One of the significant tasks of church leaders is to find, equip and deploy lay people to lead in creating new places for new people. If we are going to produce a multiplicative growth for the new church starts movement in the United States, engaging lay people in church planting is one of the paths to move forward.  We have this great opportunity and solemn responsibility, as leaders of our United Methodist denomination, to empower the lay people of our churches to get out from their church pews into the world to give witness to the amazing love of God by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ and participating in planting new churches.

The opportunities to reach more new people, more young people and more diverse people in the United States have never been as exciting as they are right now. The need to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to the increasing number of unreached and underserved groups of people and to start new churches among them has never been greater. This reality calls us to act now. It challenges us to take seriously our task for raising new leaders that will plant new churches.
The challenging question before us is: Where do we find the leadership to start new churches among all of these places and people groups?
The answer, of course, is the people of God – clergy and laity. Neither the clergy nor the laity has monopoly to carry out the task of planting new churches. Both clergy and lay people are called, gifted and anointed by God to be in ministry including the ministry of church planting. John Wesley believed lay people were just as called by God to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus Christ as any ordained clergy.
There are 7.8 million total lay memberships in the United Methodist Church in the United States, according to 2007 GCFA Statistical Report. However, laity represent the church’s biggest untapped resource for the task of starting new churches. Let us think for a minute about some mathematical propositions: what if 10 % (780,000) or 1% (7,800) of our lay people step forward to lead home Bible study, become part of a launch team for a new church start, pray daily for church planters, give generously and so forth and so on? Can you imagine what this could produce in terms of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world? Can you begin to imagine how many new churches would be started?
Creating a church planting process that celebrates the value and calling of God upon laity to plant new churches is a critical step towards growth and sustainability: more new disciples who will multiply new churches; more new churches that will transform the world; and a world that is transforming will reflect the reign of God.
Churches that are exponentially growing are in countries such as China, South Korea, the Philippines, and some countries in Africa. The testimony of these churches is one of lay people spreading the Gospel, forming house churches, leading home bible study and prayer meeting, assisting in community outreach activities, and planting churches. In these places, the new church movement is really a lay-powered-driven movement, empowered by clergy partners. Could it happen in the United States? Of course, it could!

It will not serve ourselves as leaders of the United Methodist Church for leading a movement of church planting and multiplication in the United States nor do the people and the communities that we seek to reach out with the Gospel of Jesus Christ to think that we can accomplish this enormous task devoid of active involvement and shared leadership of lay people of our churches.
Engaging the laity in church planting is an exciting and challenging task, but the Scripture underscores it, history of the Wesleyan movement documents it and the story about multiplication of churches outside the United States proves it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Multiply, Find Leaders, Leading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.