Why Church Planting? (with insights from Tim Keller in NYC)

Whenever I tell people what I’m up to, I usually get a response like, “Why do we need another church?” I love this question. I’d also like to take a stab at answering it.

“Evangelism” is a wonderful and loaded term. It comes from the Greek word for “good news.” That’s right GOOD NEWS. So how is it that the word for good news has been hijacked by guys on street corners shouting lines about hell and repentance? That doesn’t seem like good news.

So what is the good news? Jesus himself had a much fuller and richer sense of this word. For him, as we can see from the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), evangelism meant baptism and discipleship. This means that an ongoing worshipping body must be present—a worshipping body as described in Acts 2.

The good news is that God has provided us a community to help us live life to the fullest. The fullest doesn’t mean the easiest but it’s my conviction that following Jesus is the best way to live our lives. Praying with other Christians, sharing what’s going on in your life with a small group, and worshiping the God of the universe in a vibrant community are all aspects of God’s gracious plan for the unfolding of the local church.

The Acts 2 church has a beautiful variety of expressions that cannot be contained in a single or even a few churches. It’s a good thing to dream about the wonderful expressions that “church-life” can take. And as we dream about a variety of church expressions, we find that the variety and diversity of the kingdom of God also begins to take shape and grow. Church planting is simply the means by which we increase the breadth and range that Christ’s bride can take. In fact, leading missiologist C. Peter Wagner said, “Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.”

Of course there are tons of objections out there. Objections like “But everyone around me already goes to church” and “Isn’t the churchgoing public a shrinking pie? Why do we want to break it even more” and “Shouldn’t we our existing church filled before making new ones?”

We’ll look at these good questions over the next few posts.