Mission Before Form in Church Planting
Why the size of a gathering is the wrong starting question.
The last few weeks, I’ve been writing about the importance of clarity of mission instead of commitment to a form when we think about innovation in church life.
One of the most common forms we can become attached to is the particular size of a gathering or community. Should we start house churches or aim for large format gatherings? Is one more biblical than another? Is the size or location of a gathering really the most useful or relevant question to ask?
The size or form of a church gathering is not a helpful starting point. From a fair reading of the Scriptures, it seems clear that the church gathered in both large and small spaces, in public and private settings.
Different Group Sizes Serve Different Purposes
Social psychologists have talked about this for years: Different sized groups accomplish different purposes.
2–4 people is the intimate space (think life on life discipleship).
5–12 people is the personal space (think house church).
20–50 people is the social space (think fun events and community connection).
50+ people is the public space (think large format gatherings).
All of them are scriptural, helpful, and necessary for cultivating a healthy community.
This framework is helpful because it suggests that a healthy church will need ways to engage all four spaces of belonging. The objective in church planting is not the size or format of the group, because different group sizes serve different purposes. The goal is to make disciples who make disciples.
When Form Replaces Mission
However, in many church-planting contexts, the commitment is to the form rather than the mission.
For example, we might commit to “launching gatherings” or “starting a house church.” Both approaches suffer from the same pitfall of a form-first approach to church planting. Rather than starting with the question, “Who can we reach with the gospel who has not yet heard it?”, both begin with a commitment to a particular structure.
If our goal is to launch large-format gatherings and reach financial sustainability as quickly as possible, we will likely need to grow through transfers from other churches.
On the other hand, if our goal is to start house churches, we can quickly end up with insular communities that are detached from the larger body and struggle to discover a clear raison d’être.
Starting With the Right Goal
I would suggest that every church plant should begin with the objective of making disciples who make disciples.
While there is scriptural precedent for rapid growth, that growth often occurred in cultural contexts where people were already familiar with Judaism or spirituality. In the post-post-Christian West, evangelism is often a much slower process. In our experience, it typically takes about a year for someone who is exploring Christianity to accept the gospel from the point they first engage with a Christian.
The real question becomes this: how do we stay focused on the mission without letting the form drive the agenda?
Four Practices That Keep the Mission Central
1. Cultivate Patience
Rather than viewing church planting on three to five-year time horizons, we would often be better served by extending the timeline to at least ten years. Church planting, disciple-making, and evangelism often require a great deal of patience and resilience. This is especially true in contexts with little history of gospel penetration.
2. Find and Engage Non-Christians
In my context, Canada, there are certainly many Christians, but our society is so fragmented that Christians do not naturally rub shoulders with non-Christians.
We need to identify places where there is no faithful Christian witness and determine ways to be present among those people. If we have a clearly articulated people group to whom we are sent, it becomes much easier to remain faithful to that mission.
3. Remove Financial Pressure
The financial pressure for most church plants to succeed can have a corrupting influence on the mission.
If the ability to pay tomorrow’s bills requires the church to grow, it becomes very tempting to begin seeking out existing Christians who can contribute financially.
This is one reason why bi vocational church planting can be so advantageous. It allows planters to remove the pressure to grow quickly and instead grow at the pace of their capacity to reach people with the gospel and disciple them.
4. Focus on Evangelism
Ideally, church planting would not rely on transfer growth but would instead consist of net new people entering the kingdom of Jesus.
That means from the very beginning, our church planting efforts should focus on building relationships with people who do not know Jesus and inviting them to discover life in him.
Holding Form Loosely
You will notice that none of these suggestions assumes a particular form.
There is space for many different expressions of church. The key is making sure the mission remains central as we plant healthy churches that make disciples who make disciples.