Why Plant A Church?

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  Many have asked me over the last year: Why plant a church? Aren't' there enough churches in the city? Why aren't' you satisfied just handing out tracts?
  
  First of all, it would serve us to recognize the state of things. According to George Barna, 82 percent of America believes Jesus is the Son of God. Now let me ask you something: Do you think this means that 82 percent of America are real Christians? If you do, I have a bridge not too far from here for you, real cheap!
  
  Because we have confused a creed or a decision with salvation, we have multitudes who believe they are Christians without following Christ. But following Christ IS the definition of a Christian.
  
  Part of obeying Jesus' call to salvation is to be attached to a local church. Now I am not saying, (before you get your knickers in a bunch) that church membership, baptism or works save you. But can you go year after year without these and say that you are obeying the Lord?
  
  Jesus' commission was essentially a church planting call:
  
  Matt 28:18-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
  
  Baptism and consistent teaching in obedience are pretty hard to do on a street corner. Both of these imply the introduction of people into local community in order to truly live out Christianity.
  
  We have to get out of the mind set that praying a prayer is the end of salvation, when in reality it is just the beginning. So, church planting is Jesus' way of soul winning.
  
  The Apostle Paul's whole strategy was planting urban churches. His strategy was pretty simple. Go to the biggest cities and plant churches in each one. End of story. Time to go golfing.
  
  Listen, no offense, but what happens in Hackensack isn't going to influence the nation. Rev. Tim Keller is so much more erudite. He puts it like this:
  
  "The way to most permanently influence a country was through its chief cities. The way to most permanently influence a city was to plant churches in it."
  
  Are you still with me?
  
  Here is a flurry of facts:
  
  
• The average new church gains most of its new members from the ranks of the unchurched
• The average new congregation will bring in 6-8 times more new people into the life of the church than older congregations of the same size.
• New residents are better reached by new congregations.
• New believers beget new believers.
• New social groups are better reached by new congregations.

The main reasons for these facts is that older congregations reflect older sensibilities, take much longer to bring new people into leadership, and tend to allocate most of its resources towards existing members.

What does this mean practically? The only wide scale way to bring in lots of new Christians to the Body of Christ in a permanent way is to plant new churches.

The world is coming to the city. If the church is really serious about reaching the world with the gospel, (are we?) we will put our resources into planting churches in the cities.

Living Hope is being planted in a community of 60,000, where there is hardly any evangelistic or evangelical presence at all. Yet people ask why are we trying to reinvent the wheel? We desperately need more churches in this city of 8 million people!

At Living Hope our purpose is

Leading New Yorkers in a Lifestyle of Building Faith, Doing Life Together and Serving Others in Jesus' Name.

Key word: "Lifestyle"-- not just a decision. That's Christianity.

Building Faith through a powerful Worship Service of Proclamation and Demonstration

Doing Life Together through Affinity Groups

Serving Others by giving of our time and treasure to promote the Kingdom.

Again if we care at all for souls, if we have any compassion, if we have any vision, we should look upon our cities and weep. God forbid that we just focus on survival when millions perish without Christ in the world. Will we model true love and biblical community for them? Will we show them by our example that church is not optional to the walk of faith but is a fruit of true faith?