Core values — Vigorous Planting
By George O. Wood
Excerpts from General Superintendent George O. Wood’s book, Core Values, will be featured in The Council Today. The complete book is available from GPH.
The U.S. Assemblies of God is planting, on average, 275 churches a year. That works out to a new church every 1.3 days.
Here is the bad news: The U.S. Assemblies of God is closing, on average, nearly 275 churches a year. There is no avoiding or downplaying the reality that our Fellowship has barely grown for several years. This must change. If the Assemblies of God is to grow, we must focus on church revitalization as well as church planting.
Church planting is the most effective means for evangelization. New churches, by their very nature, have to grow to exist. People are motivated to get out and reach the lost. New converts more effectively reach other new converts because they still have a lot of non-Christian friends. When you plant a church in a community, you have a wonderful opportunity to impact that region with the gospel.
WE MUST REACH UNCHURCHED AMERICA
Our AG Church Ministries Division reports there are 25,150 U.S. communities that can be identified demographically. The Assemblies of God has no churches in 18,742, or 74.5 percent, of America’s identifiable communities.
Among the total U.S. communities, 18,969 are home to 5,000 or fewer people. Of those, we have no AG churches in 15,934. That is 84 percent. I realize we put a lot of emphasis upon urban church planting, but there is room for a lot of churches in small towns and rural America.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, 230 U.S. communities have between 100,000 and 500,000 people. We have churches in all but six of those cities. That sounds like a solid track record until you stop and think about it—six cities with six-figure populations without a single
AG congregation.
There are 31 cities and communities of more than 500,000 people, and there are AG churches in all of those. But in many of those places there is only one AG church, or just a few small churches. That level of penetration does not significantly impact a city.
I love the term “churches of influence.” Churches of influence impact their communities. What comes out of church planting is not buildings; it’s people. Church planting is all about people.
PARTNERS WITH THE SPIRIT WILL CARRY THE MANDATE FORWARD
Vigorously planting new churches is a continuity of Brother Trask’s emphasis that every church should be a parent or a partner in church planting. We must strategically plant new churches. We must recognize no existing church or ministry has a fiefdom or a territory. We must work together to see churches begin filling the thousands of communities we have yet to reach.
One of the most successful church plants I have ever seen was in Fresno, California, years ago when Dave Gable pastored Full Gospel Tabernacle, an historic Assemblies of God downtown church. Another AG church started in the same neighborhood.
Many of the families attending Full Gospel Tabernacle had moved to the suburbs and were driving back into the city for services. Dave realized his church had a big gymnasium and his congregation was largely middle-aged and older. The new church had mostly young people and children.
Dave approached the other pastor. “Look,” he said, “you guys don’t have a permanent facility. Why don’t you come and use our gymnasium? You’re short on mature Christians. We’ll have our mature Christians help teach your Sunday School. We’ll combine Sunday School, and have different worship services.”
So they had two AG churches in one building—two churches with totally different styles. The newer church grew so much that the older church planted a new church in the suburbs and kept on growing.
At Newport-Mesa Christian Center in Costa Mesa, when we hit 500 people we outgrew our location and could not expand because of zoning restrictions. Planting a church was the natural solution. I brought a person on staff for six months to recruit as many people in our congregation as possible to plant a church in a neighboring community. About 80 people joined the effort, and we held a commissioning service on the last Sunday before we sent them out.
I asked the congregation, “How many of you have come to this church in the last six months and have made it your church home?” More than 80 people raised their hands. We had already replaced the people who were leaving.
I’ve heard this story countless times from other church planting pastors. Whether we want to believe it or not, the scripture is true: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” The problem comes when we get into maintenance mode or status quo and are not pushing the envelope. Churches must have faith to continue to push the envelope for the next work God has in store.
Pastors need individual faith and congregations need corporate faith in constant pursuit of God’s vision. The Lord has dreams and visions for the pastor and church who will take time to listen to His voice. The Holy Spirit certainly wants to reach our communities in America. If the Holy Spirit wants to reach our communities, then as we quiet ourselves and wait for His leading, He will show us.
In March 2007, I stood on the beach where Paul and Barnabas sailed from on their first missionary journey, and I had an incredible spiritual encounter. I realized at the moment when Paul and Barnabas first set sail, no book of the New Testament had been written, none of the Gentile churches had been founded except the church in Antioch, and Paul had no idea that in the next 15 years he would plant churches in Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth and Ephesus. He had no 5-year plan or 10-year plan. There is nothing wrong with such plans. But Paul had a sensitivity to the Spirit and was willing to go where the Spirit directed him. And the next 15 years became an incredibly productive time for the Early Church.
I believe the Spirit wants to replicate that in our lifetime. He wants to take not only the young leaders anxious to get out and make a mark for God, but He also wants to take senior veterans and launch them into new ministries they never would have imagined. And as we partner with the Holy Spirit across this Fellowship, there are great churches in communities as yet unreached waiting to be born, waiting to impact their world for Christ.
May God burden our hearts and give us the vision for His great churches of the future.