Church In The Wild: This American Life and Church Planting

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and insightful quotes is a direct affront to the church planting industrial complex, “The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.”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.