Dan, a pastor from Pella in Iowa on CRC-Voices then asked what role established churches can play if church plants are doing most of the evangelism. This was my answer to him.

To answer Dan’s question about what the purpose of the established church is:

First let me clarify that I pastor an established church. Ours is not a church plant and our growth through evangelism numbers are sometimes an embarrassment to me. A couple of Sundays ago we had an almost 70 year old man make profession of faith after being with us for 10 years. I’ve baptized two 70 year old men. I regularly have people come to me after services, most of them African American, who say “I wish you had given an invitation because I would have joined your church today.” and I explain to them that we don’t work that way (the way many African American congregations do.) Why? We take a long time with people. Many come and go and come back throughout the process but I’ve found that for the most part slow is better.

New church plants could not be started without the established churches and the established churches are in many ways the foundation for all of the evangelistic activity out there.

I resist a theological perspective that reduces God’s mission to the world to evangelism as understood by getting people to identify and participate in the church. We are constantly working to evangelize ourselves, each other, and the world out there that is always in a sense on the fringe.

I’ll make a list:

1. Established churches bear witness to the community of the saints through time in a long term, stable, sustained way. Church plants are exciting but tiring. Everything needs to settle into community and established churches do this well.

2. Established churches afford a long obedience in the same direction. People need a sustained, predictable community around them in order to grow in Christ and to be surrounded by a body that affords them a context for the real work of saint creation.

3. Established churches continue to do outreach to the communities out of which they were formed. I’m always amazed at how able my congregation is to enfold people of the generation that founded the church. I’m not of that generation but my church reaches out to that demographic well. Our church plants can’t do that like my church can. Because of the generation that founded this church this often means re-activating dormant nominal Christians who have some nominal relationship with a church in the past. Church plants often reach out well to the generation of the church planter initially but then continue to age with their population while actually they broaden and diversify. The Granite Springs church which was for years all the age of the church planter or younger now his a nice demographic spectrum. It matured as it endured. This is a natural process in most churches.

4. Established churches parent new churches. Just like parents they have children and in a healthy relationship they both celebrated their children and struggle with them, sometimes because of them.

5. Established churches shoulder much of the theological, maintenance, broad spectrum ministry that the church should be involved in. We see this in CRC agencies: CRWRC (relief and development), CRWM (world missions), BTGMI (media ministries), Home missions, institutions of higher education, theological pursuits and questions, etc. Established churches are in a sense the adult supervision of the body of Christ. The kids are off pushing boundaries and establishing the church in new areas and breaking new ground but the established churches offer some wisdom hopefully combined with flexibility so that all may learn together.

6. Established churches help the saints persevere. The perseverance of the saints is a key mission of the church and the established churches often afford and ideal context for this. I pastor a lot of older people and one of the things I see is that a key life goal for Christians is to grow in faith and trust throughout so that when they reach the age when the age of decay strips them of all security, dignity, prosperity, confidence, self-sufficiency that they may have hearts that are ready to rely on Christ alone. People need a community to walk this dark valley. Established churches do that well.

7. The established church is there to be loved by God in all of its mediocrity, bumbling, failure and blessed endurance. It’s a context where God works in surprise ways just like in church plants. God as warrior is seen in church planting, God has faithful father and faithful husband is seen in established churches. Parents shouldn’t have an identity crisis because their children are all cool, hip, hot and popular. Parents should be parents, understanding the part that they play. Kids need parents, parents need kids. It’s part of the whole family.

Established congregations should continually strive to be more effective evangelistically but also be secure in the variety of other roles that the play in the broader body of Christ and the much longer narrative of the perseverance of the saints.