Why Plant a New Church in the City?

Often times, the normal response to discussions about church planting is something like this:

• We already have plenty of churches and lots of room for all the other people. Let’s get them filled before we build other churches
• A new church will just take people away from existing churches
• Help should be given to the struggling churches first. We need better churches, not more churches.

Although these statements appear to be ‘common sense’ to many people, they rest on several assumptions. The error of this thinking will become clear if we ask, “Why is church planting crucially important?”

Church Planting is a Biblical Mandate

Jesus’ essential call was to plant churches.Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant churches, not simply to share the faith. The ‘Great Commission’ (Matt.28: 18-20) is not just a call to ‘make disciples’ but to ‘baptize’. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshipping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41-47). The only way to be truly sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches.

Paul’s whole strategy was to plant urban churches.The greatest missionary in history, St.Paul, had a rather simple, two-fold strategy. First, he went into the largest city of the region (cf. Acts 16:9,12), and second, he planted churches in each city (cf. Titus 1:5).Once Paul had done that, he could say that he had ‘fully preached’ the gospel in a region and that he had ‘no more work’ to do there (cf. Romans 15:19,23). This means Paul had two controlling assumptions: a) that the way to most permanently influence a country was through its chief cities, and b) the way to most permanently influence a city was to plant churches in it. Once he had accomplished this in a city, he moved on. He knew that the rest that needed to happen would follow.

Planting New Churches is Healthy for the Entire Body of Christ

It is a great mistake to think that we have to choose between church planting and church renewal. Strange as it may seem, the planting of new churches in a city is one of the very best ways to revitalize many older churches in the vicinity and renew the whole Body of Christ.

Often times, in efforts to reach out to unchurched people, a new church will take risks and bring new ideas into the whole Body. It is the new churches that will have freedom to be innovative and they become the ‘Research and Development’ department for the whole Body in the city. Often the older congregations were too timid to try a particular approach or were absolutely sure it would ‘not work here’. But when the new church in town succeeds wildly with some new method, the other churches eventually take notice and get the courage to try it themselves.

Likewise, in older congregations, leaders can emphasize tradition, tenure, routine, and kinship ties. New congregations, on the other hand, attract a higher percentage of venturesome people who value creativity, risk, innovation and future orientation. Often older churches ‘box out’ many people with strong leadership skills who cannot work in more traditional settings. New churches thus attract and harness many people in the city whose gifts would otherwise not be utilized in the work of the Body. These new leaders benefit the whole city-Body eventually.

A Kingdom Mentality

New church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in a city and one of the best ways to renew the whole Body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is strong–Biblically, sociologically, and historically. In the end, a focus on the Kingdom of God rather than our own personal kingdoms will keep us fixated upon Jesus’ call to go and make disciples of all nations.

Taken from “Why Plant a New Church in the City?” from the Redeemer City Church Vision Packet (adapted from “Why Plant Churches?” by Tim Keller) - download HERE