July 8, 2005

Church Planting Editorial from Richard H. Harris ~

The North American Mission Board has a goal of assisting our partners to lead our churches to increase the number of sponsoring churches from approximately 5 percent of all existing churches to 15 percent by the end of 2005. That means identifying, enlisting and equipping some 6300 sponsoring churches. Wow! This represents a potential of several THOUSAND new churches being planted, far exceeding anything we have experienced in our wonderful history of church planting as Southern Baptists.

Now the pressing question is: Where do we get that many church planters? If the planting of these new churches requires that we have lots of money and traditional types of church planters, this vision will not become a reality. However, the answer is literally staring us in the face. Week after week, the answer to our need sits in the chairs and pews of our auditoriums and worship centers. The answer, of course, is God’s people – the “laos,” those we typically call lay people. Many of them simply wait for some ministry leader to invite them to get out of their pews and engage the harvest that is literally all around them day by day.

From a thoroughly pragmatic position, there are any number of arenas where lay people can make an immediate and significant impact in the planting of new churches. Let me suggest a few of these, in no particular order. One is in the rural settings of North America. Some 50 million people live in sparsely populated areas where too few churches exist and the Gospel is not readily available. Church planting missionaries in these areas tell us that older main-line churches are closing their doors in record numbers. Most of our funded church planting methodologies are not appropriate for these types of settings. There are, however, Christian lay people who could be encouraged and trained to help start and lead churches in thousands of small towns and villages all across the U.S. and Canada.

A very similar story can be told about the urban core and inner cities of North America. Churches have been exiting the city for decades while large numbers of people continue to live these communities. A “land and building” strategy is typically cost prohibitive and it has proven difficult to get church planters for urban church planting projects. However, lay people represent an untapped resource for urban church planting. Many already live in these communities, understand the culture, and have existing networks of relationship through which the Gospel can flow. A third area ripe for the involvement of lay people is in multihousing. From the inner city to rural communities, multihousing is a growing and viable environment for lay led church planting. Everything from public housing to upscale gated communities; from senior housing to sprawling communities of manufactured houses have proven to be closed to traditional attempts at evangelism and church invitation. However, the planting of indigenous churches in these settings has been demonstrated to be effective and has typically occurred under the leadership of a committed lay person or team.

These illustrations obviously do not exhaust the possibilities for lay led church planting. In fact, anywhere there is a Kingdom motivated lay person with a vision for an unreached group of people, there is the potential for a lay led church plant. The next time you need someone to lead out in a church planting effort, consider those who are sitting there looking back at you every Sunday – they represent our greatest untapped resource for Kingdom work. We can help: for general questions contact Van Kicklighter (vkicklighter@namb.net); for help in enlisting lay people contact Ken Tan (ktan@namb.net; to help in equipping lay people for church planting contact Bobby Dean (bdean@namb.net).

~ Van Kicklighter, Field Partner Service Rep, Church Planting Group, NAMB