PDF file of the essay "Contextualizing Church Planting"
Contextualizing
Church Planting:
Balancing
Mission and the Tradition when Choosing a Model
©
2011 Rev. Mark A. Wood
INTRODUCTION
The church planting
movement in North America has identified or produced a number of church
planting models, modes, and methods. The
availability of differing approaches to church planting presents new challenges
for church planters and church planting teams.
The influence and importance of choosing an effective model is widely
understood, but the ways in which church planters go about choosing the model
are often highly subjective. Personal
preference, prior experience, attraction to innovation, the lure of
“successful” models, and the influence of church planting programs and consultants
are more influential in choosing (or settling on) a model than objective
analysis. This paper explores the
potential of developing an objective basis for choosing a church planting model
through balancing cultural considerations for a mission opportunity with the
Great Tradition of the church.
CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS
IN CHURCH PLANTING
The word “culture” is often used by
church planters in reference to the prevailing attitudes, values, goals, and perspectives
of a population within a specific geographical area. This working understanding of culture fits
well with the dictionary definition of culture as “the customary beliefs,
social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; the
characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversion or a way of life)
shared by people in a place or time.” (Merriam-Webster 2005)
With the growth and diversification of
American society, understanding culture has taken on a new importance for
church planting. While culture in
America has never been monolithic, previous generations of Americans shared a
culture that was far more universal than today’s generation. In the past, variations in American culture
were primarily defined by regions.
Today, a variety of cultures can be found coexisting (and often
competing) in a single community. This
fragmentation of American culture is of special interest and concern to church
planters because of the significant role that a culture has in the personal
formation of its constituents. Only by
understanding a culture can a church planter understand how to proceed with an
effective church planting approach, including the most promising church
planting model.
Cultural issues that must be considered
by a church planter include finding ways of initiating relationship building
through effective points of contact, adapting to the means and methods of
effective communication within the culture, understanding the perceived (i.e.,
felt) needs of the culture’s constituents, and developing a Law/Gospel dynamic
that engages the people of that particular culture.
The starting point of the church
planter’s discovery efforts is identifying the explicit culture of a mission
opportunity. In the past, we might have
spoken of an explicit culture as a subculture, i.e., a cultural group within a
larger culture. The fragmentation of
American culture into a myriad of distinct cultures calls for us to look at
smaller pockets of cultures as distinct cultures rather than as subsets (even
rebellious subsets) of a larger culture.
Church planters who intentionally work to identify the characteristics
of a unique culture will avoid the hazards of appealing to a broader culture
that may not reflect the characteristics of the target community and selecting
a church planting model that is ineffective with the explicit culture of that
community.
In general terms, identifying the
explicit culture of a mission opportunity (i.e., a target group) involves study
of, dialogue with, and experience in the community that makes up that
culture. While the specific means of
accomplishing these three things is beyond the scope of this paper, it is
important to recognize what this does and does not entail. The study of a culture should be both
objective and subjective. The objective
study of a culture would include interpreting demographic data, digesting
sociological reports, and reading the studies of other researchers of that
culture. Subjective study would involve
making use of the media produced or consumed by the members of the culture,
including written matter, video recordings, and music, in the form used by the
culture (e.g., physical, electronic, on-line, etc.). Such study prepares the church planter to
engage in dialogue with members of the culture, though initial attempts at such
dialogue may be awkward as the church planter “learns the language” of the
culture. Through these dialogues, the
church planter will begin to experience the culture for himself as he builds
relationships with members of the mission opportunity. This experience is vital for getting the
explicit culture into its proper context, which, in turn, is essential for properly
identifying and understanding that culture.
An authentic exploration of an explicit
culture calls for the church planter to personally engage the culture without fully
immersing himself in the culture – it is an “in-not-of” experience. The church planter, in order to be a church planter, must maintain a degree
of distance from the culture of the mission opportunity as one who is alien to
that culture. The church planter is, by his
nature, an outsider. He may be bringing
something valuable to the culture, but it is foreign to it. After all, the goal of the church planter is
to plant the church, which is, by its nature, foreign to every human culture.
BRINGING THE
ONE, HOLY, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH TO THE CULTURE
One of the pressing challenges of
contemporary church planting, no matter what the cultural considerations may be,
is having a proper understanding of what constitutes a church. While it may seem obvious what a church is,
the differing understandings of and theological definitions of “church” can
lead to differing assumptions about church planting. When church planting is treated as a “one size
fits all” approach without respect to these differences we are in danger of
planting something other than churches with the results often being shaped by
the explicit culture of a mission opportunity rather than by God’s Word and the
church’s historical understandings of it as formative and normative for the
church.
The operative definition of “church” is
often dependent upon the Christian heritage of the person or persons leading
the church planting effort. Among
Reformation churches, there is general agreement of what a church looks like. For
example, the Augsburg Confession discusses the church according to her outward
signs, or marks:
“The
church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught purely and the
sacraments are administered rightly. For the true unity of the church it is
enough to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of
the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions or rites and
ceremonies, instituted by men, should be alike everywhere. It is as Paul says, ‘One
faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,’ etc. (Eph. 4:5, 6).” (Tappert 1959,
32)
Contemporary understandings of “church”
focus more on what the Augsburg Confession calls “the assembly of saints”
rather than on the pure teaching of the Gospel and the right administration of
the sacraments (i.e., Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which are also referred to
as “ordinances” in some Reformation church bodies). Thus the purpose of the assembly and its
characteristic marks may vary with each instance of the church as a unique
assembly. While this frees the church to
readily adapt to the explicit culture of a mission opportunity, it leaves the
church vulnerable to becoming immersed in and redefined by the targeted culture.
A good attempt at balancing the
Tradition’s focus on the church’s marks with contemporary church planters’
emphasis on the church as an assembly is found in Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North
America edited by Darrell Guder: “While the Greek word for ‘church,’ ekklesia, can mean any assembly, it
often refers to an assembly gathered for decision making, a town meeting. Thus
the church is that gathering of the reign of God assembled to be a sign of that
reign, to proclaim the reign of God in word and deed, to make decisions, and to
give allegiance to their Ruler.” (Guder 1998, 118) Caution should be exercised with this
definition as the historic marks of the church are de-emphasized (i.e., “Word and
sacraments” are reduced to proclaiming the reign of God “in word and
deed”). Indeed, Guder goes on to
redefine the marks of the church in a way that relegates the Word and the sacraments
to the background by stating that “the primary mark of the church is its
apostolicity, its sent-ness as the witness to the good news of God’s saving
rule.” (Guder 1998,
214)
Church planters who understand the need
to engage the explicit culture of a mission opportunity but are not rooted in
the Great Tradition of the church are especially at risk of redefining “church”
according to cultural standards or emphases.
Relying on the Tradition to form the boundaries of our definition serves
as a safeguard against inadvertently devolving the church into an element of
the culture of a target group. For those
expressions of the Christian faith that don’t make use of the Tradition, Ed
Stetzer promotes establishing those boundaries directly from Scripture: “ecclesiology
is not a blank slate to draw out of the cultural situation. The Bible tells us
that certain things need to exist for a biblical church to exist. Certainly,
how we do some of those things is determined by the context, but that we do
them is determined by the Scriptures.” (Stetzer 2006, 159)
Stetzer’s point about context is well
taken. However, what Stetzer excludes
from his discussion about ecclesiology is troubling. Bypassing the two thousand year formation of
the church through the Great Tradition, Stetzer seeks to define the
contemporary church solely on the basis of Scripture. This application of Biblicism falls short in
two ways. First, it imposes the culture
of the First Century Mediterranean world (especially as defined by Judaism) on
the church as the unwavering basis for the church’s culture throughout the
ages. Even when adapting for context, as
Stetzer allows, this approach is overly restrictive as it limits the adaptation
and evolution of the church in meeting cultural situations far removed from
(and probably unimagined by) the Biblical world. Second, it fails to recognize that the church
has its own distinct culture that, while based in the Scriptures, has evolved
and developed over time to meet its mission in the varied circumstances of a
dynamic world.
The failure to recognize the necessity
and purpose of the church having its own culture is a major limitation in much
of contemporary church planting. While
most church planters understand the underlying struggle of God’s Kingdom
against the kingdoms of this world when planting a church, few seem to embrace
the reality that planting a church is invading a human culture (or cultures)
with the alien culture of the church.
Instead of looking to the Great Tradition for understanding how to bring
the church in its cultural packaging to people, much of current church planting
doctrine encourages church planters to jettison the church’s culture because
they consider it a barrier to engaging a culture that is foreign to that of the
church. Stetzer’s Biblicism is a lament
that many church planters have jettisoned the culture of the Apostles as well.
The strength of using the Great
Tradition to define “church” is that it incorporates the culture of the church
into our understanding of the church. As
with any culture, the culture of the church must develop and evolve in order to
remain viable while maintaining its essence so that it is not subsumed by
another culture. The Great Tradition
includes the values, ideas, experiences, and world views of the church in the
First Century, but then grows, adapts, and applies them as the church expands
and matures. Restricting the church’s
culture to that of the Apostles retards the growth of the church just as
limiting a child to the nurturing of infanthood would limit his growth and
development. Just like a body – a wonderfully
Biblical image of the church – the church’s culture changes over time and
through growth, but not in ways that conflict with its essence. In this way, the Great Tradition can be seen
as the depository of the DNA of the church’s culture. Just as a person grows physically through
various stages while remaining the same person, so the culture of church goes
through growth and change while the church remains the church.
Without the influence of the Great
Tradition the culture of the church is subject to change without
boundaries. This kind of unregulated
change would be like a person growing through phases without static DNA. As he changed he would take on all sorts of
characteristics, many of them contradictory and most of them throwing the poor
person and those close to him into confusion and anxiety. Unfortunately, those who have abandoned the
Great Tradition have introduced just this kind of change to the church and its
culture – often with the same confused and anxious reactions. On the other hand, there have been many
attempts to hold the culture of the church in a type of suspended animation. Like Biblicism, this has the effect of
defining a specific instance of the church’s culture as normative for the
contemporary church. The remedy to both
of these errors is found in contextualizing the church’s culture while
differentiating between essentials and adiaphora.
Examining
those things that are essential to the church and therefore constant in the church’s
culture brings us back to the marks of the church. The essence of the church is in the Word being
taught in its purity and the sacraments being rightly administered. The manner in which these things are done in
order to accommodate human cultures falls into the realm of adiaphora. The Lutheran Formula of Concord (Article X) spells this out clearly:
We further believe, teach, and confess that the community of
God in every place and at every time has the right, authority, and power to
change, to reduce, or to increase ceremonies according to its circumstances, as
long as it does so without frivolity and offense but in an orderly and
appropriate way, as at any time may seem to be most profitable, beneficial, and
salutary for good order, Christian discipline, evangelical decorum, and the
edification of the church. Paul instructs us how we can with a good conscience
give in and yield to the weak in faith in such external matters of indifference
(Rom. 14) and
demonstrates it by his own example (Acts 16:3; 21:26; 1 Cor. 9:10). (Tappert
1959, 611)
The ordination of homosexual clergy
provides a good example of differentiating between essentials and
adiaphora. Church planters are likely to
engage cultures in which homosexuality is accepted (even promoted) and the
limitation of roles based on sexual preferences is seen as an expression of discrimination,
hatred, and fear. Those who embrace
God’s Word as normative understand that homosexuality is a sin and that the
open and unrepentant practice of it disqualifies a person from serving in the
pastoral office. However, we also find
well-intentioned church planters who, in wishing to accommodate the culture,
obscure or distort God’s Word on this matter.
They seek to find a way to include the culture’s preferences into the
church’s practices. Some have even gone
so far as to make the matter a cultural matter rather than a theological
matter. The prohibition is an essential
matter. How one goes about teaching the
truth of God’s Word is adiaphora, providing one finds a way to teach it
faithfully.
Any number of issues can arise when
bringing the culture of the church into the culture of a mission opportunity
(e.g., the role of women, the sanctity of human life, the Biblical
understanding of marriage and sexuality).
The Great Tradition of the church provides an excellent framework for
dealing with these issues in a manner which maintains the essentials and allows
adaptive freedom in adiaphora. It also
provides two thousand years of experience in engaging cultures that are foreign
and hostile to that of the church. In
the Great Tradition we find practical examples of “being all things to all men”
in order that God’s Word of salvation would reach them. Relying on the Great Tradition to inform us
regarding the church’s culture provides boundaries which protect us from going
too far in accommodating human cultures.
Maintaining the essentials of the church’s culture avoids the tragedy of
planting churches that fail to reach those who are lost because they end up
subsumed by the culture they were seeking to reach. When considering the hazards of engaging
human cultures as the church we do well to bear in mind William Inge’s warning
that “Whoever marries the spirit of this
age will find himself a widower in the next.”
MISSION AND
TRADITION IN CHURCH PLANTING MODELS
Recognizing that church planting is the
strategic invasion of a human culture by the alien culture of the church, a
church planter or church planting team should be very intentional about
selecting a church planting model that provides effective ways of entering into
the explicit culture of a mission opportunity while preserving the culture of
the church. Church planters who purpose
to do this discover rather quickly that it is neither a simple nor a
straightforward task.
The first challenge to balancing mission
and tradition when selecting a church planting model is the lack of a common
definition or agreement as to what a church planting model actually is. Ed Stetzer acknowledges this situation when
he writes, “Ask ten different organizations for a list of the different types
of church planting models and you will get ten different lists (i.e. there is
no universally agreed to list of church planting models).” (Stetzer, NewChurches 2007) Stetzer rightly observes that “often people
confuse ‘models’ with ‘strategies.’” Unfortunately,
he goes on to add further confusion to the issue by promoting his own
definition and examples of models which are more modes and methods than models.
Mindful of Stetzer’s assessment, and at the
risk of adding yet an eleventh entry to his proverbial list of church planting
models, it is necessary to clarify what a church planting model is (and is not)
before discussing the next challenge to balance mission and tradition when
choosing a church planting model. What appear
to be missing in the discussion on this topic are clear distinctions between
methods, modes, and models. Each of
these elements addresses the “how?” of church planting in a different
dimension. Methods are practical, modes
are tactical, and models are strategic
A church planting method is a particular
action or procedure for accomplishing a church planting task or objective. Methods are the practical actions of planting
a church – the nuts and bolts of church planting. Every church planting effort will include a
number of methods. Most will also
include a variety of methods. Many of
the same methods are used under differing modes and models. Examples of church planting methods include
advertising through mailings, hosting a community event, inviting people in the
community to a financial planning seminar, and establishing a counseling
ministry.
A church planting mode is a way or
manner in which church planting is done.
It is the approach to church planting that organizes the methods into a
cohesive effort. While a church planting endeavor will tend to focus on
operating in a single mode, a well-planned and managed effort can effectively
make use of multiple modes of church planting.
Examples of church planting modes include the “parachute drop” (i.e.,
inserting an outside church planter into a community or culture), opening a
storefront or coffee house, mothering a daughter congregation, and establishing
a child care center. Briefly stated, modes, more so than methods, are often
misunderstood as models.
A model is an example for imitation or
emulation. It is strategic in the sense
that it considers the objectives of the overall task rather than addresses
specific actions to be accomplished to meet those objectives. A model is strategic, but it is not a
strategy. While a strategy is concerned
with an overall objective, it is a plan of action that includes tactical and
practical elements. When applied to church planting, a model is the organizing
principle for strategically invading a human culture with the culture of the church. There are a number of church planting models
that meet this definition to one degree or another. The North American Mission Board (Southern
Baptist Convention) has effectively summarized them into five models: program-based,
purpose-based, relational-based, seeker-based, and ministry-based. (North American Mission Board 2010)
Determining the balance between mission
and tradition in each of these models for church planting is somewhat
subjective and highly contextualized. In
reality, a model in and of itself is neither mission-oriented nor Tradition-oriented. However, there is a tendency in each of the
models toward maintaining the culture of the church or gravitating toward the
culture of the mission opportunity. It
is these tendencies that guide this evaluation.
Program-Based
Church Planting Model
The church planting model that is most
familiar and most widely used is the program-based model. As the name implies, this model focuses on
programs to establish and grow churches.
The programs in this model are intended to meet the perceived needs of
the community in which the church is planted, though the programs tend to fall
into categories that are more reflective of the church’s culture than the
secular culture of the community. This
speaks to the chief criticism of program-based church planting: it tends to
gather people from existing smaller churches that do not (or cannot) offer the
programs people desire into larger churches that have the resources for the
programs.
The program-based church planting model
recognizes the consumer nature of American culture and incorporates it into its
strategic framework. The result is a consumer-oriented church that tends to be
driven by the desires of already churched people. This tendency is innate to the model as
program-based churches are typically resource intensive because they require
staff, buildings, and capital funding in order to develop and execute programs. Out of necessity, they rely on a large core
group of existing believers to fund the mission. When the consumer preferences of these
believers drive the church’s programs (which is naturally the case), the
church’s culture ends up dominating the culture of secular community.
Evangelism in program-based churches tends to be oriented toward drawing people
from the community into the established culture of the church. Overall, the program-based church planting
model is skewed toward the Tradition (and, arguably, traditionalism).
Purpose-Based
Church Planting Model
The purpose-based model derives from
Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven
Church. The model promotes organizing the church planting efforts around the
five purposes of a church as delineated by Warren: Worship (Magnification),
Fellowship (Membership), Discipleship (Maturity), Service (Ministry), and
Evangelism (Mission). (Warren 1995, 102-107) The nature of this model is made clear by
Warren’s instruction “to choose or design a program to fulfill each of your
purposes.” (Warren 1995, 141) In the purpose-driven model Warren has
brought focus and structure to the program-based model, so the purpose-based
model is more of an application of the program-based model rather than a
distinctly different model for church planting.
The strength of this model is that it
provides a safeguard against the consumer demands of already churched people
driving the focus of the mission by having clearly defined purposes. If those purposes reflect a mission
orientation and the leadership of the church is able to keep the church
committed to that focus, the purpose-based model can be well balanced in terms
of mission and the Tradition. However,
the five purposes as defined by Warren are more reflective of a church that is
orientated toward its own culture than toward that of the community. Like the program-based model from which it is
derived, the purpose-driven model is inclined toward drawing people into the
culture of the church rather than engaging them in their own culture.
Relational-Based
Church Planting Model
The relational-based church planting
model is mostly used to describe churches that are planted on a small scale
with the intent of remaining small either in totality or in components. This model is favored by house churches and
multi-site, cell-based churches. The
intent of these small churches or units is to facilitate the development of
relationships both among the core group of believers and with the non-churched (i.e.,
unchurched, de-churched, and never-churched) people in the community. Formal structure and programs are
de-emphasized in the relational-based church planting model.
In theory, the relational-based model
has great potential for being skewed toward the targeted culture. In practice, however, this model tends to
produce churches that are disengaged from both the explicit culture of the
mission opportunity and the Great Tradition.
The focus of relational-based church planting tends to be toward
establishing “New Testament” churches that are reflective of the church as it described
in the book of Acts and the Epistles.
The result has been the promotion of a church culture that is both
different than the culture of the mainstream church and even more disconnected
from the secular culture than it. Like
the program-based and purpose-based models, the relational-based model tends to
focus on drawing people into the culture of the church, albeit a distinctly
different church culture.
Seeker-Sensitive
Church Planting Model
The seeker-sensitive model has its
origins in the ministry of Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington,
Illinois. The seeker-sensitive model is similar
to the purpose-driven (i.e., focused program-based) model. In this model there is one specific purpose,
namely, to develop programs to connect with people in the culture who are
“irreligious” but are, to one degree or another, exploring or open to exploring
spiritual matters. While this model is a
highly specialized application of the program-based model, its focus on a
specific element of the target culture distinguishes it from the program-based
model and presents unique challenges that warrant treating it as a separate
model.
While
it has developed into several versions (e.g., seeker-directed, seeker-friendly,
seeker-oriented), the seeker-sensitive model remains an approach that eschews
the Tradition and intentionally embraces the culture. There is an inherent imbalance between
mission and the Tradition in this model, with the emphasis being placed on
accommodating the culture of the mission opportunity at the expense of the
Tradition.
Ministry-Based
Church Planting Model
The ministry-based model for church
planting is distinguished by caring for the whole person through services that
address meeting their physical, emotional, and practical needs in anticipation
of also addressing their spiritual needs.
This model relies on human care and social ministries to connect with
the people in a targeted culture or community. The ministry-based model
incorporates concepts of other church planting models in practical ways. In this model ministry (i.e., services) are
the programs, serving is the purpose, and developing relationships with
non-churched people is foundational.
Cultural attitudes and values are engaged in an anticipatory manner as
people are “met where they are” with the expectation that they will move away
from a culture that is hostile to Christ and into a culture that is formed
around the love and compassion shown by His people.
The ministry-based model is capable of being
reflective of both the New Testament church and the Great Tradition while
engaging a culture in a balanced manner.
However, churches planted under this model are at risk of devolving into
a culture-centered purveyor of a social gospel and becoming consumer-oriented
in the sense of seeking to satisfy the consumer demands of people dependent
upon social services.
BALANCING
MISSION AND TRADITION WHEN SELECTING A CHURCH PLANTING MODEL
As the organizing principle for strategically
invading a human culture with the culture of the church, there’s a lot riding
on the selection of an effective church planting model. Because the model drives the integration and
coherence of modes and methods, it is very difficult to changes models once the
planting of a church is in process. The
lack of a clearly defined and effective model is certain to lead to confusion,
inefficiencies, and frustrations that may well result in planting a church that
is not sustainable.
Despite the importance of the church
planting model, it is essential for balancing mission and the Tradition to
understand that models are tools not solutions.
A planter or team may select the “right model,” but without proper
management of that model the church planting effort may go in unintended directions
and end up undesirably skewed toward mission or the Tradition.
Four of the five models defined by the
North American Missions Board are suitable for planting churches that can
balance mission and the Tradition. Only
the seeker-sensitive model is inherently skewed to one over the other. The similarities between the program-based and
purpose-based models are so strong that one of these models should be set
aside. Since the purpose-based model
provides a mechanism for keeping a church plant from becoming imbalanced, it is
reasonable to retain it over the program-based model.
Whichever model is used for a church
planting effort, the planter or team must be intentional about balancing
mission and the Tradition if there is going to be any balance. By themselves, models will not produce the
desired balance. They must be
managed. The key to balancing mission
and the Tradition when deploying the purpose-based model is defining purposes
that work to keep them in balance. For
the relational-based model, it is incorporating the sense of the universal
church into the ethos of the small groups that are formed. In the ministry-based model, the key to
balance is ensuring that the love and compassion that is extended to those
being served is done overtly in the name of Christ and His church. Above all, the church planter or planting team
must value the Great Tradition, have a passion for liberating those who are
enslaved to cultures hostile to Christ, and be committed to keeping mission and
the Tradition in balance.
WORKS
CITED
Guder, Darrell L. (ed.). Missional Church: A
Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans, 1998.
Merriam-Webster. The
Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2005.
North American Mission
Board. Church Planting Village. 2010.
http://www.churchplantingvillage.net/churchplantingvillagepb.aspx?pageid=8589990647
(accessed 2011).
Stetzer, Ed. NewChurches.
2007. http://www.newchurches.com/tutorial07-models-of-planting/ (accessed
2011).
—. Planting
Missional Churches. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006.
Tappert, T.G. (ed.). The
Book of Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959.
Warren, Rick. The
Purpose Driven Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.
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