Funding missionaries, not church plants

(weird, I scheduled this post for June 28th and it still shows as a draft. That seems to be happening a lot with blogger, scheduled posts stay in draft status and never actually publish)

David Fitch has an interesting post arguing for the church to fund missionaries in North America and likewise to stop funding traditional church plants: STOP FUNDING CHURCH PLANTS and Start Funding Missionaries: A Plea to Denominations. Here is a sampling…

Instead of funding one entrepreneurial pastor, preacher and organizer to go in and organize a center for Christian goods and services, let us fund three or four leader/ or leader couples to go in as a team to an under-churched context (Most often these places are the not rich all white suburbs where evangelicals have done well planting churches).

Fund these leader/leader couples for two years instead of three. Fund them only with health insurance (in the States) and a reasonable stipend for housing. This gives them space to get a job on the ground floor of a company, at the bottom of the pay scale, learning a skill, proving themselves. They can do this because they have certain benefits and a place to live for two years.

I think this is a fascinating look. Traditionally, as David points out, church plants in North America are largely concerned with becoming financially self-supporting before their three year support runs out. How are you going to do that? Again as he says by getting financially secure, middle class Christians to leave their current church and come to the plant (and of course start “tithing”).

The reality that faces us is one that is not going to be conducive to planting yet another traditional church. I think people are sick of church as we have always known it. The culture that we are trying to reach to make disciples (i.e. lost people) is suspicious, rightly so, of the stained glass, preacher on a platform sermonizing, plastic smile, Sunday best world of traditional churches. We can say “Too bad!” and cling to our traditions or we can humble ourselves and do what we need to in order to reach the lost. Church planting is not going to work the way that it has because the pool of church goers is getting smaller every day and just shuffling church goers from one church to a new one is not “making disciples”.

Check out what David wrote. As with everything he writes I don’t agree with all of it but I certainly think it is thought provoking. What do you think?