STARTING A CHURCH
In this book my goal has been to establish the need to start churches of the struggling class. The most important person for this job will be the church planter. He should have a strong sense of the Lord’s call on his life to do this work. Personality-wise, he needs to have a vision of what the as-yet-to-be church will look like, its place, its people, its worship, and its ministry. As a leader he needs to share his vision with others and gather a core of similarly-motivated families to join him in this effort. He needs to be a leader, someone who will take the initiative, and go beyond the shadow of someone who might have at first prompted him to pursue this work. And he needs to be a man, the husband who is “faithful to his wife” (1 Timothy 3:2) and manages his family well (1 Timothy 3:4) since he will be ministering to people who have been wounded by broken relationships. Even if their lives are fractured, they will want to know their pastor can be trusted, and is someone who practices what he preaches.
Suppose a suburban church feels the call to start a church of the struggling class. Where will it find such a person to form a core team and lead an emerging church? A normal church council would have an almost unanimous answer, “We need to hire a worker and appoint a committee to oversee his work.” By this very decision, the new church will be dependent on a budget greater than what the struggling class can support. It is easier for the suburban church to allocate money than it is to mobilize a team of lay volunteers to evangelize and disciple those of the struggling class. Should we mobilize a team of volunteers for the ministry? Who can mobilize this team? The person they would be looking to for leadership is the pastor of their church.
Can a team, like a husband and wife together with a few more people, start a church?. It can, but someone will inevitably become the leader. The team members together may form a Bible-study group with the purpose of growing the number of its participants. However, team must understand that the tendency of a group will be to settle to what is comfortable for the majority. A good leader with a vision is needed to keep the group focused. He or she will also have to allow some people to leave if they do not desire to make the necessary sacrifices in time and resources. In fact, the leader may feel the necessity to ask someone to leave if they are hindering the growth of the group into a church. Sometimes, the leader will stand alone, but he must trust God to move in the hearts of those who will follow in obedience to Christ. If this happens, the leader must interpret this leaving as neither discipline for error, nor a failure of the group as a whole to care for the spiritual needs of its members. Leadership by consensus may bring peace, but it will not move forward.
In church planting, a big obstacle to overcome is conducting church like a business or corporation, where the board hires and judges the performance of the CEO (the pastor). The ruling elders exercise authority over the teaching elder while the teaching elder, the pastor, hopes that ruling elders hear and understand. The pastor is not used to exercising spiritual authority over the elders and deacons in a way that emulates the type of leadership that Jesus exercised over his disciples. We are not used to thinking of the members of the board as the pastor’s disciples. Will the church allow the pastor to be a disciple-making type of leader? This is the question facing every church council and every pastor.
In addition, the head pastor of a suburban church rarely has experience evangelizing and discipling people from the struggling class. He is used to pastoring the congregation and managing the education of the church youth. He is the coordinator of the church’s paid employees if the church does not have an administrative assistant. He is at the center of a homogeneous group that is resistant to accept outsiders. Yet he is the person who needs to cast the vision for the work and convince the board to allow him to dedicate a portion of every week to evangelizing and training a team of disciples who, in turn, are capable of making other disciples (2 Timothy 2:2). The pastor may feel totally inadequate, but that’s a good thing. It makes him rely on God and not on himself. It also forces him, and those who accept his leadership in this, to learn from the very people that they evangelize. They may know the scriptures, the Bible, but they also need to read another book—the people of the struggling class. By listening to the people that they are leading to Christ, they are learning how to read the scriptures in new way, a way that communicates truth to the broken and downcast.
I’ve heard of a pastor who kept to himself inside his study while the church was conducting vacation Bible school. Why didn’t he take part? He was exercising his gift! Why didn’t he step out and be an encourager of those who were selflessly working? The pastor could be monitoring the Bible school leadership, encouraging and praying for them. He could call a group of people to pray together with him while the Bible school was in session. He could step forward at the opening assembly, and visit classes and mix with children during craft time. Better yet, to greatly increase the attendance of neighborhood children, he could motivate teachers to be part of back-yard Bible classes and be instrumental in helping people open their homes, invite neighborhood children, and host the classes.
The church could also host block parties, or a “hot-dog” in the park neighborhood picnic, or sing carols in a neighborhood terminating with hot chocolate for everyone. At all of these events the pastor could be a visible presence. As these are occurring in trailer courts or near apartment complexes, teachers and volunteers could be collecting names and addresses for further contact through visits to the home. Here again the pastor could train people for the work.
In addition, the pastor might dedicate an hour a week to engage in door to door canvassing with a team whose leader is charged with the duty of scheduling, record keeping, etc. In so doing, he will be training others in how to work in the trenches, so to speak. All the while, the pastor is primarily the pastor of the flock. All the activities I’ve mentioned may be peripheral to his main work, but the flock knows that the pastor’s heart is out seeking the lost. As involvement in ministry among the struggling classes increases, leaders will emerge. The pastor may ask someone, “Can we count on you to organize a community event at the social hall of the _________ trailer court? Can you give the message?” Or, a recovering alcoholic might see the need to start an AA meeting. Or some ladies will form a single-parent support group. The suburban church will be ministering to suburbia, but it is not overlooking neighborhoods of the struggling class. It’s becoming known as a mission church for everyone. Through this, shouldn’t God be calling someone to a pastor-evangelist ministry? If so, the pastor might encourage and mentor this person. The church might feel prompted to call him to part-time youth work or to oversee the outreach ministry. And also encourage him to take online seminary courses to better interpret the Bible and preach. Somewhere along this journey the one called to plant a church of the struggling class will know his target audience, he will have a vision on how to proceed, and he will be in a position to invite others with a mission passion to join the core team under his leadership.
One of the challenges of the core team will be to find a place for worship. I know of one large church of Reformed persuasion in a community that over time has largely become Hispanic. It’s an island of Caucasian wealth in a sea of Hispanic poverty. So, the church hired a Hispanic evangelist who did a good job. He started Sunday afternoon services in the same auditorium used by the main congregation. When the church built a new church plant on the outskirts of town, the Hispanic congregation moved with it. Now the meeting place was farther removed from the former part of town where most Hispanics lived. It also was meeting in social hall of an upscale building. Its wealth put a distance between the existing Hispanic congregation and the town’s people. As a result, the Hispanic congregation ceased to grow. It would have been more advantageous for the Hispanic congregation to have rented a vacated store downtown for worship and its outreach ministries. There, the leaders might have been like Jesus’ disciples learning to minister to the spiritual and social needs of the struggling class. Unfortunately, it was too connected to the sponsoring congregation and was not able to make deep inroads into the Hispanic community and its brokenness.
Several years ago, I heard a guest lecturer from a New York seminary speak in a church planting class at Calvin Seminary. He was cooperating with a new church in New York City that was started by laymen from a Nigerian mega church. Its mission was not only to gather Nigerian immigrants for worship but also to bring in other city residents. These Nigerians were transferred to New York on business and they started a church to reach New Yorkers. Members of this mega church have started churches in many other countries as well. Its members have been inspired and empowered to start international churches wherever their jobs take them. They share loyalty in doctrine and inspiration to the mother church and probably also send back a percentage of the offerings. All the team members needed to start a church was that each one bring a chair, a Bible and a simple musical instrument like a zither, mouth organ, tambourine, or guitar. Together the people rented a meeting place, sometimes for only one day a week. This is how the Nigerian workers in the US have started churches that win and assemble American-born residents.
In our work in Brazil, we arranged the use of schools or community centers for meetings of emerging congregations. In the United States stores and restaurants can serve the same purpose.
A great obstacle to forming a congregation of the struggling class is the brokenness and chaos surrounding the lives of the new converts. Just a thing as simple as sitting down at the table to share a meal may require a tremendous amount of self-discipline and the discipline of children. To demand that everyone stay seated around the table for Bible reading (maybe from a Bible storybook), and prayer is another quantum leap. Working out fractured relationships and learning how to manage finances are other huge challenges. As long as a home is so chaotic it cannot serve as a meeting place for Bible study or for a support group. For a congregation to be functioning well, it needs enough mature members who are able to give of themselves to help others, and with enough compassion to love the unloved. Some of the greatest ministers in our church were like the Samaritan woman. They have been washed, sanctified, formed into the likeness of Jesus. They’ve been discipled and are no longer broken; rather, they are healed and have become strong.
The path to becoming a leader, a partner in ministry, a volunteer teacher, musician, evangelist and more is something like a beginning piano student. At first, learning a piece of music by daily practice is a struggle. Then a point comes where the young player is making music and loving it, even going ahead to pieces of music not yet assigned. The joy of banging the keys is so great that playing the piano becomes a form of recreation and relaxation. Then the student meets another child who would like to learn. She says, “I can teach you,” and she does and even earns some money doing it!” In like manner, the people who minister among the broken and needy will come to a place where they see results. It is doable! Victory is exciting! They experience emotional highs. They say, “If only so-and-so could do what I’m doing, he’d share the same victory and joy. It demands dedication and sacrifice, but it’s worth it.” As a result, they feel confident enough to teach or mentor others.
The struggling class church will be composed of people who are breaking out of their tradition and creating a new one patterned after Christ. The first leaders of this church, people from established churches, are also people who are breaking out of their tradition. They have decided to leave the security of the established church to birth a new one.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am in debt to the late Dr. Roger S. Greenway who was my mentor in my Doctor of Ministry program at Westminster Seminary. This book, in a way, is a version of my doctoral dissertation, but now enriched by life and ministry in the United States for the last thirty-plus years.
It was Pastor Wayne Ondersma who prompted me to write. In one of our frequent times of sharing, he said, “You ought to write this down,” and so I have done so. That first effort over two years ago has been revised and updated with suggestions of fellow servants of Christ, and with further experience ministering to the struggling class in the context of the PIER Church of Grand Rapids, where I am a volunteer and where Wayne Ondersma is pastor.
I am grateful to my wife Clarice who read the document and made numerous corrections and pointed out areas that were unintelligible. The same can be said of my daughter Elizabeth Lindemulder, who did the same. She also asked probing questions that begged for an answer.
Ben Meyer, a church planter and church-planter trainer in Mexico with Resonate Worldwide gave words of encouragement and highlighted phrases that might be interpreted as racist or chauvinistic.
Emeritus Professor at Calvin Theological Seminary, Carl J. Bosma and I have shared many experiences and have grown in our understanding of what it means to be a witness and make disciples during our missionary church-planting ministry in Brazil. He critically read the completed manuscript and made suggestions that ranged from the more persuasive use of scripture to the correcting of grammatical errors like the use of split infinitives and ending a sentence with a preposition. Only he would note that Luke’s use of the word poor in his Gospel (ten times) was more than Matthew and Mark’s together (four times each), and how that could reinforce my exposition “God’s Special Concern for the Poor.” It was he that pointed out that Jesus’ words, “repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15) meant “become my disciple,” by what immediately followed in verse 17, “Come, follow me.” Other similar observations made their mark on the final revision of this book.