As told to Jessica Hanewinckel
When starting a church, we aren’t simply trying to gather a crowd as quickly as possible to preach and hope for conversions. Instead, we focus on establishing the distinctive biblical markers that form the essence of successful church planting.
I define a “church” as a regular gathering of Christians who have covenanted together to preach, portray, and protect the gospel. To break that down: First, regular gathering is essential. Second, we collectively commit to the gospel, which drives our preaching. We portray the gospel through baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and our mutual love. Finally, we protect the gospel through intentional church membership.
Success in church planting is in the essence of facilitating these things, but that isn’t what I often see. Instead, the common definition of successful church planting we run up against are what I call the four S’s: size, speed, self-sufficiency and spread. And I’ll add a fifth one: span. Those are great, but they don’t get to define success. Big organizations that fund church plants don’t get to define success. Success is defined by Jesus and his Word.
Let’s say you are a church planter, and you tried to plant a church, but it didn’t work out. Did you have a regular gathering of Christians who agreed together to preach the gospel, portray the gospel and protect the gospel? If the answer is yes, then you established a church. “But,” you say, “it only lasted two years.” Man, let’s praise God for the things he did in those two years instead of acting as if your effort yielded nothing, because our definition, our metric, is not McDonald’s. It’s the Messiah.
Why do we plant churches? Strangely, that is a question that hardly ever gets talked about much. I think that’s because the answer is just assumed. We hear this a lot: The reason why we plant churches is to multiply and to evangelize the lost. Yes, and amen. I am praying both of those things are happening, but they are not the point. This answer might be a little controversial, but in my opinion the reason why we plant churches is to treasure Christ together.
We evangelize and we multiply, not as the ultimate goal, but because we want more people to treasure Christ together. I think what winds up happening is, we assume it, and then it gets lost. I want to get back to the basics. This is what the church is, and this is why it exists.
Nathan Knight is a pastor of Restoration Church in Washington, D.C., and a leader of the Treasuring Christ Together church planting network. His latest book is Planting by Pastoring: A Vision for Starting a Healthy Church (Crossway).
