Why Plant A Church? Biblical Conviction And Personal Charge

This is the first of (Lord willing) many writings that have a two-fold aim.  First, I hope in chronicling the journey to sharpen my ability to articulate the vision and burden for church planting that God has put on my heart.  Along these lines, I welcome any push back, questions, or clarification you have.  My thinking isn’t a finished product!  Second, I hope to inform and encourage you who would read.  Whatever God is up to is worth celebrating and leveraging to stir us up to love and good deeds.

It makes sense to try and answer the obvious question first:  Why plant a church?  

As the title suggests, there is both a biblical conviction and a sense of God’s call, a “mustness,” about it.  One is objective and unchanging.  The other is subjective and open to alteration, correction, or surrender depending on what the current assessment process concludes.  But combined, the two realities answer the question: why plant a church?

Biblical Conviction:

The Church is the hope of the world for salvation because the Church has been entrusted by God with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and there is salvation in no one but Jesus.  

Throughout the New Testament, we see that the Church has responsibility for doctrinal integrity, for making disciples through Gospel proclamation, and for demonstrating the love of God to those within and outside of the body of Christ.  For those dead in trespasses and sins, who are walking in darkness, the Church possesses the life-giving message of salvation.  The success of God’s rescue mission rests on the faithfulness of the Church.  That’s not to say the church can somehow thwart God’s plan.  It’s meant to communicate the significance of the Church, and by extension, the significance of the local church.  

For God’s people to live as God intends, we must embrace our “sent one” status that takes after The Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.  Jesus was sent by the Father, and the Church is sent by Jesus into the world to continue His mission of making disciples of all nations to the glory of God.  

This begs the question, what of those places where the Church is absent or undermanned?  We know that apart from responding to the gospel with repentance and faith, no one will be saved.  And if the Church doesn’t exist, the gospel is very likely not being proclaimed or heard, which means people are dying in their sins.  This means that the Church must always be cultivating and acting upon the impulse to reproduce and go where it doesn’t yet exist and isn’t yet faithfully proclaiming Christ.  

So the biblical conviction is built upon who the Church is, what the Church’s (God’s) mission is, and how best to faithfully engage that mission.  

As the pillar and buttress of truth, the Church is the hope of the world for salvation.  The Church’s mission is to go and make disciples of all nations.  And the Church engages this mission by reproducing and entering areas where Christ is not yet worshipped and obeyed.

Personal Charge:

This one feels much riskier to speak of.  Objective biblical truth feels much easier to me to speak of with clarity and conviction.  But the sense of calling is mysterious and sacred.  More than most other aspects of my life, this one can feel “core”, it can feel like part of who I am.  And that’s dangerous, because my true identity is not found in a sense of calling, but in Christ alone.  

It’s also a balancing act.  On the one hand, I really have a desire to plant a church.  It feels urgent.  It seems that God has planted the seed of it in my heart years ago.  I’m convicted by Scripture of the necessity of church planting.  I am confident in my abilities and God-given gifts to see a new work of God materialize and grow and become salt and light in a place of sin and darkness.  

Yet, on the other hand, I have just enough idea of how immensely impossible the undertaking is that I am scared, hesitant, and dismissive of my sense of things.  And of course these feelings are not a good foundation to build upon.  

All that to say, discerning a call to plant has been a whirlwind of emotions.  It’s been more confusing than clarifying.  It’s felt more like backpedaling than trailblazing.  For each question that seems to have a sufficient answer, dozens more questions result.  

Who is sufficient for these things?  If Paul felt this way, I guess I’m in good company.  

With all the dizzying confusion and path-obscuring fog, here I sit.  Compelled by the glory of God and full of an urgent desire to see God do something that He’s promised to do: build His Church.  I sit here full of faith that Jesus intends to build His Church through the Word of God by the power of His Spirit.  And my continued sense is that He’s inviting me to participate by taking the Good News where it’s scarce, to labor to see a church birthed that is yet to be conceived, to give my energy to see God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, to see lives transformed by the Gospel and to see those lives go on to testify to others who bend the knee to Jesus.  

Why plant a church?  That’s why.