Multiple news outlets have reported the Church of England is no longer describing their new
church start-ups as church plants. A new study says the Church is opting for terms like worshiping community and worshiping congregation that reflect the culture change or rejuvenation that is taking place. The designation church is apparently no longer sufficient to describe the new things that are happening like Shh Free Worship for young families with children, Silent Disco Worship for young adults, and Outdoor Worship for those who like to listen to the audio Bible and pray while they walk. But in the words of one Vicar, this movement reflects “a misplaced desire to be relevant and modern-sounding” and communicates “the Church has given up on church.” The author of the report even admits the change is forcing those within the Church to redefine what they think a church is and that it has “left certain parts of the Church – for whom fidelity to ecclesial forms and practices is central – feeling outside of the planting conversation.”(1)
I’ve been a part of three church plants over the course of my ministry. Two as a Baptist and one as a Presbyterian. The first was in 1997 after being sent to the very first Saddleback conference where I drank the Purpose-Driven Kool-Aid. The second was in 2006 after returning from the first T4G Conference as an official card-carrying cage-stage member of the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. The third was twelve years later after arriving in the PCA. I spent my years in the seeker-sensitive (seeker-centered) movement exhibiting my misplaced desire to be relevant which resulted in being labeled defiant by the denominational establishment due to what they believed to be a lack of restraint within the limits they had deemed to be proper and in good taste (they were right). I didn’t fare any better during my stint with the YRR. Rather than humble me, my newfound knowledge of and appreciation for God’s sovereignty in salvation became an incubator for my pride. I, as so many do, overcorrected and spent a few years reacting to the err of my former ways by being condescendingly critical of other churches and harshly communicating what I was against more than what I was for. This opened the door to a legalism that left me and my family in need of an indefinite period of respite.
The PCA church we began attending was an oasis. We were immediately welcomed into the fellowship and ministered to and restored by a faithful pastor who was committed to the ordinary means of grace and the regulative principle of worship. For four years, he presented Christ faithfully and confidently through Word and Sacrament and our parched souls were rehydrated and nourished back to spiritual health. He also walked me through the ordination process and encouraged me to consider planting again. And by the grace of God, having been spiritually and ministerially invigorated through a pastor’s faithful shepherding, and having been infused with the DNA of a simple means of grace ministry, I and seventy members from the church were sent as a mother/daughter plant to a neighboring town nine miles up the road.
Being committed to the ordinary means of grace and the regulative principle of worship, which is our ecclesial form and practice, I understand feeling outside the planting conversation. You see, our church wasn’t the only church to be planted in our area in 2018. There were others seeking to be unique and creative, and focused on promoting and implementing the newest thing. One in particular was described as one of the fastest growing churches in the country. It had begun six months earlier three blocks away from the building we had leased in an area of downtown. Being social media savvy, there were over six hundred in attendance on their launch Sunday, twelve hundred by the end of their first year, and a second campus was established by the end of the second.(2)
But I knew from past experience the numbers didn’t necessarily reflect health and stability and were coming at cost I was no longer willing to pay. Those involved were working themselves to the point of exhaustion, but not in the way Paul had in mind (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13).
The past nine years in the PCA have been the best years of my 35 years of ministry. That faithful minister, now my closest friend, took the time to equip me as a pastor and a planter. He encouraged me to not give up on church. To put it positively, he encouraged me to take Christ at His word. He taught me about reformed piety and practice, the importance of our Confession, and the extraordinary nature of the God’s ordinary means of grace. Thankfully, the days of having a misplaced desire to be relevant are a thing of the past. Pragmatism has lost its luster. Target audiences, growth strategies, and innovative ministry methods are no longer viable options. Self-sufficiency and self-reliance have been replaced with a dependence upon the grace of God and His all-sufficient Word. Proclaiming God’s promises has become more important than implementing programs.
Church is no longer somewhere to go and serve, it is now God’s people gathered together to receive Christ and the benefits of His work of redemption through the means He has established. I now believe when we gather for corporate worship, something happens that doesn’t happen at any other time or in any other place, and it happens through the ordained means of Word, Sacraments, and Prayer. I am now trusting in His means of grace not my own list of what another friend of mine calls means of growth (spiritual disciplines). More important, I am no longer binding people’s consciences by supplanting these simple ordained means God has given us with a list that requires them to do rather than receive. I’m sending them out rested and refreshed not more burdened than they were when they arrived.
While I occasionally wrestle with regret due to my past, I am humbled as well as filled with gratitude and joy for all the Lord has done. He has been merciful and kind over the last 6 years. By His grace we grew during Covid. As a matter of fact, we particularized in the fall of 2020. Therefore, I’m firmly convinced there isn’t anything more relevant than remaining committed to the corporate gathering of God’s people, the preaching of the Word in season and out of season, the right administration the sacraments, praying, and loving and shepherding God’s people well. These are the simple, biblical topics of planting conversations that everyone should feel comfortable having. Moving forward, may the Lord bless us as we and others like us consider how and when we might pass on this DNA that has been passed on to us.
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(1) Eastman, Janet, “Church of England dropping word ‘church’ to be more ‘modern,’” The Telegraph, 16 Aug. 2024,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/16/church-england-dropping-word-church-more-modern/
(2) Like many, they were hit hard during the pandemic of 2020 and have still not fully recovered.
