Church Planters Perspective: November 2007

The Future is Now

By Michael B. Knight

Introduction: (back to top)
Dee Hock said, “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out…Make and empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.” We are living in a world where even change is changing. While doctrine is established, precepts and principles in which we communicate this timeless message are in constant vertigo.

Change and Cultural Relevance: (back to top)
We find ourselves, now in the 21st century, not only being bombarded with Gnosticism once again, but constantly fighting the balance between actual and functional relevance. There are people in the world who are asking, “Is the Bible relevant?” Our answer to them is a resounding “Yes!”  God’s Word is always relevant. However, in American culture today, the functional relevance isn’t based on our belief about the authority of God’s Word. It is based and rooted in the issues of our ability to communicate this relevance to a world that doesn’t consider it relevant at all. In other words, if your Bible is written in Spanish and you only speak English, then you cannot understand the Bible’s relevance. It is our desire in the Church of God/NCPO to communicate the Bible to our culture in a language they can understand. This is an issue of communicating in the 21st Century.

Futurism and Communication (back to top)
Futurists are now telling us that within the next decade the advancement in nano-technology alone will revolutionize communication. If you think the oral communication process was rocked to its core by the invention of the Gutenberg Printing press, then wait until you see what nano-technology and neuroscience does to the world of communication by the year 2025! The culture’s use and understanding of technology will directly affect the local church. Just like the print communication age changed the structure of church services (1500 A.D), from oral to linear, the digital world will change everything from the occupations of our members to how we communicate the gospel on a personal level. Change is not coming, it is here.

A Prayer for the Church of God and America as Whole: (back to top)
My prayer is that God blesses our movement, the Church of God, to be the leader on the cutting edge of what the future will bring. I pray our new church planters ride the wave of the future, not be overtaken and drowned by it. Why? Because our heritage is way too important to let it die on our watch. We certainly don’t want to lose the message simply because we were not in tune with how to best communicate a timeless, infallible message.  John 1:1 tells us that, “In the beginning was the Word.” Communicating that Word is the responsibility of every new generation. Moses and Paul used oral and papyrus scrolls to communicate this Word. Luther used ink and Gutenberg used movable type. Aimee Simple McPherson used radio and Rex Humbard used broadcast. Today we use the Internet, personal hand held devices; tomorrow nano-technology will take the Word into a virtual world.  Each of must be ready to embrace the tools needed to share the message of Jesus Christ.

A New Globalized World: (back to top)
 This globalized world is changing everything from technology, to social justice, to change itself. Today the average life span of a corporation, including Fortune 500 corporations, is between 12.5 and 40 years. The church world also finds itself in the same tension. As Rex Miller says, “Many of our rapidly growing non-denominational churches have neither stood the test of time nor exhibited the qualities of enduring communities. At the same time, several long-established and revered corporations have been unable to endure the recent business upheavals or deregulation and global competition.” We must begin to plant new churches in our movement with the same force that we started out with in 1886.

The Denominational Ideal Age Profile: (back to top)
Dr. David Olson says, “In nature, a species will become extinct if the number of adults that survive infancy is less than the number of adults that die each year. For each species, there is an ideal age profile-one in which the species will prosper because there is an appropriate balance of births, adolescents and adults. In the world of churches, denominational species will become extinct if the number of births (new churches) that survive infancy is less than the number of adults (established churches) that die.” He goes on to say that in the ideal denominational profile an organization should have 16 percent of its churches between the one to 11 years of age (infancy) category. Eleven to 40-year-old churches should make up 36 percent (adolescence of their denomination. Lastly, 48 percent of a denomination should be made up of churches 40 years (adult) or older.

The bad news is that the latest studies from 2005 report that some of America’s oldest churches like the Episcopal, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches are presently reporting a two percent and three percent denominational birth rate respectively. The Southern Baptist is at eight percent and the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) is at 13 percent. Only Evangelical churches are growing and planting new churches. And only Pentecostal/Charismatic movements are growing faster than the current population rate. The Evangelical Covenant Churches are currently leading America with 39 percent of their new churches being church plants, according to Dr. David Olson from the American Church Institute. (All of Dr. Olson’s in-depth research will soon be available in our book store).

The NCPO (back to top)
At the NCPO we are attempting to build methodical and consistent church plants. Our strategy is not immediate gratification, but long-term. We are building a new modern architecture in the Church of God. We want to see a new generation of churches that is distinctly Spirit-filled and culturally relevant. Our new church plants are highly creative. It just go to reason that if the Holy Spirit in Genesis “brooded” over the earth like a hen does her eggs and thus gave birth to the beauty of Earth and is, according to Job 1, the creative agency behind the “adorning of the heavens,” that Spirit-filled people should be the most creative people on this earth.

Since the Executive Committee’s conception of the National Church Planting Office in the late fall of 2004, the Church of God has seen a renewed emphasis on planting churches. This emphasis is not about planting lots of small, struggling churches. The emphasis is on planting churches that are culturally relevant, methodical and properly trained. Hundreds of new church planters have been trained in four-day intensive training systems called LABS. Dr. Owen Weston, a world renowned church growth expert, touts our training program as being “the best in America.”

New NCPO Resources: (back to top)
There is an old saying that “Rome was not built in a day.” We have a long way to go to get to where we want to be. However, we have come a long way in a short period of time. There are dozens of new relevant resources to aid any church planter in our movement. Take a look at the hundreds of pages of new information on our web site. The future of this site is going to be amazing as we become the “one stop shopping place for church planters.” By the Holidays we will double the information (again) found on this site. Our new “NCPO Online Discussion Forum” will provide a way for church planters to strategize, dream and wrestle through the pertinent issues of taking our movement to its most successful day of church planting. It will be hosted only by people who have successfully planted churches. The new “Planting Locator/Church Planters Needed” link will help potential church planters better grasp the future possibilities of their call. There are dozens of articles and training videos, IPOD casts etc. Enjoy!

References: (back to top)

Miller, M Rex, The Millennium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Olson, David, The American Church Institute. www.theamericanchurch.com