As told to Jessica Hanewinckel
When starting a church, it’s not as though we are just trying to get a crowd together as quickly as we can to preach at them and hope they come to Jesus. Instead, there are distinctive markers we try to get in place that the Bible seems to be calling us to.
I define “church” as a regular gathering of Christians who have covenanted together to preach the gospel, portray the gospel and protect the gospel. Let me break it down: First, regularly gathering is self-explanatory. Second, we agree together that we’re going to give ourselves collectively as a people to this gospel, which then leads to the preaching of the gospel. We are also portraying the gospel. That comes in two or three ways: baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and by the way we love one another. We protect the gospel with 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).
