Recently, I have talked to a lot of people in my sphere about the coverage of church planting in a conversation between Ira Glass and Eric Mennel on This American Life. I have been grateful that the podcast has sparked a lot of interest in my friends who don’t consider themselves Jesus followers in what we are doing planting a church. As a church planter, in the early stages of planting Ecclesia, a missional community in central New Jersey, any time I can talk to somebody about Jesus and church, I will take it a hundred times out of a hundred. But what I have also seen is that the coverage of church planting has left people feeling uneasy.^[1]This American Life aggregates a longer podcast series called Startup where Eric Mennel documents the work of Watson Jones and AJ Smith at Restoration Church in Philadelphia.I want to address a couple of the items that stood out to me and wrestle honestly with the tension of trying to build something from scratch without losing the soul of what a church that follows Jesus is: a community of worship and mission, shaped by the love of Jesus to announce the Gospel of restoration, salvation, and justice to its immediate context.

Just A Christian Copy of The Tech World?

The angle that the conversation surrounding church plants takes is that evangelical church planters are simply adapting the philosophies of the the tech industry. In the Podcast, Eric Mennel (of the Startup Podcast) states, “What the Christian world is trying to do is use the tools of Silicon Valley to create startups.” The hosts point out that there are conferences, seminars, and books all designed to help people take their vision from nothing to a fully functioning, self-sustaining operation. This is partially true and Mennel really focuses on this angle with AJ Smith. In Episode 3 of the Startup podcast, Mennel uses the framing question, “Does what makes you a good entrepreneur make you a bad Christian?” I can speak for many a planter and pastor when I say I have felt this tension in my own ministry. The pastor I have been shaped most by in my ministry is a man named Eugene Peterson. One of Peterson’s many powerful and insightful quotes is a direct affront to the church planting industrial complex, “The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.” This quote and the theology behind it has had a profound impact on my own vision and leadership. Part of leading with integrity, for me, is a congruence between ways and means. But full disclosure, I have also read a lot of books this year like Scaling Up, The Culture Code, and even Patrick Lencioni’s The Better Pastor that is a sort of parable illustrating a local parish priest awakening to better management practices available to him.

“The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.”

There is a tension here to be certain. But here’s the thing. I have seen that to grow as a leader is not simply becoming more spiritual, praying more, reading Scripture more. Pete Scazzero, in his Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast, talks about how he would often hide away in those activities when faced with some of the truly difficult, uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing aspects of leading. And believe me, I would read the Bible and pray all day rather than face another day of fundraising. And that would be an abdication of my God-given call to lead my church. For pastors, we are naturally lovers of people, we want to partner with God to see individuals, neighborhoods, and whole cities transformed by the love of Jesus. We love talking about the Scriptures and praying with people. But with that responsibility comes a burden to lead people. To suggest that pastors have nothing to learn from the world of business and technology is not just foolish, its arrogant. It also suggests to those that we serve and lead from those fields that their everyday world is somehow unredeemable, a vocation altogether removed from the life of the church. I think there is a humility and an affirming of the business world that happens when churches and their leaders listen and ask questions. Certainly, as John encourages his recipients, we must “test the spirits” (1 John 4) but there is much wisdom to be found outside the church. We are right to seek it, to form it to the shape of the crucified Jesus, and to learn and grow from it.

The Heart Of Church Planting

The assertion that the Christian startup world is just copying the tech startup world ignores two of the fundamental realities of church planting and church in general: relationships and contextualization. I find it interesting that the This American Life, and the Startup podcast, to a large extent ignores the relational elements of Watson Jones and AJ Smith’s work. They fall into the same trap that many Christians fall into, focusing only on Sunday morning as the fruit of the ministry. But what are Watson and AJ doing Monday-Saturday? They are incarnating the neighborhood, they are walking the streets praying for people, they are interacting with business owners, listening to neighbors. In short, they are loving the place that they live. They are learning the rhythms of that part of Philadelphia, reading the culture to see where the needs of their community and the power of the Gospel meet. I will be participating in one of the Incubators, hosted by Tim Keller’s City To City (referenced in the pod). And the whole focus of the program is not how to build a thriving organization, its how to be shaped by the Gospel in such a way that your city thrives because your church is there. 

A brief aside. Glass and Mennel are right to point out that church planting organizations often focus on booming suburbs or gentrifying neighborhoods where income is plentiful, population is increasing, and the soil seems right for mega-church growth. There are two ways to look at this, one decidedly more cynical than the other. First the slightly shadier version of events, its been shown that churches grow rapidly in predominately white, emerging suburbs so if your prone to think that church is all about money, well you may be onto something at times. Second, its a numbers game. Right now upwards of 90 people a day are moving to expanding urban centers like Austin, TX, Charleston, SC, and Nashville, TN. You would be right to presume that church planting organizations and planters are working hard to plant in those areas and if you look at it from a strictly altruistic perspective, it makes sense. Churches that are interested in planting are all about the maximum number of people hearing and responding to the Gospel; therefore they are going to the places where the most people are. There are certainly significant layers to this sort of perspective on planting, as church planting, like gentrification, often ignores the historic shape of a neighborhood instead crafting in the image of the newest residents.

The denomination I am a part of, the Evangelical Covenant Church, along with many other incredible, historic expressions of the Christian faith aren’t chasing the latest, hippest locales. They are seeking planters that love a place enough to listen to its hurts, to know its pain, to know its longings and who want to help the people there see the power and beauty of Jesus’ love. We are planting in a semi-urban area that is not gentrifying and is not gaining population. It is among the counties with the highest income disparities in the country and is a place where over 170,000 people identify with “no religion.” We are not doing this to be the newest, coolest church in a trendy area. There is nothing trendy about Ewing, NJ! We are planting here because we can partner with several other churches already here that are doing faithful Gospel-centered ministry and can be an expression of the Kingdom of God here in a place that we love.

One thing I did really enjoy about the Startup podcast is that it casts church planting and really, leadership, in its true light. Leadership is not flashy or remarkable. Leadership is suffering. I commend Watson and AJ both for their incredible vulnerability during this series. Eric Mennell is dead-on when he tells Ira Glass about Watson and AJ’s work, “At some point no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, either people come or don’t.” 99% of the church planters I have met are just people who love Jesus, love the people of a certain city, and are perhaps just crazy enough to think they can start something that will help those people find that same Jesus they found. They are not people who are trying to get rich, they have signed up for a path with incredible uncertainty from a career and financial security standpoint in the hopes of seeing the love of Jesus taking root in their neighborhoods. If you are skeptical that churches are just like other organizations, focused simply on the bottom line, the church has certainly earned your cynicism. Hopefully, This American Life, didn’t simply confirm all your suspicions but raised some questions. If so, your local church planter in bars, coffee shops, and walking the streets praying for you, would be happy to tell you more about their church, and even more happy to listen to your story and tell you about Jesus.

In John 18-19,  Jesus is apparently on trial before Pontius Pilate.  But John, in a brilliant stroke of narrative weaving demonstrates that it is Pilate and the whole system of imperial politics that actually stand in the docket.  As the trial progresses, the reader is privy to the internal struggle of Pilate.  He suspects Jesus of nothing but innocence and he knows that he should set him free.  In fact, he tries, really hard.  He offers to release Jesus in accordance with custom, he tries to accommodate their desires by having Jesus ruthlessly whipped, all the while maintaining that he finds no case against him.  But the fervor of the crowd only grows.  After whipping Jesus within an inch of his life, he parades him before the vitriolic throng in a purple robe and a crown of thorns.  “Here is your king,” he mockingly announces, all the while completely unwitting to the prophetic weight of his words.  And the crowd responds exactly the way we would expect sinful humanity to respond when confronted with perfect, unflinching love:  Crucify him!

Pilate sees the stakes clearly now.  He is caught between his conscience and the political fallout.  And make no mistake, for Pilate, if he can’t keep this situation under control, there will be hell to pay.  If he handles this poorly, a delegation from Jerusalem will set out for Rome to complain to the emperor about Pilate.  Pilate could lose what little prestige he has or worse ^[1]in 37 AD, Pilate is tried in Rome for the unwarranted murder of Samaritan pilgrims. Knowing he has to get himself out of the middle of this no-win situation, he tries to release Jesus.  But the crowd has him and they know it:

“If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”

Throughout the course of this election cycle, many well-intentioned Christians feel like they have been pulled in two different directions. Maybe you have heard statements like this during the past year:  “If you vote this way or for that person, you’re not being faithful to God.”  Much like Pilate, American Christians seem caught between two uncompromising realities.  But maybe there is more to it.  You see, Pilate’s problem was not that he had to choose between his conscience and the political ramifications.  Pilate’s problem, like the conundrum facing many Christians in this election, was that he had the options reduced for him to a formulaic binary.  It’s either A or B.  Left or Right.  Free him or crucify him.

For instance, many American Christians feel as though they have to choose between the lesser of two evils.  On one side, well-meaning individuals will say that they simply cannot vote for a person who is “pro-choice” all the while ignoring the fact that the opponent is an openly racist, neo-fascist who has been accused of sexual assault on multiple accounts and who has asked the joint chiefs why we don’t use nuclear weapons on our enemies and so, in my humble opinion, can in no way can be classified as “pro-life” simply by spouting empty promises about overturning Roe v. Wade.

Many, upon reading that above statement will feel as they have me pegged.  Just a know-nothing millennial who has been blinded by the liberal media and doesn’t understand how things work in the real world.  If you read the above condemnation as an endorsement of the candidate from the other side, you are falling into the exact dichotomy that I am trying to help the Church reject.   It’s exactly at this intersection that I want to make my plea to Christians from every end of the political spectrum:   do not be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of your minds and be able to discern the will of God(Rom. 12:2).  When the world presents us with two bad options, we don’t, like Pilate, choose pragmatism over principle.  We don’t wash our hands and go against every ounce of our conscience because “sometimes you put your Christian values on pause to get work done” (actual quote from Ben Carson). No, in the face of absurdity A and absurdity B, we respond as Jesus did before Pilate:  we witness to the Kingdom that is not of this world and when any political party tries to co-opt our faith for their cause, perhaps silence or suffering are our best recourse.

Politics are ambiguous, plain and simple.  Whether you vote Left, Right, or simply “no thanks,” it is highly likely you are being asked to compromise the values of the Kingdom (Matt. 5:3-11 for instance) in some way because America is not the Kingdom.  So what’s the Christian to do?  First, we do not allow our decisions to be made for us.  This is what happened to Pilate and its what’s happening to many white, evangelical Christians along the lines of the abortion debate.  Saying one candidate is pro-choice and one is pro-life is reductionist and may help you sleep at night but is not a conclusion with any basis in reality. Second, we are people who confess our own sins.  The ambiguity of politics should humble us not allow us to demonize those who think differently.  You may wonder how anybody who claims to be a Christian could vote for a “pro-choice” candidate and miss the possibility that your Christian sisters and brothers of color are asking how anybody who claims to be a Christian could vote for a racist.

As Pilate tries one more time to wiggle his way out of crucifying Jesus, he asks the crowd, “Shall I crucify your king?”  The crowd responds, “We have no king but Caesar.”  The binaries are unflinching.  The reductionist rhetoric does not bend, it grind us down into bureaucrats merely following orders.

But there is a third way.

It’s not a way that leads to political power or economic security.  It’s not a way that insulates us from pain or danger.   It is the way of Jesus.  It’s the way of the cross.  The way of confronting evil and injustice with suffering and perfect love.  The way of reconciliation.  The way of bearing witness to a kingdom that is not of this world.  I pray that the American church will rise above the fray, especially the rhetoric that suggests that the fate of the free world somehow rests on this election.  Empires rise and fall, the Kingdom of God will stand forever.  I pray that we will renew our minds to reject the talk-radio rancor and seek what it means to love our enemies or at least those who think differently.  I pray that we will allow our hearts to be washed and not simply wash our hands.  Grace and peace.