Our first church-planting conference, [CO]MISSION UK, was held July 8–10 at Christchurch in Newport, Wales. Dave Harvey spoke at the conference along with Pete Greasley, senior pastor of Christchurch. Pete is responsible for international church planting and care on behalf of Sovereign Grace Ministries in Australia, Germany, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, and the UK.

For an update on the [CO]MISSION UK conference, I asked Pete a few questions.

C.J. Mahaney: I’ll begin with a broader question. Among young pastors in the U.S. we see a trend toward what is commonly referred to as “young, restless, and Reformed.” What is the theological climate among the young pastors and church planters you see in the UK?

Pete Greasley: In recent years, I’ve become increasingly aware of a stirring among young men in the UK to “do something” for the gospel. There’s been a gradual growing in awareness—particularly amongst men in their early to mid twenties—for the need to plant gospel-centred churches both here and elsewhere in the world. I’m also aware of many guys who have already planted churches and desire encouragement and input in how to best apply the gospel in their church situations. From my perspective, this is an exciting time!

CJM: So last month you hosted the [CO]MISSION UK Conference. I hear it was well attended. Were you surprised by how many attended?

PG: Very much so. We anticipated about 30–40 men, partly due to the specificity of the conference (men who believed they may be called to church planting or who were already leading a church plant), and also because we didn’t think that Sovereign Grace was that well known over here. When 120 men booked in we were extremely surprised and genuinely humbled that such men of calibre were willing to take time off work and travel to the conference.

CJM: Who showed up and what do those guys represent?

PG: There was a real spectrum of attendees, from experienced church planters to new university graduates exploring a sense of call to church planting. But the unifying factor amongst them was a desire to play a part in seeing new churches planted and wanting those churches to truly represent the gospel and still be here in 10, 50, 100 years time! I was particularly encouraged by the sobriety, as well as the passion, that these men demonstrated in desiring to build churches that glorify God. God was kind to us in allowing us to influence and be influenced by these passionate men.

CJM: What immediate fruit did you see from the conference? What long-term fruit do you hope for?

PG: As the conference drew nearer, our prayer was that it would be the beginning of relationships that God would use for the furtherance of his kingdom. God was pleased to answer that prayer—we met some remarkable men, and our hope in the short term is that these relationships will provide a context for us to continue to learn from and serve these men. But in the longer term, I hope that we’ll be able to play a strategic part in the birthing of new churches throughout this country. Our desire is that in God’s providence, he would use [CO]MISSION UK to inspire men to plant churches that will bring much glory to God and will stand the test of time. If we can serve towards that endeavour, even in some small way, it will be an incredible privilege. Soli Deo Gloria.

Thank you, Pete.

The audio and video recordings from the conference can be downloaded from comissionuk.org.

For more about Pete, see my interview with him: Meet Pete Greasley.

We’ve been talking governors. A governor is something that controls the speed of an engine. Install a governor and it slows you down; pop it off and you go much faster. When it comes to church planting, Sovereign Grace has intentionally installed certain governors—values that help us control the speed and quality of our growth.

In the previous posts we looked at the first two governors:

Governor 1: A commitment to finding the right guy.

Governor 2: A commitment to providing the right guy with the right resources.

Having the right church planter and the right resources (team and finances) promotes the viability of a church plant.

In this post we want to think not just about viability (the likelihood of a successful church plant) but sustainability. Sustainability is about more than individual plants; it is about the ability of a church-planting movement to maintain a coherent and consistent approach to church planting. Viability requires a focused commitment to the success of a church plant. Sustainability requires an effective infrastructure within a movement to make sure that we stay on track with who we are and what God has called us to do. These final three governors are aimed at sustainability.

Let me introduce you to the three final governors in church planting:

Governor 3: A commitment to actively care for a church planter before he goes and after he arrives.

If you’ve been in the church-planting world long enough, you’ve probably heard stories of church planters who find themselves isolated and “dying on the vine.” Sometimes this occurs because a guy feels called to start a work and launches independent of care, connection, or coaching. Other times the promises of support go unrealized. No matter what the cause, church-planter burnout is one of the major factors in failed church plants.

Sovereign Grace Ministries is a “family” of churches. That means we are committed not just to ministry partnership, but to ministry fellowship. Partnership often means mechanics and funding. Fellowship means ongoing relationship, encouragement, training, correction, and accountability.

Back in the day, we were a small enough group that an SGM guy could know almost every other pastor in the movement, and enjoy deep friendships with more than a few. These relationships provided ready means of counsel, encouragement, and resource sharing, and a healthy dose of learning from each other’s mistakes. As we’ve grown, this happens more on a regional level. And as Sovereign Grace churches continue to multiply, we need to consciously set up structures of care for existing churches and new church plants.

The SGM Leadership Team and Church Planting Group spend a lot of our time these days think-tanking for the future, in order to preserve the relational nature of Sovereign Grace care for leaders. Whatever the ultimate structure looks like, it will be based on our core commitment to care for each church planter and each established church through leader-to-leader relationship. Here’s our ongoing commitment: We will govern our growth to make sure every church planter, at every step of church planting, experiences care through relationships with other leaders.

Governor 4: A commitment to ensure that Sovereign Grace values run deep in church plants.

One of the remarkable things we’ve seen over the years is how many gifted and highly trained men have come to Sovereign Grace Ministries expressing a desire to plant churches. Frankly, we feel a little bit like we’re being asked to play in a pro-am with Phil Mickelson, and we’re the “am” of the pairing. But we’ve also learned that there are things at the heart of who we are as a family of churches that can’t be downloaded from a website, read in a book, or imbibed from a conference. One of the things we must ensure is that our church planting doesn’t become the wheel out of alignment—you know, pulling us off track a little bit at a time. This can happen when the values of a movement diminish bit by bit through expansion and innovation.

One of the things that every church planter knows is that he is not planting his own work. The fruit of his labor has come through a vital partnership with a sending ministry. The church planter has received a stewardship of values that he in turn must embody and transfer to others. Because internalizing core values is essential, this will always govern our growth.

Governor 5: A commitment to endurance, not just impact.

In the early days, the idea of church planting as a primary missions strategy was strange to a lot of folks. But church planting now has some serious street cred. It’s become normal, if not normative, in many denominations and families of churches. I think that’s great because it provides us the opportunity to learn more. We’d be foolish to sit back in our little SGM world and pretend that we’ve got it together. That’s why I love connecting with other church-planting guys—getting up close to what they are doing, and getting their eyes and insights on us. As C.J. has always said, nothing we’ve ever done is original. We’ve just become good at adapting what others have done; if we ever stop learning from others we might as well cash it in.

As we’ve matured (relatively speaking) we are also seeing that success can’t be defined in present impact. To be biblical and worthy of the costs it demands, success has to be long term. We’re talking enduring, multi-generational sustainability. We can’t think of five year plans—we have to think in 50 years. We have to think about how to build now so that we have something meaningful to hand over to the next generation.
Here’s a principle that now runs deep in Sovereign Grace Ministries: gospel-centered means gospel-transferring (2 Timothy 2:2). Gospel-transferring means that we’re building church models that proclaim the gospel, apply the gospel, and seek to impress the gospel upon the next generation. We’re not looking to cultivate a passion for the way Sovereign Grace does ministry. We want the passion to be confined to the Savior himself.

Honestly, discerning those things is an ever-present challenge for all ministries. It’s sometimes hard to see where our present practice will help transfer the gospel and what is, well, just our way of doing things. Understanding the difference and building in light of it is the only way this thing will last.

Conclusion

It’s funny, originally I wanted to call this cluster of blog posts, “Why So Slow???” But as I thought about it, the goal is not slow growth, it’s wise growth. And that takes patience and pace in church planting.

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

I met Kang Songhwan when he and his wife, Miran, visited our church near Philly. Songhwan already had a seminary degree and almost ten years of pastoral experience. But the shocker was that they were considering moving temporarily from South Korea to the U.S. to attend our Pastors College. I remember being struck with the sincerity and humility of this couple—they were willing to make some serious sacrifices to go where they believed God was leading them. I’ve met few people like the Kangs.

Songhwan and Miran did move to Gaithersburg in 2008, and we were privileged to have them at the Pastors College. Songhwan did a remarkable job of navigating an intensive ten-month study program in his second language. (I mean school was always a challenge for me in my first language!) Songhwan graduated in June of 2009 and moved back to Seoul to plant a church.

Fast-forward to today: There are about 30 adults in Lord’s Grace Church, meeting in an English-language school in central Seoul. Songhwan recently finished teaching a series on foundational doctrines and commitments. On the final Sunday of that series, the church’s first members made a public commitment to the church, and everyone celebrated with a shared meal afterward. It’s no megachurch, but numbers aren’t what Songhwan is aiming for. A recent email from him says that the church “is growing continuously and happily in God’s mercy and grace.”
 
Now that’s good news.
 
Would you pray with us for Lord’s Grace Church? Please pray:

• that God would grant the church favor in their community
• that the church would share the gospel effectively and many would be saved
• for financial provision for this brand new church as it gets started in an expensive city
• that God would give grace and wisdom to the Kangs as they lead this church
  

Thanks for praying for believers in Seoul!

If you’d like to support Sovereign Grace Ministries’ work outside the U.S., you can make a designated gift by clicking here.

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

Okay, back to this topic of governors.

A governor is a device that regulates the speed of something. For example, when NASCAR began to realize that their cars were increasing in speed year by year, and this was making accidents more common and more serious, they instituted what was dubbed “the car of the future.” The car of the future was essentially the car of the present with some design modifications that effectively regulated the top-end speed of all the cars in the same way. These modifications served as “governors” on how fast stock cars could go.

What’s interesting is that the purpose of the car of the future was to go slower than what technology could ultimately allow. Other values besides speed were important to NASCAR, so speed was sacrificed so those values (safety, protection of drivers, competition) could be promoted.

Sovereign Grace church planting has governors on the engine of our growth. They help determine the speed of our growth so we can move forward toward the finish line. The next governor I want to discuss is having the right resources.

Governors in Church Planting

2: The Right Resources

This means the right guy with the right stuff is not enough. We need to send him with the right resources. How many people are needed for a successful church planting team? How much up-front cash does a church plant need to get off the ground? What does care look like for the planter after the planting? These are resource questions where wise church planting joins clear strategy. The bottom line? A viable church plant is possible when the right guy is given the right resources for the right needs in the right location.

There seems to be a growing consensus among church-planting movements that a viable church planting team needs to be around 30 to 50 core people. By core we mean people who are committed to both the work and the sacrifices necessary to get a church off the ground. Bigger teams may be attractive, but they’re not always better. If bigger means folks who are coming with their own agendas or self-seeking desires, then run for the hills ’cause you’re planting a weed, not a church. Also, some types of plants—cross-cultural for instance—are better served with smaller teams of experienced or knowledgeable folks.

Likewise, financial investment is subject to the church plant situation. Planting in some urban areas is an experience of sticker shock; everything from meeting space to cost of living is more—actually, much more. And the process of people moving from happy attendees to faithful givers can be unpredictable. So there is a lot of diversity in the church-planting world over the question of how to fund church plants.

In Sovereign Grace we operate with a few basic principles:

• We want a church planter to be focused on planting and establishing a gospel-centered church, not building a funding base. We have found that where a proven man is free to focus on building the church, the Lord’s provision will usually move a plant quickly from outside funding to self-sustainability. And what gets fostered in the process is a spirit of gratefulness and shared mission in the plant, because both the planter and the team recognize the financial commitment of the broader family of churches to help them get established.

• We want a plurality of leaders as quickly as possible. The ultimate goal, where possible, is a plurality of full-time elders. However, until the church is financially capable, we have provisional pluralities made up of lay leaders with proven gifts and character. But a low-risk church plant can actually get extra money to speed a plurality of elders on its way.

• We see financial resourcing as part of our shared partnership in the plant. If you talk to most of our church planters, one of their hopes is to be able to say to Sovereign Grace Ministries, “Thank you for your commitment to us. We’d now like to make a commitment to future church planting through our giving to the mission.” While this transition from receiving to giving doesn’t take place the same way for all church plants, it is a vision that Sovereign Grace church planters hold dear and endeavor to build into their new churches.

The right resources are an important governor in Sovereign Grace church planting, because church planting isn’t merely a growth strategy. It’s a commitment, both to people who are sending and people who are going, that we will do everything we can to make sure a church plant not only survives, but thrives as a faithful expression of the gospel. It takes longer to start stronger. We get that. But we’re in it for the long haul.

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Previous posts in this series:
Patience, Pace, and Church Planting (Part 1)
Patience, Pace, and Church Planting (Part 2)

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

In my last post I talked about how Sovereign Grace is committed to being as aggressive in church planting as gospel values allow. But certain values act as governors to cap the speed of our growth (see the previous post for the retro go-kart analogy). Therefore planting churches requires patience to do it well, and the pace to sustain it over the long term.

As a Leadership Team we’ve identified several governors—things that help us pursue opportunities at the speed limit our values will allow. They determine our pace and insist upon our patience. (Warning: For dudes who are missiologically minded—read: rapid expansion—don’t check out. We in Sovereign Grace may be nuts but it’s an informed lunacy.)

I’m going to take several posts to discuss four specific governors. Here’s the first:

Governors in Church Planting

1: The qualified guy

Yeah, yeah, I know. We all believe this. You can’t plant a church without a good candidate. But I’m not talking about a good guy. I’m talking about the right guy. Why? Because for us, the key factor in strategizing when and where to church plant is the man—the church planter. A viable church plant begins with both a need or opportunity to plant and the emergence of a qualified man to lead the plant.

You see, need is relevant, but it can’t determine our pace. There’s just too much of it and too little of us. Is there really any place where you could honestly say, “There’s no church needed there”? Opportunity is also important, and we pay careful attention to it. At any given time there are groups of folks in various locations who are requesting that a Sovereign Grace church be started in their area. And conversations with existing churches looking to affiliate with us are always taking place.

But need and opportunity alone don’t create the call to plant a church. We need the right guy. A qualified one.

What do we mean by a qualified man? A qualified man is one who has sensed a clear and enduring call to plant a church. But there’s more. That sense of call has been confirmed by mature leaders who know the man, warts and all. A qualified man is revealed by the grace on his life. How do we know if there’s grace? Because there are character and abilities that match the eldership qualifications of 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9, and other passages. And not just to attain them, but to maintain them as well.

In Sovereign Grace Ministries, we organize these qualities around five essential criteria, which we call the “e5.” First and primarily there is preaching. That’s the BIG E. A qualified guy must be an expositor who knows how to handle God’s Word in clear and compelling manner. In our experience, the training and evaluation involved in this component just takes time. It slows the process. We realize that dialing this one back, maybe just downgrading from expository skill to sensible Bible teaching, would speed things up considerably. But we’re called not just to win converts but to make disciples. Disciple making requires exposition.

It doesn’t end there; here are numbers two through five. The qualified man displays (2) a leadership gift, (3) faith towards God, (4) a shepherd’s heart that cares for people, and (5) a determination to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5). If reading this list incites a desire to know more, check out our website. Also stay connected to this blog. We definitely want to talk more about the e5.

So how do equip men and evaluate whether they are qualified? Sovereign Grace has, by some measurements, a ponderous training process for church planters. It starts with relationship. You know, being known and coming to know us well enough that we can evaluate each other. Then there’s a ten-month Pastors College commitment, followed by a residence with a local sending church.

Could we speed it up? Sure. But we’re not measuring success in the next five years or in the number of churches affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries. We believe growth is fruit of building right, not a goal that should determine our strategy. After all, church planting is a heavy responsibility, and high failure rates are an unacceptable statistic. We’re not doing experiments; we’re reaching people.

When all is said and done, we’ve found that the single most important variable in the viability of a church plant is the man sent to do the plant.

Not long ago a woman came up to me and shared her sincere burden to see a church planted in a certain area. She humbly shared all of the needs and opportunities and evidences of God’s activity in that area. As I listened to her I thought, “Wow, she has enough faith for this thing all by herself!” And then she asked me what she could do to speed things along. I answered with the first step.

“Pray for the man.”

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

It can be awkward, but only sometimes. It happens in certain conversations with other church-planting guys whenever the topic turns to vision for the future. Usually it goes something like this.

Church-planting guy (not me): So how many churches would you Sovereign Grace guys like to plant over the next ten years?

Me: Mumble, mumble, mumble… (sounds of me stuffing chips in my mouth to avoid answering)

Church-planting guy: We’re believing God for thousands of churches planted over the next few months. We’re calling it maniacal multiplication. So how many churches do you guys have right now?

Me (having no more chips to protect me): About 80, or maybe it’s 90—I forget exactly.

CPG: Wow, that’s great. How long have you guys been planting?

Me: Since “We Are the World” came out.

CPG: Wow, that’s incredible.

Me: The first one.

CPG (doing math in his head): Oh…I’ll pray for you dude.

End of conversation. Awkward.

Let me say something at the outset here. First of all, I am so grateful that there are church-planting groups who love the Savior and love the lost so much that they are willing to take the risks and send men so that many gospel-preaching churches can be planted quickly. That’s bigtime faith! And make no mistake, it’s being hurled at a bigtime need. I have no doubt God will bless those efforts. But as much as I’d like to see Sovereign Grace churches so widely and thickly planted that you couldn’t spit from a freeway without hitting one, that isn’t what God is calling us to. At least for now.

Since our inception, we’ve had a clear sense from the Holy Spirit that we were called to be slow and patient builders. That was crucial because we were trying to sort out who we were, and therefore what we were trying to build. Had we exported quickly, we could’ve really wreaked havoc. And back in the day, church planting was kind of an odd thing anyway—old as the New Testament, but not really something people talked a lot about. You didn’t have churches and denominations dedicated to it—and no websites helping you learn how it’s done.

When it came to church planting, what mattered to us was that real, solid, gospel-loving, local churches would bloom. Churches that had shared values, relational connection with each other, and common purpose. We didn’t want to plant churches and walk away from them, or have them walk away from us. We call ourselves a family of churches because that’s what we’ve been. We wanted to build slow and plant slow because we wanted every church to apply the gospel and be a healthy contributor to the mission of church planting for years to come. We’ve made tons of mistakes along the way, but that’s what we’ve tried to do.

Slow and patient doesn’t come easy to us. In fact a little over a year ago, the Sovereign Grace leadership team went on a retreat to revisit a familiar question: How aggressive should we be in planting churches? We talked about ways we could expand more rapidly without diluting what makes us distinct. We asked, “How do we take advantage of the growing number of opportunities that are coming our way from both inside and outside of Sovereign Grace Ministries (and increasingly this includes genuine possibilities beyond the U.S.), without compromising the quality of care for leaders and churches in Sovereign Grace?”

As a result of this retreat, we came back more firmly committed than ever to being as aggressive and creative as we can to plant churches—we want to plant tons of churches! But we also realized that the Lord had deeply ingrained in us some clear values that would act as governors to control the rate of our growth.

What do I mean by a governor? Growing up, our family vacations always took us to the Jersey shore. It was a kind of religious pilgrimage; my family held a deep-seated belief that the ocean summoned us. The beach town where we stayed had go-karts, which loops us back to governors. A governor is a device that regulates the speed of the go-kart engine. It caps acceleration, controlling how fast the go-karts fly around the track. To a ten-year-old, governors stink. To the parent who pays for health care, they rock.

What’s interesting is that the purpose of the governor was to go slower than what the engine might ultimately allow. To go-kart track owners, other values like safety, passenger protection, and bloodless family times were important. Speed was sacrificed so other values could be promoted.

We didn’t consult a go-kart mechanic on this one, but as a movement we at Sovereign Grace Ministries saw that to remain healthy and to endure, we needed governors of our own. Don’t get me wrong; we love growth. But rapid growth could not come at the sacrifice of other values we hold dear—values that make us who we are.

So here’s where I’m driving this. In a couple of upcoming blogs, I want to pop the hood on Sovereign Grace church planting and check out the governors. I think it might be great to understand some things that help us grow at the pace that God would have us grow…and still remain Sovereign Grace Ministries.

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

Urban ministry used to mean the gospel to the gritty city. Urban church planters negotiated crime, poverty, and the realities of the hood. But it’s morphed a bit. Urban can now mean urbane—ministry to the more sophisticated single, cultured upper middle class, or maybe the arts community. I’m not complaining about the expansion in meaning—I’m actually excited about it. Everybody needs the gospel! It’s just good to remember that urban ministry can mean many things.

Do you remember Ian McConnell? You met him in a blog post a couple weeks ago. Ian loves the whole city. There’s not much urbane in his neighborhood, but this guy eats, sleeps and breathes urban church planting. And he’s someone I’m learning from. Check out the rest of this interview where Ian writes about hard-learned lessons of city ministry.

Ian McConnell:

I have learned that incarnational ministry is not an option.

OK, I know that “incarnational” is a buzzword these days, and it can mean a lot of things depending on who you talk to. So let me define it the way I’m talking about it. It simply means that when planting an urban church, dwelling among the people we serve is, in my opinion, a serious “must.” Now ideally, a church could be planted with believers who already live in the urban context. But often urban church planting is pioneering work—bringing a gospel-preaching church to an area where there are few, if any gospel-believing people. Church planters should not be commuters, especially in urban areas. Before we moved, we only lived 15 minutes away from the planting neighborhood, but it might as well have been 50 miles, or even Pluto, because the demographic differences were so significant. Living and indentifying “in the flesh” with those whom you are serving is vital. Here are a few reasons why:

• It removes the “us” and “them” barrier that divides so many people in the city.
• It moves us into close proximity to those who need to see the gospel lived out in “dual communities” (church and neighborhood).
• It provides an opportunity for our homes to be places for ministry rather than places to escape from ministry.
• It reflects the Savior’s approach to be among the people he ministered to in word and deed.
• It models pastoral approachability in a radical way.

I have learned that the value of the church-planting team cannot be underestimated.

The pastoral demands of planting in an urban area are so tremendous that if one man feels the weight of all the preaching, administrating, counseling, making neighborhood contacts, reaching out, leading meetings, and so on, he is in big trouble—and so is his family. I think one of the reasons why so many church plants (urban or not) take a long time to lift off the ground is that the church planter is spread too thin. God has not gifted one man to do all that.

One challenge of developing an urban church-planting team is that you not only need folks who have a vision for the city and a willingness to sacrifice; you also need folks with gifts that can help penetrate the area of the church plant and model what it’s all about. In a sense, the ideal church-planting team member would have a radical commitment to sacrifice, demonstrated gifts of leadership and service, mature wisdom, proven character, and humility to accept a role that serves the purposes of the church. Now you’re starting to think it’s a plant team full of deacons and future elders. But that’s not likely to happen, is it? So a lot of the church-planting pastor’s work focuses on getting to know the folks who want to be part of the team, discerning gifts and maturity level, and strategizing to plant the church with both the strengths and weaknesses of the team (and its pastor) in mind.

It is still so humbling for me when I consider all the people who relocated to be part of the church-plant team at Grace. We had a mixture of people from the city and not from the city who came with a sense of calling to help build our church. Very quickly God was hunting down my pride and giving me grace to delegate responsibilities that I would normally cling to because I thought I could do it better. Delegation at the beginning of a church plant involves a lot of risk, but it’s worth it. As much as the young church needs my leadership, it must never depend solely on my leadership. I was initially afraid to let people make mistakes and grow from them. But God has used both the things we’ve done well, and the mistakes we’ve made, to remind us that this is his church and he loves to work inside our hearts so we can take the gospel outside to the city.

I am learning that even though the urban setting is very different, without exception every person has the same need—the message of the gospel!

I know this is like a “duh!” But I’m afraid that some, without meaning to, act like the gospel isn’t enough. It’s a temptation to think that the various challenges of the urban setting call for such a radically different approach to ministry that we become susceptible to not believing that the gospel is enough or that the proclamation of the gospel isn’t our main responsibility. People in the city often appear to have a lot more sin baggage that takes more time and patience to help them see the radical implications of the gospel. Discipleship in the city can get really messy. People who are typically the exceptions in suburban churches are the norm in the city. Practical needs can scream out in ways that make the fundamental problem of rebellion against God seem small by comparison. And when the gospel seems like a secondary consideration for us, we will never be able to communicate it as the primary consideration to lost and dying people. It really is a challenge to find ways to connect with people in our city neighborhoods, but once we do, they need the same thing that every sinner needs—the sin-forgiving, wrath-removing, life-transforming message of the gospel.

Many things are different in the city, but one thing is always the same—people need the gospel more than anything. And that’s where the city and the church planter always find common ground.

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

You may have met Ian McConnell before. C.J. posted about him a while ago. But let me give you some real facts about my friend. First, the guy is big. I’m talking 5-brothers-and-3-played-semi-pro-football big. And he’s got a personality to match. There’s just a lot of him. He loves Philly sports, too. We love church planters who love Philly sports teams. It demonstrates perseverance.

What’s most important about Ian is that he loves Jesus. And he lets everyone know about it. His joy is infectious and he inspires those he comes in contact with to love Jesus more. I’m serious. Five minutes with this guy and you’re getting schooled on how to love God.

Ian “re-planted” a church in north Philadelphia in 2005. The church was struggling and its numbers had dwindled to 27…and that included Ian and his wife, Rachel. With a new vision for the church, Ian became the senior pastor and replanted Grace Bible Church.

Just last Sunday, Ian was telling us that they knocked down one of the walls in the church to fit all the people on Sunday mornings…over 200. But for Ian, it’s not about numbers. It’s about people hearing the gospel and learning about Jesus.

I asked Ian to tell us some of what he’s learned about planting churches in the city. Here’s what he wrote.

Lessons I’ve learned in planting a church in an urban setting (Ian McConnell)

I’m humbled that Dave would ask me to offer some thoughts on church planting in an urban setting. We’re learning as we go, and benefiting from the mercy of God in our mistakes, so don’t read this as if it is coming from an urban church planting guru. I’m just a guy trying to serve the Savior and care for his church in Philly. But here are some things I’ve learned so far.

I’ve learned that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” urban church-planting model.

When you think of the word urban, what comes to your mind? Lively ethnic neighborhoods where everybody knows you and all your family back for four generations? Burnt-out rows of dilapidated crack houses? Gentrified townhouses on tree-lined streets? Highrise condos strategically situated right off the business district? A bohemian enclave with cool little bars, coffeehouses and art galleries?

If I asked ten people for a definition of urban, they would most likely give me ten different answers like the ones above. Urban is a fluid concept. The word itself is an adjective that means “characteristic of a city.” So when approaching planting in the urban setting, I don’t think we should be asking the question, “What are the common ‘characteristics of cities’ that affect planting churches?” Since planting in Philadelphia, I have come to believe that one of the only things I can count on being true when somebody says they are doing an urban work is…population. When I hear “urban,” all I know for sure is “a whole lot of people.”

Cities are where there are a lot of people. It’s a place where a lot of people—some very poor, some very rich, some very in between—live close together. It’s a place where a lot of people—some hipsters, some hip-hop, some metro professional, some artsy, some immigrants—all live close together. It’s a place where a lot of people—some Caucasian, some African American, some Hispanic, some Asian, some Haitian,  etc. etc.—you guessed it, they live close together. That is what makes urban church planting so crucial and so risky. And for guys like me, so exciting!

All that is to say that I have come to learn that stereotyping the urban setting, and approaching planting from that stereotypical vantage point, can be a huge detriment to urban planting before it even begins.
 
The challenge this presents for approaching urban church planting is that we really want to create a model of urban church planting that works the same in every city, and every part of every city. That would be so nice! What potential planter wouldn’t want to get a manual in the mail from Urban Church Planting Headquarters, turn to page one, and just get on with it. I’ve stopped looking in my mail for that package. What I have learned over the past seven years is that our approach to planting in the urban setting will be as fluid as the definition of the word urban itself.

And that’s what keeps it interesting.

I have learned that I must think neighborhood and not whole city.

I know every guy who has driven through a city with the burden of Christ pressing down on his soul, block after block, has at some point had this vision. What would happen if the gospel swept through this city? Why can’t there be a great revival—it has happened before! And why can’t it begin with me?

Come on, you know that last one at least has crossed your mind. And if we understand the power of the gospel, it should cross our minds. But planting a church is not running a crusade. And cities are big and complicated and busy. They resist people trying to change them—just ask the mayor. So as humbling as it may be to our Whitfieldesque dreams, when we think church planting, we need to think neighborhoods first.

Anybody who has lived in a city for any time knows that neighborhoods are well defined, and everybody knows the definitions. Everybody knows the folks on that side of the tracks are different than the folks on this side of the tracks. You know how far to go down a street before it goes from safe to not so safe. As an old East Coast city, Philadelphia was populated through immigration over the past 200 years. Different ethnic groups and nationalities came and dug into sections of the city, importing and planting their cultures side by side—coexisting, but rarely blending together. You tell a Philadelphia native what neighborhood you live in, he can guess your religion, your favorite food, and probably the last syllable of your name. Any big city, whether it is Sunbelt, Midwest, or West Coast, will be a city of neighborhoods. If you’re going to take the city for Jesus, it’s likely going to happen a neighborhood at a time.

This is a big deal to me as we approach reaching our city. I think that the neighborhood planting approach, over time, will be the most effective way to reach our cities. Our core theological values will be the same, and our Gospel message is absolutely unchangeable. But how it plays out methodologically will have to vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. This challenge requires what I like to call demographic exegesis. We need to study and understand the characteristics of the particular urban setting we are exploring and know what we may be getting into. We need to know who the people are in the neighborhoods we are considering for the church plant.

What is their culture? What is the predominant religious background (and believe me, you can have a neighborhood where nobody goes to church but everybody thinks they know all they need to know about God). If we open our doors on this block, who will come, and who will never even know we’re there? If we offer a certain ministry, who will think it is meeting a need and who will think it’s a cultish intrusion on the community? If we have this kind of music, who will like it and who will think the devil is in the building? This, folks, is called contextualization. And you can’t do urban without it.

I’ve got a few more thoughts as well, but I’ll wait for the next post to pass them along.

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.

 

When people think of church planting in Sovereign Grace Ministries, the idea of reaching Starbucks-studded suburbia often comes to mind. And obviously we have more suburban churches than urban ones, at least here in the U.S. of A.

But Sovereign Grace does not exclusively focus on the suburbs. In fact, a growing number of church planters are being called to urban areas, which creates an incalculable excitement in our hearts.

Now a new church plant is underway in the heart of San Francisco. Christ Church was planted with a group of folks who have a heart for the city of San Francisco, and is led by Toby Kurth.

I first met Toby when Sovereign Grace had launched an urban church plant in New York City and he was working on his Ph.D. in Early American History. Toby and his wife Rebekah jumped into this church plant with heart and soul and served tirelessly for several years.

As they served in that church, it soon became evident that God had called Toby to preach. So off to the Pastors College he went, and then to Gilbert, Arizona, for a church-planting residence. From there, the invasion plan for a church plant to San Francisco took shape.

Let me introduce you to my buddy Toby.

1) Hey Toby, tell us what drew you there?
 
One common theme that has run from the earliest days of considering the church plant through today is God demonstrating that he has gone before us. We feel like active participants and spectators at the same time.
 
California is home for Rebekah and me; and though our burden for urban church planting began in Brooklyn, our hearts were redirected here. I spent a day in San Francisco after my grandmother passed away in October 2005 praying about our future and ever since then God has increased our burden and opened doors for this church plant to happen.
 
2) What are some of the unique challenges that urban church planters encounter?
 
The unique challenges we have encountered have all been two-sided. The challenges appear to be obstacles, but are simultaneously opportunities for God to demonstrate the power of Christ and his gospel. Cities are diverse and neighborhoods can change dramatically in cultural and socioeconomic make-up in just a few blocks. This can appear to be an obstacle, but is ultimately an opportunity to build on the cross-cultural transcendence of Christ and his gospel. It is a great opportunity to display love above and beyond any obstacles that where we are from or what we do might present.
 
Another obstacle is that many city dwellers can be outwardly opposed to what they think the message of Christianity is. Some of that is due to superficial or negative interactions with Christians, and some of it is just that people have never heard the gospel. Either way our goal is to bring people face-to-face with Jesus, with who he is and what he has done.
 
Finding a place to meet is the last big challenge. It can be hard to get established as a church without a steady, affordable place to meet and a presence in the community. This has been a huge way God has demonstrated that He has prepared the way for us. We have a building! It is a hundred-year-old sanctuary built by German Lutherans and later used by a Baptist church. The building has a rich history of use in ministry to the ever-changing community around it. From Chinese and Russian Jewish immigrants to “Summer of Love” hippies, the church has consistently been used by God to bring people to Christ.

But over time membership dwindled. The church was in the process of praying about their future and what God would have them do to see gospel ministry continue in their building when we arrived in January 2009. God gave me a great and growing friendship with the pastor and the sole remaining elder. What began as a friendship grew into these men wanting to support our church plant in any way they could. Their humility and desire to see the gospel go forward led to them merging in what remained of their people with our church plant on October 4, 2009.

You would be hard pressed to find a church in the Bay Area where the gospel has been faithfully proclaimed for 104 years. We have inherited a rich legacy and pray that we will be faithful to continue and hopefully expand it.
 
3) Toby, you know Sovereign Grace Ministries is about “gospel-centered local churches planting local churches.” Tell us about Wellspring Church and how they heroically served, supplied, and supported the starting of Christ Church.
 
Wellspring has been another clear and amazing evidence of God preparing the way for this church plant. Sam Shin’s humility and desire to see churches planted in the Bay Area is compelling.

For starters, almost all of our church plant team came from Wellspring’s San Francisco small group. Sam also gave me the opportunity to preach twice a month starting last February. This enabled me to build much better with the church-plant team, for the people at Wellspring to be more invested in our church plant, and for me to get to launch the church on August 2nd with a running start in the pulpit. In addition to sending off a large portion of their congregation, Wellspring also sent us with a $10,000 check.

We continue to look for opportunities to do as many events together as we can, which has included a fall retreat, various seminars, and a Christmas Eve service. Wellspring is a sister church and a partner in the gospel for us in so many ways.
 
4) What excites you most about Sovereign Grace planting even more churches in urban areas?
 
What I personally love about urban church plants is that no two of them will look the same. I think there can be such a temptation with church plants, and it can be so subtle, to put faith in a model more than the active presence of God.

Trying to import a certain way of doing things that works in the suburbs into an urban setting simply will not work. Urban church planters must put their faith in what Christ is calling them to do in their setting. We have a wonderful model in Sovereign Grace and I look forward to working it in a unique urban community.
 
5) Last question: Let’s say some young guy is reading this and he burns to plant an urban church. What would you say to him?
 
I would start by commending him for his desire to plant an urban church. We need as many church planters as we can get. But a call to plant is much more than a burden. You must have the confidence that God has placed that burden in you and that God is going before you. That burden may begin in you, but it has to be confirmed outside of you.

You need to be invested in a local church where you can be equipped and evaluated and where those who know you best can ultimately confirm your call. You need to do all you can to cultivate a love for God’s Word, your ability to preach it, and a love for the lost. An urban church plant is an exciting adventure, but our only hope in the midst of it is ever and always in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for passing along your experience, Toby. And thanks even more for serving the Savior in San Francisco!

I’ve got a friend named Jim. He’s an evangelist. An evangelist is a guy who takes his wife to a romantic restaurant and then spends the meal witnessing to the waiter. That’s Jim, and that’s a true story, but probably for another time.

In my world, Jim exists to help me—and the other guys on our pastoral team—break out of the church and into the world. Jim’s on a mission to make sure our community hears the gospel and that every member of our church is sharing it. Each week, Jim arranges for one of the pastors to go out witnessing, and that’s what put me on a local campus standing in front of a student—I’ll call him Jesse.

As a philosophy student, Jesse was wired for God-talk. As for me, …umm, I was trying to remember my name, how to string words together to form complete sentences and, oh yes, the gospel. Eventually I fumbled through it and Jesse appreciated the conversation. But I don’t think he walked away impressed by my power or presence.

Church planters can relate. Sure, the field is ripe, but the worker feels weak, alone, and ill-equipped for the moment. But even when we feel like we’re laboring alone, our mandate—the Great Commission—fills the field with one magnificent promise.

Check it out in Matthew 28:20: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Our commission is great (always!) because it comes with the promise of God’s enduring presence.

God’s Powerful Presence

Think about it: we are sent by the risen Savior to do his ministry in the earth. So we spill out of the locker room with the Great Commission, the greatest pre-game speech ever delivered, ringing in our ears. Through the tunnel of planning and preparation we run, ready to burst out on the field of church-planting opportunity. But then we realize something: we’re on the enemy’s turf and there is opposition everywhere. Suddenly our numbers seem puny and our playbook pathetically thin and predictable. It is for this moment that Jesus ended his Great Commission with these words:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We can tend to extract this verse from the context of the Great Commission and slap it on all kind of situations. The primary context of this promise informs us that God is with us as we go. As we seek to plant churches, God is with us. As we stammer to share the gospel with guys like Jesse, God is with us. As we huddle up, looking to call the first play on our launch Sunday, God is with us.

Jesus doesn’t toss out this promise as a stray thought—“And dude, by the way, I’m always around if you need me.” No, when he says, “behold,” he means, “Listen up, you need to know this!” “Behold” typically precedes a payload. And the payload is his permanent presence as we go.

In other words, what he’ll do is always more important than what we’ll do.

Go into all the world and make disciples? That’s great.

Jesus with us? That’s greater.

Baptize and teach? Seriously great.

Jesus with us? Amazingly greater.

Planting churches? Exhilaratingly great.

Jesus with us? Even greater.

God’s Enduring Presence

And this isn’t a time-determined promise. He isn’t going to be with us for three quarters of the game and then hang out in the luxury box for crunch time. He is with us always…even to the end of the age. He is with us every moment in equal measure. And he will be there when the final whistle blows, when the final trumpet sounds. It’s at that time that the mission will be done and we will be with him in glory. Always and without end.

There are eight, or maybe it’s now nine, church planters connected to Sovereign Grace Ministries starting churches over the next year. Can anything strengthen their hearts more than Jesus’s words?

“I am with you always.”

To Dave who is breaking ground for us in Sydney, Australia; Toby in urban San Francisco; Songhwan in South Korea; Kenny in suburban Philly; David planting a church in an unreached region in southeast Asia; Eric in Arlington, Virginia; Wilbroad in Zambia and others already in the field or just preparing to launch—Jesus reminds you:

“I am with you always.”

How about you? Do you have any doubts about your participation in the Great Commission? Christ is with us. Do you have any doubts that your church can make a difference, that your church can actually raise the number of conversions? The Savior is with us. Do you have any doubts that your people can gain an enthusiasm to actually become a church-planting church? The Savior is with us in our going.

Part of the reason I was sharing the gospel with Jesse is because I want to do something great for God. I want to play in the game and score something for God’s glory. But the Great Commission dwarfs any idea of my contribution. The Commission is great in spite of me. It’s great because it comes from one with great authority. It’s great because it is entrusted to a great church. It is great because it graciously allows even people like us to participate in it. It is great because it carries a great promise…even to the end of the age.

That’s truly awesome. So next time you’re planning to share the gospel (and I hope it’s soon!), remember the promise: God is with us in our going. That’s what makes it a GREAT commission!

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Dave Harvey leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.