Is Your Church Plant Investing In and Serving Your Community NOW?
Don't wait to launch or "get established" to focus on your community's needs. Building Jesus' Kingdom requires you to build the community at all phases of planting.
Exponential guest post by Ron Edmondson
I saw it on Mark Jobe’s Facebook page. Mark is a pastor of a church I greatly admire in Chicago. Actually, as a church planter and revitalizer, I’ve probably referred people to New Life (and a video of their work I keep bookmarked) as much as any other church. New Life is doing what I believe is some of the best, hardest and most needed work in church growth today. They come alongside an older, declining, established church and breathe “new life” into them, helping them reach the community again. Granted, many other churches are doing similar work.
But I have been to New Life and had the opportunity to talk with Mark a few times, so he’s one doing this type ministry I’m familiar with most. I don’t know Mark well—but we are close enough to be Facebook friends.
In this picture, Pastor Mark (left) is walking with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (right). According to the caption on his Facebook page, Mark was “discussing with the mayor the challenges of providing a safer environment and better role models for Chicago school children.”
I’m struck by the thought that this picture provides further proof of something I’ve believed for some time. Something I’ve been living and preaching. It’s how I’m trying to do church growth today.
To be a Kingdom-building pastor, you MUST be a community-building pastor. Okay, maybe must is too strong a word. And let me be clear: There are many other effective models of doing ministry than Mark’s and certainly mine. But being a community builder seems to be at least one of the more effective ways I’m seeing churches grow these days.
People aren’t coming to our big buildings anymore—or our small buildings. We must go to them. Shortly after I arrived in Lexington, Kentucky, I passed a historical marker for the oldest home in our city. It was built for a Presbyterian pastor. The marker explains what a difference that pastor had on the city— not just as a pastor— but as a community leader. That’s because years ago pastors used to be at the center of everything in a community. Pastors were community leaders—game changers in the community. They garnered respect through visibility and activity. People listened to them and wanted their opinion, mostly because people knew them well enough to respect them. They weren’t just faces on a raised platform on Sunday. They were seen in the community during the week. They were friends. Town folk.
One of my mentors, a pastor now in his mid-90s, helped start a small business almost seventy years ago that is still thriving today in the community where his first pastorate was located. How? He walked the man desiring to open a business over to the bank and told the community banker to “give this young man a chance.” He got the loan. The pastor got a generous church donor. (Funny how that works.) Because this pastor was respected by the banker, he could march over to the bank with a prospective loan.
Now, I realize things have changed. Banks don’t operate like that anymore. I’m not saying they ever will again. Most likely not. But, not everything has to change. The fact is we didn’t just stop influencing the bankers; we stopped influencing our communities. Many times we left the public square to hide behind our pulpits. And I get it. For so long, they came to us. We would build it—buildings and parking lots and programs—and they filled them. We may have needed to wait for some tragic or life-altering events to occur in their life. But at some point they would come. I’m sure you’ve discovered hat doesn’t always work anymore—at least not as easily.
I’m convinced, many times people don’t trust us as much because they don’t know us as much. I haven’t been in full-time vocational ministry long. I came out of the business world where I was very involved in community functions. Frankly, in my experience, the pastors who were active in community efforts weren’t respected because of the way they went about trying to make a difference. I know because I heard my friends who weren’t Christians talk about it. (That experience has greatly shaped my approach to doing ministry. Leading in the community—hoping to be a Kingdom builder.) You knew what these pastors were against, but you didn’t know what they were for. You knew what they didn’t like about the community, but you didn’t know what they liked about it. You knew they took resources from the community to operate their programs, but you didn’t know how they gave anything back. Honestly, they were seen more as antagonistic than helpful in changing the community for good. The community won’t stand for that anymore.
I realize much of that is perception more than reality (most pastors and churches do love their community, even if it’s not always visible). If the local church does its job of making disciples of those who attend, the church should be helping the community by giving back citizens who have more joy, patience, love, etc. Who doesn’t want that? (I’ll let someone else decide if a particular church is actually producing Christlike disciples.)
But wasn’t Jesus visible, known and well-liked in the community?Sure, the people eventually rejected Him, but that was part of the divine plan. He knew the rejection was coming—yet that didn’t deter Him from loving the people outside the walls of the synagogue. Jesus proved you could be in the world without being shaped by the world. And by being in the world, we stand a far better chance of helping shape it. Frankly, if all the community knows are the perceptions they see—and those perceptions are more against a community than for it—I don’t blame people for rejecting our message.
And, so, I contend again… To be a Kingdom-building pastor you must be a community-building pastor. So your church plant should be addressing your community’s greatest needs. Like Mark Jobe and New Life, you need to be involved in your community’s schools. You need to know the leaders of your city and schools and help them understand you’re here to be part of the solution—not to add to the stress of their jobs. (Start by asking leaders, “How can we serve?” and be open to serving in small ways, as well as ready to mobilize volunteers.) You and your plant need to earn the respect of people in the community—some who will never enter the doors of your church—so that you can help build your community. Only then can we most effectively build the Kingdom today. And, in my honest opinion, it’s the right thing to do even if your church plant never grows another member from it.
So, let me ask you some sobering questions as you pray for and lead your church plant:
- Church planter, how are you investing in your community right now? Do you have a plan to increase that investment over the next three to five years?
- How are you becoming a community leader/influencer?
- Does the community know you?
- If so, do they like who they are getting to know?
Note: Mark Jobe will be one of five leaders (including Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, Dave Gibbons, Mark DeYmaz and Geoff Surratt) participating in the Multisite Leadership Forum at Exponential West. Learn more about the Forum and speakers here.
Failure
doesn’t have to be final. In fact, I believe God wants to put our
failures to work for us. Everybody experiences defeats in life.
Everybody has failures. The book of Proverbs has a lot of insight into
what causes failure. Five different things that cause failure in our
life according to the book of Proverbs:
About Rick Warren
