WHY PLANT A NEW CHURCH?

As I walk down the streets of Pebble Creek, I do two things; pray and talk to anyone who will talk to me. The most common question I'm asked is "Why are you starting a new church? Aren't there enough?" Believe it or not, I LOVE that question. It gives me an opportunity to tell the truth. Here are the facts;

Fact #1:There are about 200 million non-churched people in America, making America one of the four largest “unchurched” nations in the world.

Fact #2:Each year about 3,500 churches close their doors permanently.

Fact #3:Today, of the approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining.

Fact #4:One American denomination recently found that 80% of its converts came to Christ in churches less than two years old.

Each church has her weaknesses—and strengths. In planting new churches, we pray not for replications of already existing churches with all their weaknesses, but more and more of incarnations of biblical vision and gospel theology without the same limitations and imperfections. What the world needs is not the multiplication of our imperfections and limitations but new sets of imperfections and limitations. Multiplying churches with different strengths and weaknesses means coming closer to meeting the crying needs of the world.

Mark this well: Jesus does not promise that he will build his school, or that he will build his co-op, or build his medical clinic, or build his university, or build his social service agency—as good as those are. He promises with absolute authority: "I will build my church."

I once heard a story about a man who was shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Seeing that rescue might not happen for a long time, he painstakingly built a little hut to provide himself protection from the elements and a place to store the few items he had managed to salvage from the wreck. Every day he would prayerfully scan the horizon, hoping for the approach of a ship. But he saw nothing.

Then one evening, after he had been out and about on the island, searching for food, he came back to see that his hut was in flames. He tried to put out the fire, but it was too late. Everything he owned in this world had gone up in smoke. He went to sleep that night listening to the pounding of the surf, stunned by his own misfortune.

The next morning he awoke to find a ship anchored off the island—the first ship he had seen since he had been marooned. Still trying to believe his eyes, he heard footsteps, and then a human voice, saying, “We saw your smoke signal and we came to rescue you.”

That’s how it happens sometimes. In divine sovereignty and grace, the worst-case scenario somehow becomes the best-case scenario.

Disasters can turn out to be great opportunities for God to work in your life. The Lord is always present with us, always intimately acquainted with our circumstances, and He specializes in taking “impossible” situations and turning them around, for His glory and our benefit.