christian leaders simply assume that a specific dialect, and a sub-culture’s customs and aesthetic, are necessary for Christian expression and experience.  This was one problem that John Wesley observed in his Church of England in the eighteenth century.  The “common people” did not speak establishment Christianity’s language. They did not dress, conduct themselves, and enjoy the same kind of music that characterized polite, refined “Christian” society.  How could such people become “real Christians?”  You know the rest of the story.  Methodism’s approach began on the people’s turf, and the approach adapted to the “common people’s” style, language, aesthetics, and music, and a contagious movement emerged—of, by, and for the people that establishment Christianity had written off as unfit for Christianization.

We should not assume, in most of our churches, that we are at all past that problem today. Many secular people are not like  “good church people,” culturally, and they do not understand stained-glass voices and ecclesiastical jargon.  In case you have not noticed, among the unwashed pagan masses, there is no epidemic interest in eighteenth century pipe organ music!

As Jesus, in the Incarnation, took on Galilean culture and spoke Galilean folk-Hebrew, so his Body the Church is called to extend such incarnational expressions to every people.  Then Paul modeled the way, as he became “all things to all people” that “some might be saved.”   The indigenous principle can be stated in one sentence.  Each people’s culture is the natural medium for expressing God’s revelation to them.

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Tags: George Hunter III, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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You Can’t Love a City if You Don’t Know a City, Part 1

by: Ed Stetzer

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“The city” is an emerging phrase that seems to be embraced by a growing number of Christians. I intentionally say they are embracing the phrase, because I do not think that all are actually embracing the city, but rather they are embracing the idea of embracing the city.

I think that the song “God of this City” by Bluetree (sung here by Chris Tomlin) is a great powerful song that gets at the longing– Christians want to embrace, engage, serve, and reach cities. Fair enough. It is a good thing.

As one who grew up on Long Island outside NYC and planted my first church in Buffalo among the urban poor, I love the concept of “city reaching.” Yet, I am convinced that you cannot love a city if you do not know a city.

Now, full disclosure, I am biased. I run a research firm and we do city research, so you should be aware of that. I run a research firm because I believe that we need to know so we can engage.

Over the next few weeks I plan to do a series on city KNOWING related to city REACHING. I will draw from several sources (and feel free to suggest other models as well). First, I will use some examples from the study we did in Austin, TX for the pastors and churches there. Second, I will draw some on some research I’ve done on San Diego and Baltimore. Third, I will point to some ethno-linguistic research on people groups in cities. Finally, I will actually walk through a report on church planting in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore corridor. These will be done concurrently rather than consequentially, because the church planting study is going to be released here at the blog for you to consider and discuss and I will have more posts about that than the others.

My hope is that this will generate some ideas about how you might do city research AND encourage you to learn more about your context to be faithful in God’s mission there.

Read Part 2 of this series here.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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You Can’t Love a City if You Don’t Know a City, Part 5

by: Ed Stetzer

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I’ve been slowly working through this series about how to understand our cities so we can better reach them with the gospel.

In today’s post, which I co-wrote with Philip Nation, we want to focus in on how to get a study started and what might be the result from one in your own city.

The groups that meet together for the sake of the city face a formidable challenge. How does a group move from simply understanding the state of their city to acting on what they know? For the church, simply understanding the make-up of a city is helpful, but never enough. Our task is to turn the city upside down because we’ve proclaimed that there is a King whose name is Jesus (see Acts 17:1-7).

But, since beginning this series, many have asked how to start such a process and what they can expect from it. Let us give a few answers to those questions.

Where to start?

We find that in many cities the group is already there. It has normally taken on the form of the prayer gatherings of pastors and other believers. It is often a transdenominational group that is active in praying and occasionally mobilizing for certain evangelistic efforts such as a large crusade. Such groups can make the decision that combining their current efforts (of prayer and evangelistic efforts) with an in-depth knowledge of the city can mobilize churches in greater ways. So, if you are a part of such a group, the foundation is already being laid for a greater impact on your city.

But, if you’re reading this and are unaware of any such group in the city, don’t let that dissuade you. It is certainly possible that a few church leaders could simply decide that reaching deeper into their city is a necessary step and a greater understanding is needed.

What else is there to know?

Sometimes I encounter people who are certain that they have a full grasp on the nature of their city. From a demographic standpoint, that is possible. After all, there is a certain amount of information you can glean from a quick Google search. But, knowing the ethnic diversity (or lack thereof), spread of age ranges, and the like can only tell you so much.

In our City Studies, one of our major goals is to identify the affinity groups in each city. The affinity groups that you readily think about can be found through surface level demographic surveys (generational groups, ethnicities, education levels, etc.). But there are unofficial “tribes” that exist in a city that can only be discovered through a robust research process. In one city we studied, with approximately 2 million residents, we found 140 tribes that included everything from pockets of ethnic families to swimmers to woodworkers. By doing a survey of the residents of the city, we were able to not only identify these affinity groups but the percentage of believers among them. In fact, in this particular city, swimmers were the tribe with the least percentage of believers among them. A demographic study could never show give you that kind of information. But what it means is… well, read on.

Actionable information

So what do you do when you discover that the tribe in your city with the greatest percentage of lost people is swimmers? The issue that gives me the greatest hope is that now the church will begin to see the bridges they have into the community where the lost reside.

If I’m a pastor in that town, I start asking who in my church swims regularly. As a group of churches seeking to reach the city, we inform our intercessors to begin praying regularly at the times when people are most likely coming and going from swimming for believers to have evangelistic conversations with their friends. A group of churches might even join together to begin sponsoring the swim meets and finding other ways to serve that tribe.

But that is just one example. Other insights can be gleaned from these studies as to the ethnic make-up of a region in the city, educational level of sections of the city, and even the societal needs that are present. Each affinity group that is discovered is a potential place where the gospel can be introduced and compassion can be shown. Whereas demographics are often just a smattering of factoids in a presentation, our hope is to give a group of churches actionable information that will lead to gospel engagement.

Mobilizing churches

The information gleaned about your city should lead to doing something about it. But too often, a bit of knowledge hits the church and rather than feeling ready, they can feel overwhelmed. Recently, the well-known actress and activist Ashley Judd spoke about the tragedy of child sex trafficking in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a heart-wrenching presentation worth your time. And, for a typical church in America that averages 80-100 in attendance, it may seem like an overwhelming issue to tackle.

But imagine the work that ten or twenty or fifty churches could accomplish if they joined arms for the sake of the gospel; proclaiming the good news to every man, woman, and child; saving spiritual and physical lives; and caring for the hurting in their city. Congregations working together for the good of the city are a powerful force in the hands of Christ.

I can see believers emboldened by the joint work with brothers and sisters in Christ to assault the darkness in their city and shine the light of Christ in places where He has not been known. We’re not just talking about pastors gathering once a month to pray for one another – though that is a very good work. Now believers across a city are getting to know one another, provoking one another to love and good deeds, presenting Christ to new tribes in the city, and caring for the hurting in His name.

The actionable knowledge that comes from researching a city can lead churches to leverage their resources into the areas where Christ has not been made known. It will help to understand where new churches should be planted and established churches need to be revitalized. It is a work that will help you to know more and, I hope, act more.

Read other posts in this series here: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 6.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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You Can’t Love a City if You Don’t Know a City, Part 6

by: Ed Stetzer

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Today on the blog I have Glenn Barth dropping by as we continue looking at city reaching from a research perspective. Glenn is well-known in the city reaching community (and yes, there is a community working on these ideas). He is the author of The Good City: Transformed Lives Transforming Communities. I have been impressed with his work and asked him to drop by here at the blog.

We talked a few weeks ago about the value of face-to-face interviews and I asked him to write more. Here are his thoughts… and he will be around today to interact with your questions and comments.

Here’s Glenn:

How Face-to-Face Interviews Create Cross-Domain Movements

In an age of online surveys and an ocean of anonymous quantitative research, face-to-face interviews bring together the power of information and relationship-building to provide breakthroughs for collaborative movements in cities. I actually spend my time guiding Christian leaders to take the first step toward understanding the church outside the walls of local congregations as a part of an exploration process.

Before launching out with a small group of leaders to mobilize others to work with you in transforming your community, slow down long enough to ask questions that can help bring understanding about what God is already doing in your city. We advocate doing face-to-face interviews using a combination of quantitative and qualitative questions. The quantitative questions will give quick snapshots of information in Yes/No, multiple choice, Likert rating scales, and the like. Carefully crafted open-ended qualitative questions will reveal personally customized information with the nuance of the spoken word (e.g. voice inflection, facial expression, body language, and more). This latter approach is vital in building a relationship with those being interviewed.

The key is listening, not promoting. The best approach has three elements:

1) Look at the person you are interviewing.
2) Give him/her verbal affirmation.
3) Give him/her visual affirmation.

I encourage interviewers to take notes on paper rather than recording the interview electronically or typing notes into a computer. Some have told us they would love to bring a video camera on the interviews. Once a piece of technology like a camera or digital recorder enters the conversation, the other person may become less candid. We want to build an authentic relationship as well as collect information.

This is a survey biased toward action, based on what is learned. Aim toward the expansion of a sense of collaboration with the first focus on getting to know followers of Christ who are in a variety of leadership roles and who may be able to influence the culture of the city. We have found it best to start with qualitative questions that begin with the person’s sense of God’s calling or personal mission and move toward the mission and history of the organization he or she works with. Ask about pressing issues confronting the community and suggested solutions. Near the end of the interview, explore the person’s willingness to collaborate with others to address important community issues through service using his or her unique mix of gifts and strengths.

In Modesto, CA, we have just completed an interview process that engaged a team of 18 marketplace, ministry, and church leaders. These leaders conducted 108 interviews with leaders of organizations in each of seven areas that shape and influence culture. I anticipate that in the near future, with the information and relationships built that there will be collaborative work that comes together to address issues that are of concern to many in this city.

There are limitations in using this approach. First, you will have a smaller sample size than most quantitative surveys. Second, what I have described is not a random sample. The survey subjects in this case are carefully chosen with the aim in mind of building a coalition of leaders to serve the city. Those leading the survey process will need to be careful to include persons of both genders, persons of each significant ethnic group represented in their city, and persons from different generations.

This type of survey takes a committed corps of leaders. In Modesto, it took six months to bring together the leaders who would commit to doing these interviews. I come alongside city leadership teams as a coach. We make it clear from the start that the work they choose to do is their work. The local leaders will guide the process and achieve outcomes which they choose to pursue.

Upon completion of this type of survey, it’s important to close the loop with a survey report to those interviewed. We recommend calling together a meeting in which the leaders of the survey process outline next steps based on the conclusions from the survey.

Doing this kind of research is an important part of knowing a city. It creates community as it discerns the community and empowers innovative collaboration for city transformation.

Glenn is the President of Goodcities, a ministry helping leaders collaborate for city transformation. Here is a description of their work:

What is a good city? A good city is a place where people find meaningful employment, create families, live in neighborhoods, engage in the arts, education, government, and live out their faith. In a good city, unjust systems are confronted and compassionate help is offered to those in need. It is a place where God’s redemptive plans are experienced by its citizens and sojourners. A good city offers the experience of God’s common grace, the opportunity to experience God’s salvation, and a future filled with hope.

Let me encourage you to connect with Glenn at www.goodcities.net or on twitter: @glennbarth.

Read the prior posts in this series here: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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You Can’t Love a City if You Don’t Know a City, Part 4

by: Ed Stetzer

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I’ve been working through some idea about researching a city in order to reach a city.

In part 2, I introduced a case study of church planting in Baltimore / Washington. This study is an unpublished report on the current state of church planting in the Washington DC and Baltimore Corridor focuses on identifying the church plants and who is planting them.

I found it fascinating and one helpful element to understanding what God is doing in a city.

Here is more from that study.

—————————————————————————————

Church Planting in Washington DC / Baltimore Corridor

New Church Plants Identified

Church planting has continued to expand over the last five years.

• 274 churches were identified that have started in the last 5 years
• It is estimated that as many as 70 churches or a quarter of the total of the new churches have not been identified. These churches are usually independent, non-English speaking, small denominations, or house churches, etc…

The Following Questions Relate to the 274 Identified Churches.
Who are Planting Churches?

Denominations/associations lead the way over all other efforts combined in the planting of churches.

222 churches were planted by denominations/associations 81%
31 by national and local networks 11%
54 by church planting churches (have planted 3 or more churches) 20%
47 are independent plants 17%

The total adds up to over 274 and over 100% because of co-sponsoring between church planting churches, networks, and denominations.

What Denominations/Associations are Planting Churches?

22 denominations/associations were identified for planting churches. Southern Baptists are starting 49% of the new churches.

133 by Southern Baptist 49%
17 by Assemblies of God 6%
14 by Church of God Cleveland 5%
10 by Church of the Nazarene 4%
9 by Christian Church 3%
6 by Foursquare 2%
6 by Anglican 2%
27 by other denominations/associations 10%
52 not by denominations 19%
What Networks are Planting Churches?

National networks are just getting established in the area. Although few in number, the pastors generally have more training, are better funded, and experience a higher survivability rate.

8 by Baltimore/Washington Christian Church network **
5 by Ecclesia *
3 by Stadia
3 by Orchard
2 by Acts 29
2 by ARC *
2 by Liberty
2 by New Thing
2 by Redeemer City to City *
2 by SENT **
1 by Kairos
1 by Virginia Evangelizing Fellowship
0 by Calvary
0 by Launch
by Mosaic *
by Vision 360
* National Network with a local representative
**Local Network

Who are the Church Planting Churches (churches planting 3 or more churches in our metro areas in the last 5 years)?

Although other churches were church planting churches 10, 15, or 20 years ago, most of these became church planting churches in the last 5 years. These church planting churches have been identified.

5 Capital Baptist Church, Annandale, VA
5 Mountain Christian, Jappa, MD** ***
5 New Life Christian, Chantilly, VA** ***

4 National Community Church, DC*
4 New Life Wesleyan Church, Waldorf, MD
4 Northwest Baptist Church, Reisterstown, MD

3 Capitol Hill Baptist Church, DC***
3 Church of the Resurrection, DC***
3 Grace Fellowship Church, Timonium, MD**
3 McLean Bible Church, VA*
3 Frontline of McLean Bible Church, VA*
3 by The Gathering of McLean Bible Church, VA*
3 Pathways Church, Bel Air, MD
3 The Falls Church, Falls Church, VA***
3 Word of Life Int. Church, Ashburn, MD

*Churches who are planting exclusively through multi-site locations.
**Churches planting through multi-site locations and new churches
***Churches with internship/residency programs for new church planting pastors

“For God did Not Give Us a Spirit of Timidity, But a Spirit of Power, of Love and of Self-Discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7

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I find the list interesting. The people involved in the research tend to be non-denominational (with a Restoration / Independent Christian streak) so they are not generally denominational apologists. Thus, the overwhelming number of church plants being denominational is worth noting. When you combine Southern Baptists (who planted almost half) and Pentecostals (Assemblies of God, Church of God Cleveland, and Foursquare), you see a strong majority of the churches. Also of note: the lack of plants from mainline denominations.

Now, they may have missed some plants (though they worked hard to identify them), but I found this interesting. Networks get a lot of press and are doing great things, but denominations are doing much of the planting in this area. (It is probably helpful to note that the SBC targeted this region through something called Strategic Focus Cities, a denominational church planting initiative, and that probably increased the SBC numbers more than you would see in another city).

Read more on this series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 5.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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You Can’t Love a City if You Don’t Know a City, Part 2

by: Ed Stetzer

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Last week, I started a new series on city research and analysis. I will be taking several approaches, with examples and case studies along the way. And, feel free to suggest resources in the comments that would be helpful to include.

Part of knowing a city is knowing its churches. I will share more on that later from three separate studies, but knowing a cities church plants generally requires a different approach. Recently, Todd Wilson shared what I think is one of the best studies of its kinds– looking at church planting in a region.

The study, Church Planting in the Washington DC and Baltimore Corridor area, was put together by by Ron Johnson, Director of Accelerate. Accelerate is an alliance of church planting churches, networks, and denominations for the purpose of accelerating church planting in the Washington/Baltimore corridor.

I will be sharing it in several parts. First is an introduction to the report. See my comments at the end.

The State of Church Planting in the Washington DC / Baltimore Corridor 2005-2010
Why this Research?

A group of like-minded church planting leaders and ministries in the Washington – Baltimore metro area is seeking to collaboratively support church planting. The group seeks to champion the cause of church planting while minimizing organizational structures and overhead. These leaders are seeking to continue the work God is already doing through each of them while also looking for ways to work collaboratively to enhance the effectiveness of church planting in the geographic area.

The group is coming together as the Accelerate Alliance. The Accelerate mission is to:

• Attract, inspire and equip Kingdom-minded leaders and
• Connect them so they can
• Collaborate with their time, talent and treasure to
• Accelerate the creation of healthy, reproducing faith communities resulting in transformed lives and transformed communities

The first step in discerning the approach and strategy of Accelerate was to research and discover what God is already doing in church planting in the Washington DC / Baltimore metropolitan areas. A primary goal of the initial research was to discover how best to accelerate church planting in the area.

The vision for Accelerate was conceived and birthed by New Life Christian Church who has funded the initial work on Accelerate via Ron Johnson’s (the Director) time. Accelerate is a pilot initiative closely aligned with New Life and with Exponential (a non-profit national ministry that exists to champion church planting and who runs the Exponential Conference).

Healthy church plants start with spiritually, physically, and emotionally healthy church planters. We anticipate that the best path to accelerating planting in our area is through serving church planters. These findings will help guide us to determine how we best fulfill our mission and therefore advance the Kingdom.

Survey / Research Approach

Research was conducted to identify as many of the new churches planted in the last 5 years in the Washington DC / Baltimore metro area as possible. Denominational and network leaders were called, searches on the internet were conducted, school systems were asked for names of churches meeting in schools, and church planters were asked what other church planters they knew. 81 phone interviews were conducted with church planters, pastors of church planting churches and denominational leaders. There were 25 appointments with church planters. 15 church services were also attended to get a feel for the ministries of the new churches.

As part of the research questions were asked to discern the tensions and needs of church planters.

A team of church planting influencers from denominations, networks, church planting churches, and church planters met to review what was being learned and offer input toward meeting the needs of church planters.

Acknowledgments

This was an exhaustive search involving nearly 1/2 year of a person’s effort. However some limitations were recognized:

• It is difficult finding and connecting with many churches under five years old. For example, over half of the churches meeting in schools in one county did not have an EIN number with the government, a web site, a yellow pages listing, or a white pages listing
• It is difficult identifying non-English language / nationality churches because of the language barrier and they often do not use traditional advertising. Some of the non-English / nationality churches are use to maintaining a low profile in their own countries, so they take the same posture in the US
• Many new churches remain under the care and financial oversight of a sponsoring church so records of them are more difficult to find
• New independent churches with bi-vocational pastors are often hard to identify
• The scope of the survey does not identify smaller faith communities like house churches that are not meeting in public places or can’t be found publically
• These numbers represent surviving churches and don’t reflect others that did not make it to five years.

Observations of Demographic Populations that are Growing the Most

The diversity of the population continues to grow as people move here from all over the country and the world. Although different populations are often concentrated in areas, the population of the Washington DC / Baltimore corridor is one of the most integrated of cities in the country. The “church” often lags behind the culture in its response to demographic shifts.

These points are made by observation and talking to other church/denominational leaders. The 2010 census data detail is not yet published and the 2000 census would not reflect a lot of this change.

These demographic populations are growing the most.

• Outer suburbs – although the economy slowdown greatly slowed down this trend
• Hispanic population both in inner cities and older suburbs
• Suburban African America population in Maryland
• One denominational leader pointed to a growing African population in the city replacing the African Americans moving to the suburbs (this does not show up in a census study)
• First generation immigrants in older suburbs and inner city whose first language is not English
• 1.5 and 2nd generation children of immigrants everywhere who straddle culture but who experience life primarily in English
• Urban centers with many high rise apartments especially near subway stops that are filled with young adults who are predominantly Caucasian, but also Asian and African American
• Although the inner city poor population is not growing, it is becoming increasingly isolated from the church as thriving inner-city African American churches move to the suburbs to follow their constituents who are becoming middle class

This type of study is not intended to give you percents like a poll does, but it is an important and helpful approach in research. They have given their methodology (and you should be skeptical when research has no methodology). They have told you their limitations (and if they know those, it is a better project). The end result is a helpful look at planing in this area… more soon on that this week.

The next post on this case study will focus on the Executive Summary, who is planting churches, and the role of denominations and networks in church planting.

Interested in this series? Read Part 1 here; go to Part 3 here.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Kingdom Concept, Local Predicament

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