This from a post I made on CRC-Voices in a discussion of the upcoming effort of CRC/RCA church planting that I will be involved in.

The church I pastor was planted in the late 50s and organized in 63. When the first church plant was proposed in the Sacramento area in the early 90s it was somehow deemed by some as a threat to Sacramento CRC’s existence. When I got here in 97 the pastor of that plant and I started meeting, praying and dreaming about planting more and more churches in the city. In almost every case imagining that a new plant will harm your existing church is like worrying about your car washing sponge absorbing a pond. There is SO much work to do. Church plants are a great way to go because they can adapt to the context faster. They do cost the parent churches but in my opinion the net gain in an area is positive.

I know that when there is a CRC “market” and a new CRC church plant goes in it often siphons off sometimes the most energetic and also disaffected remnants of existing congregations and this can be very difficult. Suddenly churches that were just humming along suddenly have to figure out some new ways of doing ministry. Usually they tend to activate people who were less active.

In 1991 there were probably 150 people attending a CRC church in the Sacramento area. Today there are close to 700 and double that have some relationship with the churches. Many of the people very few people this church sent to plants left the plants after a time anyway meaning they would have left here too. NOT planting churches isn’t really a strategy for holding on to people. Many others have come into the CRC who never would have come to the old Sac CRC. Many more baptisms, conversions, people served in ministry, etc. than old Sac CRC ever could have no matter if you threw all of the money put into church planting in to Sac CRC.

Now there isn’t one CRC pastor in Sacramento there are 10. There aren’t 150 people pulling there are 700 or so. We still are mostly small churches but we’re alive and scrapping, doing the basic work of the church. We also have a collection of churches that attract different people with different emphases and the truth is we need lots more.

People look at the cost and say “wow”, but compare it to a lot of costs for a lot of other things we spend money on in the church. Investments in church planting I would argue produce more fruit and the possibility of exponentially far more future fruit. It’s better than building a bell tower or having that landscaping look just so. Church planting dollars attract more money to the denomination as a whole and to the effort.

In areas that meet the Snapper thesis “cluster” model results in fact are far better. I think probably the greatest missing element the CRC is failing at today is that they are not aggressively planting churches in areas where there is a large CRC population and a lot of dying CRC congregations. Those are places they should really be planting aggressively. The resources are already there and potentially far greater resources.

I keep pushing the churches in Ripon to plant new ones and there is some movement now but mostly the churches are very scared of what they will lose. The truth is that they have far more to gain because they are going to lose a lot anyway. New churches revitalize the area and actually often allow the established churches to specialize sometimes along lines (like traditional worship) where they already have strength and expertise.

Anyway, there’s my pitch. pvk