A Blog for the Church

Note from Ken Eastburn: Let me introduce the author of this blog post: his name is Bob Sears.  We serve together as leaders within The Well alongside two other gentlemen. We decided that for this blog to be more authentic to the communal nature of what we’re doing with Leave the Building, it’s important to bring others into the conversation.  Hopefully, it doesn’t stop with Bob…I’d love to have many others chime in as well (send us an email at blog@leavethebuilding.com if you’re interested in writing a guest post).  He is a good man, loves the church, and is pretty darn smart.  I hope you enjoy what he will be challenging you with today and in the weeks and months to come.  Now, on to the blog:

Here’s a surprising fact: we at The Well spend a lot of time thinking about the Church.  Not just our church, but the Church: where we’re at, where we’re not, and what it would take to get us to where we need to be.

That’s probably no surprise to you.

But we’re not the only ones…and that is truly a good thing.  Yet, even when others spend their time thinking about this kind of stuff, it’s probably likely that we will come to different conclusions about the direction that we should head.

That recently happened for me.

Ed Stetzer is a missiologist and the President of Lifeway Research.  He is a passionate follower of Christ and spends his life discerning trends and analyzing data related to Christianity in order to determine where we are and where we need to go.  I respect him and appreciate what he is doing to spur the church on.  But he recently spoke at Saddleback’s Radicalis Conference and said something that I would like for us to explore.

“If you love Christ, you’ll love his church. And if you’ll love his church, you’ll want to see more of them.”

He said this during a talk on church planting at this conference. And, according to this Christian Post article, Stetzer is convinced that church planting “is central to societal transformation and worldwide evangelization.”  He even shared a statistic that says the membership to baptism ratio of new church plants was found to be 14 to 100.

New churches, it seems, are doing a better job of reaching the world and making disciples than old churches.  Thus, says Stetzer, we should be planting churches.

But is church planting really the thing that is going to get us to where we need to be, where God is calling us?

For some, no doubt, that will definitely be true.  God may very well be calling some folks to plant churches and, if that is the case, they should do so.  But I have reservations about the idea that merely planting more churches will produce the kind of long-term change we’re hoping for.

I don’t think it can.

Not to disrespect Stetzer, but I’m concerned that we’ll just end up with more of the same-old, results-orientated, attractional type of churches that we’ve already experienced…only repackaged.

The logic boils down to this: do what works . . . and then multiply it as many times as possible until it stops working.

But isn’t that what got us into this predicament in the first place?  Didn’t the church move from houses into buildings because it “worked?”  Didn’t the church start adopting things like pulpit preaching, pews, and small groups because they worked?  Isn’t that why many of us went seeker-friendly, purpose-driven, or some other variation of a hyphenated strategy….because it worked?

And is a search for what works all we’re supposed to be devoted to?

I don’t think so.  I hope not.

So, question: if we’re not going to focus merely on doing what works, what should we focus on?

Answer: the same things the Church was focused on before they tried doing what works.

The same thing Jesus was focused on: discipleship.  And get this part: we should be focused on it whether it “works” or not.

Stetzer’s not all wrong, he’s just putting the cart before the horse.  What happens if we plant more churches but fail to disciple people?  Even if they manage to have a good run initially, they’re bound to crash and burn, if not physically then spiritually.

It’s not more churches that we need, it’s better churches…composed of better disciples.

So that brings up some questions I’d like to throw out to you readers.

Participate: What does it take for better disciples to be made? Identify examples in your life of quality discipleship and ask yourself what made it an experience where you or others grew in Christ.
Engage: What kinds of things do better disciples do?  What can churches do?  What has worked for you? Write out a list of things you will do in your ministry setting on an ongoing basis to increase the level of discipleship.
Own: Who is in your sphere of influence? As you create this list and begin to live it out, how will you share with others what you’re learning about discipleship within the church?