Up here in North Indiana, Bishop Coyner shared at Annual Conference a literal dream he has had multiple times. In the dream, he is comissioning a group of 70 laypeople for the work of going out in pairs to plant new communities of faith. He believes that this dream is from God, and with that in mind he is organizing a training event for laypeople and pastors in the area of church planting.
I am interested to see how this vision will play out. How will United Methodist people respond to a literal dream? How will United Methodist people respond to an initiative in ministry that leaves so much of the implementation to the laity? How will United Methodist people respond to being asked to engage in directly targeting unchurched/unevangelized people? How will they respond when the going is slow and difficult?
If you have stories from the last 25 years or so of United Methodist laypeople going out and starting new faith communties that eventually become churches, I would love to hear them! (obviously the Methodist heritage is FULL of such stories).
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
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6 comments:
As a layperson who was part of a failed UMC church plant five years ago, I can assure you the question is not whether the laypeople are ready for this.
The question is whether our conference staffs and the folks in Nashville and the General Board of Discipleship have any idea what they are doing and will support the plants both spiritually and financially.
Five years ago they didn't have a clue. I hope things have changed since that time.
Larry,
Michael voiced my concern. I support Bishop Mike's dream. However, if we are serious as a conference about new church starts then we better put up or shut up. North Alabama is serious. They majorly re-adjusted their budget to support new church starts. New starts will be important to our conference, so I hope we get behind teh Bishop and I hope that our new imagining team takes this seriously as well. I think the lay people may take interest if teh conference really offers support, money and staffing. I know that the people at the churhc I serve do not seem interested.
Two weeks ago in church service the pastor of the church being planted in the neighboring community gave the message. The five nearest neighbor churchs were chosen to help launch this new church.
He spoke of five things we can do to help make this successful.
1 Pray, When we pray things happen.
2 Give financial support
3 Spontaneous acts of Christian kindness, Going to the community and washing cars for free or passing out news papers at a diner.
Of course you inform them of the new church when they ask why
4Helping those in need, visit the sick counsel drug and alcohol abusers that kind of thing.
5 Matthew groups, these are bible studies based on discipleship,We are to seed groups from the new community with seasoned church goers from the five surrounding communities
Just to respond a bit to what Bob heard the church plant pastor say to his church.
It sounds very familiar to what we were told five years ago.
Churches in the area were supposed to help us in exactly the way this planter described. That was the strategy of our conference and the GBOD at the time. (Sounds like things have not changed.)
What happened to us was that the local churches in the area were afraid of our plant---that it would sheep-steal their members. The pastors of these churches lobbied the conference in varous ways. One even got the bishop to give his church a lot of $$$ for an additional staff member!
Now, in no way were we remotely interested in sheep stealing. First, we were trying to reach the unreached. Second, our style of worship probably would not appeal to those already churched. But that was the way folks in the established UMCs in our area felt. It did us a lot of harm.
Second, the suggestion for loaning out seasoned people from other churches to the plant... well that was imposed on us too.
Unfortunately, those folks just wanted to re-do what worked at their churches at our church. They did not understand we had an entirely different vision. I don't fault them---they were doing their best. But they came in not understanding what we were trying to do.
The last comment I have is that we were told we had to "stay within the connection" to raise the funding we needed. Our local UMCs, for the reasons above, did not want to help. Our conference never gave us a firm dollar amount commitment that we could count on. And although we had several offers from local, kindred non-denominational churches for support, and we had other places (such as foundations) we could have turned, because they were non-UMC we were forbidden from using them.
These were some of the things that spelled disaster for us, and from what Bob heard recently, it sounds like the model is the same now. It's really very sad.
Just a few words on what I have learned about new church starts.
1. The pastor appointed must be called to ministry to bring new disicples to a life in Christ. Somebody that "really" wants to be a DS or be a missionary will not succeed.
2. The new church start must be supported financially for at least five years.
3. If the new start does not have a growth vision and a growth plan and growth goals, it will fail.
4. The new start needs to show early success, disappointment sets in too quickly.
5. The new start needs to set priorities early on. It can't be asked, by the conference or itself, to act like a mature church. If mission trips are the 15th most important thing on a priority list then that's when it gets done, after the first 14.
6. It needs a group of laity that understand that there needs to be short-term, intermediate term, and long-term goals and objectives. They also need to be kept on track and not jump to long-term tasks too quickly.
New church starts are wonderful in areas where we need them, but I would like to see many of our existing churches catch on fire and fill up. Seems like we're closing down churches at every annual conference.
Can you say, "We need a revival"?
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