Reasons to Plant a Church In A City
When it comes to planting a new church, it’s not unusual to hear this objection:
“We already have plenty of churches that have lots and lots of room for all the new people who have come to the area. Let’s get them filled before we start building any new ones.
But history tells a different story. The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for the numerical growth of the body of Christ in a city and the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else—not crusades, outreach programs, parachurch ministries, growing megachurches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes—will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow-raising statement, but to those who have studied this topic, it is not even controversial.
Here are four reasons (of many) to plant a church in a city:
Biblical Mandate
Almost all of the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are calls to plant churches, not simply to share the faith. The Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20) is a call not just to “make disciples” but to baptize. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshiping community with accountability and boundaries (Acts 2:41–47). The only way to be sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches
Paul’s Whole Strategy was to Plant Urban Churches
The greatest missionary in history, Saint Paul, had a rather simple twofold strategy. First, he went into the largest city of a region (cf. Acts 16:9, 12), and second, he planted churches in each city (cf. Titus 1:5—”appoint elders in every town”). Once Paul had done that, he could say that he had “fully preached” the gospel in a region and that he had “no more place . . . to work in these regions” (cf. Rom. 15:19, 23). This means Paul had two controlling assumptions: (a) that the way to most permanently influence a country was through its chief cities, and (b) the way to most permanently influence a city was to plant churches in it. Once he had accomplished this in a city, he moved on. He knew that the rest that needed to happen would follow.
New Churches Reach New Generations, Residents, and People Groups
Whether it’s the length of the service, sermon topics and illustrations, the way a new leadership team invites new members into roles of influence, or the language the pastor speaks, younger adults, new residents, new sociocultural groups and immigrant groups are almost always reached better by new congregations. New congregations empower new people and new peoples much more quickly and readily than can older churches. Thus they always have and always will reach them with greater facility than long-established bodies can
New Churches Bring New Ideas, Renewing the Whole Body of Christ
There is no better way to teach older congregations about new skills and methods for reaching new people groups than by planting new churches. It is the new churches that have freedom to be innovative, so they become the Research and Development Department for the whole body in the city. Often the older congregations have been too timid to try a particular approach or absolutely sure it would “not work here,” but when the new church in town succeeds with that new method, the other churches eventually take notice and gain the courage to try it themselves.
This is taken from Tim Keller’s Why Plant Churches https://redeemercitytocity.com/articles-stories/why-plant-churches