Why Not Start a Church?

I gave a talk yesterday on why we should start more churches (based off Ed Stetzer's Planting Missional Churches). Included in my talk were reasons we DON'T start new churches. I'm posting my notes below.

After seeing what the Bible says about church planting, you might be thinking “Man, why doesn’t everybody church plant! This is clearly what God wanted!” Here’s a couple reasons why new churches aren’t started.

1. Because people don't realize that new churches are statistically most effective in evangelism.

• Bruce McNichol did some research on the age of a church and their effectiveness in evangelism and found the following...
• Churches under 3 years of age win an average of 10 people to Christ per year for every hundred church members.
• Churches 3-15 years of age win an average of 5 people per year for every hundred church members.
• Churches over 15 years of age win an average of 3 people per year for every hundred church members.

2. Because people don't realize there is room for more new churches in their area.

• It may actually be harder for a seminarian to start a church for the following reason: A seminarian often has accumulated so much debt they can’t take the low salary that often comes with just starting out in a church plant. And I’m not even saying they wouldn’t be willing to take the low salary - a lot of times they simply can’t (because they need enough to support their families and pay down their student loans).
• A friend of mine just graduated from seminary out in Springfield MO and he’s not even sure he can afford to go into ministry. He’s considered working a secular job just to pay down his debt. Most churches don’t pay extra for education. They pay for experience and for skills that allow you to be efficient and effective at your work. Therefore, it’s not only the church planter who starts off with a low salary.
• Some denominational leaders or church leaders often consider pastoral candidates without seminary training to be ineligible or unprepared to plant new churches. This bias limits your options, increases your costs, and certainly isn’t in line with Scripture (i.e. Jesus didn’t overlook Peter just because he didn’t have seminary training - and Peter started a church that began with 3,000 and then continued to grow from there). This professional-church syndrome hurts church planting.

3. Because some are afraid to trust ordinary people to lead a church plant.

• Ed Stetzer, in his book Planting Missional Churches, refers to “Professional-Church Syndrome.” This refers to the notion that all churches must have seminary-trained pastors to be legitimate. However, while education is important, years of academic training are not necessary to start a church.
• It may actually be harder for a seminarian to start a church for the following reason: A seminarian often has accumulated so much debt they can’t take the low salary that often comes with just starting out in a church plant. And I’m not even saying they wouldn’t be willing to take the low salary - a lot of times they simply can’t (because they need enough to support their families and pay down their student loans).
• A friend of mine just graduated from seminary out in Springfield MO and he’s not even sure he can afford to go into ministry. He’s considered working a secular job just to pay down his debt. Most churches don’t pay extra for education. They pay for experience and for skills that allow you to be efficient and effective at your work. Therefore, it’s not only the church planter who starts off with a low salary.
• Some denominational leaders or church leaders often consider pastoral candidates without seminary training to be ineligible or unprepared to plant new churches. This bias limits your options, increases your costs, and certainly isn’t in line with Scripture (i.e. Jesus didn’t overlook Peter just because he didn’t have seminary training - and Peter started a church that began with 3,000 and then continued to grow from there). This professional-church syndrome hurts church planting.

4. Some people think it's better to invest in dying churches versus investing in starting new ones.

• Because it’s easier to give birth than to raise the dead!
• Some authorities argue that changing a rigid, tradition-bound congregation is almost impossible.
• In the same way that sometimes it’s more cost-effective to purchase a new vehicle, rather than pouring more and more money into an old one to keep it running like new - it’s sometimes more cost-effective to start a new church rather than pouring more and more time and money into trying to fix an old one.
• Fact: Church revitalization does not happen much. It does happen sometimes, but not much.
• Recent studies show that nine of ten people who are told by doctors to “change or die” cannot do so. In other words, they are told to stop smoking, lose weight, or quit drinking in order to survive, and nine of ten die rather than change. Churches are similar; they often choose their traditions over their future. But some can and do change.
• I personally believe we need both revitalization of dying churches and the start of healthy brand new churches, while giving a larger percentage of money and attention to the latter (to church planting).

5. Because some people are still living under the delusion that America is still a Christian nation.

• While North American Christians have access to abundant resources of information (i.e. Larry Burkett for financial information, James Dobson for advice on raising children, Third Day for Christian music, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins for Christian fiction), the unchurched people in North America remain generally untouched by this evangelical subculture and live in darkness because we aren’t drawing them in with a culturally relevant gospel witness.
• Unchurched North Americans no longer have a biblical worldview or understanding. Their religious ideas tend to be distorted reflections of biblical truth. In other words, secular people may be familiar with certain religious terminology or ideas, but their familiarity is often a distortion of its original meaning.
• According to George G. Hunter, one of the country’s foremost experts on evangelism and church growth...
• The U.S. is the largest mission field in the Western hemisphere.
• The U.S. is the fifth largest mission field on earth.