Reflections on a Missional Church Plant

Where We Are 

Congratulations. We've made it. We moved to Missoula way back in the Fall of 2006, just two families with a dream of planting a church for people who've given up on church.

Now, 7 years later, All Souls Missoula is growing up. We've finally installed our first elders and particularized. We have some leaders (a handful). We've seen 30+ professions of faith (cool). Most of our Christians didn't come from another church (so we seem to be reaching that post-Christian demographic).

We look like a success story. Or do we?

We still have only about 120 people (counting kids). While we should finally be financially self-supporting in 2014 (with a bare-bones budget of about $150K and no additional staff), we can still only afford one pastor (I am leaving, and Ryan is staying). So we've made it – but just barely.

And the real question for All Souls now, is: What's next? 

How do we ensure that the people we set out to reach – the un-churched, de-churched, and post-churched – will keep walking through our doors? In this increasingly-jaded-about-the-Church post-Christian culture, how do we ensure that spiritual seekers keep on finding us? Because most of them aren't looking in churches. So how's it going to happen?

• By running our once-a-year ad in the Indy? 
• By finally finishing our fiscal year in the black? 
• By adding Sunday School? Or a youth group? Or a building? 

You see, growth doesn't just “happen,” and our current ethos will not simply just “continue.”

So what is our vision going to be? And how do we sustainably keep planting churches?

Looking Back 

Maybe it's helpful to ask: Why did un-churched folks show up in the first place? The short answer, I think, is that we went to them. It was an incarnational approach. We spent two full years getting to know our community, asking questions, building relation-ships, seeing conversions – and only after all of that did we finally begin to worship. I think this kind of soft-start is necessary to reach post-Christians, because it buys you time to go to them - but that also makes it more expensive.

And what made our early worship so attractive? Well it was beautiful, thoughtful, intelligible, challenging, and compelling (in its music, liturgy, preaching, and explanations). Our little church was provocative (it raised a lot of questions, refused to be pigeonholed). But it was also safe (you could ask questions and not get shunned). More importantly, people were having genuine power encounters with the Jesus of the Bible (and with the scandal of Grace in particular). There was an incredible diversity (these were not your typical church folk). There was also an authenticity as people talked about what they were wrestling with. And we were just different. All of that generated buzz.

Over time, though, things gradually changed. Once we began to worship, we as planters (the people who invite and gather) had to become pastors (people who shepherd). This is not bad. There were worship guides to write, sermons to prepare, people to counsel. We had to craft our membership material. And then pastor the people who became members. All good things. But always accompanied by changes. Over the past 3 years...

• Our growth has slowed to a trickle (technically, we're still growing, but since folks here leave Missoula as often as they enter All Souls, it's a wash). 
• Our evangelism has changed: instead of centering on un-churched friends in the community, it's shifted to new faces who showed up in church (b/c a friend invited them, or they heard about us in community). But that's dwindling too. Why? 
• Well, as pastors, we're spending less and less time in the broader community. Almost all our relationships now are in the church. And almost all our time is spent ministering to the flock, rather than reaching out to the lost. 
• Again, this is not all bad (pastors DO need to shepherd the sheep). But we also need to recognize that churches have an incredible gravity to them – they're like black holes that suck us in on ourselves, and no amount of ministering will ever satisfy it. We are needy people. Demand always exceeds supply. 
• Which means that as a church grows, outreach almost inevitably falters. 
• Meanwhile, we burn through our money (staff salaries are always the biggest part of a church budget). Giving develops slowly (especially when you are primarily reaching the de-churched). Cash on hand shrinks. Things get tight. We start to cut. 

Eventually, we no longer have the resources to do most of those things that made us so distinctive at the beginning (parties, mercy, soundoffs, the arts). We're too busy just trying to hang on and keep the church going. None of us really has time for outreach now (besides, all our friends are in the church now anyways).

And here we are now – 7 years in, down to one pastor, and we all have less time than ever.

How on earth are we going to plant more churches when it feels like we can barely support the one we've already got? What could we do differently?

Looking Forward 

As I reflect on the past 7 years, there seem to be some weaknesses in our approach (I think every approach has weaknesses, btw; these just happen to be ours):

1. Our pastoral model emphasizes seminary trained, full time pastoral staff (costly) 
2. Any post-Christian demographic takes a lot of time to reach (slow)
3. Spiritually, the people we reach tend to be both immature and broken (intensive) 
4. Both visibility and outreach dwindle as the church grows (we turn inwards) 

The end result is a church plant that is very expensive – and the more it commits itself to reaching lost culture, the costlier it gets. (For example: Ryan & I raised over $750K to plant All Souls Missoula – granted, by the end of 2014 accumulated local giving will finally match that amount, so we'll effectively “break even” in the end, but still, this is a LOT of money to spend for a small church that is still a long ways from resourcing other church plants.)

So it's not surprising when churches give up and just focus on easier targets (Christians). But is that really all God has called us to?

I think we've figured out how to create an ethos that reaches our culture (the problem is not the gospel; that's powerful and relevant and it still speaks to postmodern Americans).

The real questions for me are:

1. How do we sustain visibility? (how do we continue to rub shoulders w/ large numbers of post-Christians – b/c that's what fuels evangelistic growth) 
2. How do we reduce the cost of entry? (so we can replicate more easily – b/c not many people are jumping on board to spend this kind of money to plant churches) 
3. How do we get better at discipleship? (so that more people in the church start sharing the missional load - rather than simply relying on the founding staff to do it for them)

I think these are the questions we need to be considering. And I think the time is ripe for more outside-the-box approaches...

Some Creative Ideas

One way a church can reduce cost is by having its pastors get jobs in the community. (Paul worked as a tent-maker on occasion – but it's hard to sustain, especially if the pastor and his wife have kids, and it's unhealthy if a church never learns to support its pastors. So this can't be our only approach).

One way a church can increase visibility is by being strongly involved in social concerns. (It's what the early church was famous for – radical mercy, even more than the pagans.) I think it's just as relevant now.

So both of these are important. But could we do more?

What if a church simply worshiped regularly in public space? What if that space was provocative and unexpected – perhaps a coffee shop, or maybe even a bar or brewpub.

This idea itself is not new, and there are some obvious advantages: people who would never go looking for a church are much more likely to stumble across it as they pursue something else (coffee, beer, community). If the church is intriguing, and they have any sort spiritual curiosity, they're very likely to check it out. At the very least, they ask questions. Buzz.

But there are problems here too: most public venues are not designed for 100-200 people, so as soon as a church gets any traction, it often moves on. Plus renting (good) public space can be expensive. Or it can generate controversy (either w/ the public, or w/ the broader church community). And when the church is a renter, you're always at the mercy of the business (which is often leery of being seen as “supporting a church”). So it's easy to lose your lease. For whatever the reasons, most churches that take this approach generally don't stick with it for long.

So what if we owned the business? Or at least had a very special relationship? What if public space was brimming with people all week long (visibility), yet clearly committed to hosting a church community on Sundays (provocative). And what if that space could serve as your place of worship long term, because it had been designed that way from the get go? What if the business could actually help offset some of the cost of planting the church?

These are the questions I'm thinking about a lot these days. And I've got some ideas on how it might be possible to make it happen over here...