Renew enthusiasm for starting churches

by Cameron Crabtree
       A primary aim of the Northwest Baptist Convention’s cooperative mission effort is to start healthy, reproducing churches — lots of them. A barrier to achieving that goal, however, is skepticism among too many existing churches about the need for and effectiveness of such an effort. That must change.
       If you surveyed some of the Northwest Baptists you know and asked them to identify the main purposes of the church, you’d likely predict most the responses — worship, evangelism, missions, ministry and other familiars. In many instances, you’d find the variations and visionary phrases on banners or other signs reminding church members of Jesus’ Great Commission task.
       But usually missing from that list of responses is any concern about churches reproducing themselves. Without a commitment to reproduce itself in a new expression in a new community, a church may never enjoy its fullest impact.
       As a convention of churches scattered across a vast territory of diverse populations, we must find a way to develop a movement of “missionaries” committed to sharing Christ through new churches and the development of ministries that reach new people.
       In traveling across the Northwest in recent years, be it in the vast rural areas or the major population centers, it’s clear that our basic approach to church life — despite rhetoric to the contrary or attempts to change when given ample opportunity — is about the same in just about every setting. Indeed, God has blessed Northwest Baptists with leaders trying to share Christ with more creative approaches, but for the most part there’s little difference reflected in the diverse settings.
       A key to any large scale church starting effort in the Northwest is fostering a positive climate for such efforts. Too often, initiating conversations about the need to start churches in the Northwest invokes a look of concern from some pastors and leaders of existing churches. Their criticism often goes to their perception that a lot of money is spent on church planting with “nothing to show for it” just a few years later.
       There is some validity to their concern. We sometimes use approaches that assume economic and cultural settings that simply don’t exist in many places in the Northwest. But that should drive us to plant churches with an even greater sense of spiritual dependence, an even stronger sense of calculated risk and a way to balance sustainability and short-term impact in a given setting.
       NWBC history is full of seasons when churches were burdened with the need to plant more churches. That’s a burden worth renewing again — enthusiastically.