A while back I received an invitation from Assistant Superintendent Phil Edwards (in the picture from left to right…Phil Edwards, me, Mike Ferguson and Andy Fernandez) of the West Florida District to come and meet with their district Presbyters and pastors concerned about reaching lost people. The District Superintendent is the one and only Bobby Thompson. If you know him, you know why I say “one and only.” God broke the mold and threw away the blueprint when he made Bobby. That’s Bobby and me in the picture on the left. Together Bobby and Phil make quite a dynamic duo as they provide leadership for the district and I mean that in every GOOD sense of the word. These guys love Jesus and they love people and they are determined to do everything they can do to make it hard for people who live in Northwest Florida to go to hell!!

Anyway, Phil Edwards put together a day to resource and stretch the thinking of West Florida District leaders and pastors. He called it the West Florida District U.S. Missions Church Planting and Development Forum. So on Wednesday, I jumped on a plane and headed down to Panama City, Florida. On Thursday morning I ended up at the West Florida District Headquarters campus in Marianna, Florida. Besides me he brought in several very stretching practitioners of missional ministry. Every one of these folks has figured out a way to disciple a community and help them connect with God’s Church. I was extremely honored to share the same podium with these amazing men and woman of God.

I spoke first and basically shared verbally some of the thoughts I’ve been sharing about over the last few months on this blog. After me, everyone got to hear the story of Andy Fernandez the founder of Firewall Ministries and Crossfire Community Church. I’ve blogged about Andy before. (Check out my January blogs.) Andy’s story is a great success story of someone who started out discipling his community with an after school mentoring program and a church emerged out of the discipling process.

Following Andy, we heard from Dr. Mike Ferguson, founder of KidCare America, Inc. KidCare is a very structured and well thought through after school mentoring program that operates in over 60 locations throughout the US. Andy and Mike were like a one/two punch, driving home the incredible opportunity available to existing and emerging churches as a powerful way to connect with the community. After school mentoring is a great answer to the question that I’m being asked more and more…”How do I connect with people in my community?” Answer- It might be that the best way is to start an after school mentoring program.

But the “knock-out” punch was delivered by Lynne Eldridge who is the Executive Director of the Early Learning Coalition of Northwest Florida. Lynn is a public servant who also happens to be a committed Christian. That’s her next to me in the picture. She attends First Assembly of God in Panama City, Florida. She stood up and told us a few of the “stories behind the numbers” of real kids who are in these after school programs. She absolutely broke our hearts and put an exclamation point on the whole day. It’s time for the church to stand up in God’s anointing and disciple our communities…and after school mentoring is a powerful way to do it!

The “icing on the cake” was Jonathon Bissig briefly telling the story of how he came to First Assembly to serve as their children’s pastor and soon found himself “discipling a community” through the powerful tool of KidCare America. The stories of transformation are real. The impact on the community has been incredible.

I left Marianna late last night greatly encouraged for the future of the church in West Florida. I’ve heard some people say that the West Florida District is behind the times…but to be honest, what I saw looked a lot more like the cutting edge. They are becoming a group of churches who are discipling their communities and multiplying the presence of Christ’s Church everywhere they go!

Wray, Colorado is a community of about 2200 souls on the Eastern edge of Colorado. Folks in Wray are solid, sensible hard working “salt of the earth” types who love each other and love America…(insert a Chevy commercial here)…Wray is about as rural and classic American as you can find anywhere.

The picture to the right is one of my all time favorite pictures for at least two reasons. First, it is a picture of two pastors who both serve in Wray. I know a lot of people who would say that one church would be plenty for a community as small as Wray. But these two pastors love God and each other and they also care enough about the people of Wray to build different “bridges of discipleship” to reach them. Harold and Barbara Jackson are the couple on the left. They pastor Wray Assembly of God. The couple on the right are Duke and Beth Edwards. They pastor Wray Cowboy Church…also affiliated with the Assemblies of God. Yes, you read it correctly. There are two Assemblies of God churches in Wray, Colorado, population 2200. And Harold is glad Duke is there. And Duke is glad Harold is there.

Both churches connect with a very distinct set of people in Wray. Harold and Barbara connect well with those who desire a more traditional worship experience. Duke and Beth connect with “cowboys” who generally feel out of place in a “traditional” setting. Both churches are doing well and even find ways to do things together from time to time. I’m so thankful that Pastor Jackson didn’t tell Duke he wasn’t welcome in Wray when Duke expressed a desire to start a cowboy church. I’m also thankful that the Rocky Mountain District was visionary enough to let this unique situation become a reality. Hopefully, it won’t be unique in the future.

Which brings me to the second reason I like this picture. The picture has Duke in it. Duke is a most unique leader who loves rural America and is determined to make sure that the people in rural America are not forgotten. When Duke was younger, he was a champion bull rider on the pro-rodeo circuit making a ton of money, but an injury knocked him out of competition and forced him to re-evaluate his life. Now he’s a US Missionary Rodeo Chaplain planting churches in rural America. Duke sent me this note the other day. “I was looking for stats regarding Rural Churches, trying to find out a rate at which they were closing. The stat people in Springfield couldn’t tell me, so I started calling the Districts to gather the info myself. Keep in mind that all Districts haven’t reported and some gave me ratios and some gave me numbers, plus the number of years they went back varied, but still these stats have some weight. There are about 3,300 rural A/G churches in the United States. For every 3 that close, 1 new one opens. However 60% of the new churches in rural America that open, are from church splits. And 90% of the time both the old church and the new church die in 5 years or less. What I am still trying to find is the average number of Rural A/G Churches that close each year. If I can figure that then I can figure an extinction rate. Right now from the data I have, the Rural A/G Church will be non-existent in about 18 years unless something changes. I know this email isn’t good news, but it lights a fire in me, and makes me want to plant rural churches even more.”

I thank God for people like Harold and Barbara Jackson and Duke and Beth Edwards. They are true champions who are discipling their communities empowered by God’s Spirit. It is a privilege to be on their team!

Recently, I had a conversation with a district superintendent who expressed great frustration with his efforts to encourage a culture of planting among the leaders in his district. He said, “I have always been very publicly supportive of planting, but I’ve noticed lately that anytime I talk about it, “eyes glaze over” and it’s clear to me that they are tired of hearing about it. What do I do?”

I did my best to answer him on the spot, but now that I’ve had some more time to think about it, here’s a guess as to why the eyes glaze over and how we might fix it.

First, why do “eyes glaze over?” I have no way of knowing the answer for sure, but I think could be attributed to the current “fad” status of church planting. Like other types of fads, ministry fads come and go. In the 70’s “bus ministry” was the big fad. Every church worth its salt purchased a fleet of buses and went out into the highways and byways to “compel” them to come in. The 80’s brought us the “church growth” fad and every church looked for ways to optimize their ministry strategies to help increase their ministry footprint. The 90’s were all about “church health”…it’s not the quantity of your ministry, but the quality. In the decade of the 00’s planting churches has been touted as the answer to everything. Veteran pastors who’ve lived through all the other fads intuitively know that the fad will come and go and in the end it will have little overall positive or negative impact. Indeed, David Olsen’s research makes it clear that the church has virtually tread water for the past 16 years or so…despite all of new churches planted and existing churches revitalized, the Church in America has made virtually no progress in reaching lost people. So when leaders hear anyone saying that planting churches is an essential activity of a healthy church, they greet the assertion with yawns. They think we’ve been there and done that.

But, I would beg to differ…sort of. In a way, we have been there and done that. The new churches we’ve planted over the past 16 years have mostly been new efforts at the same thing. At the end of the day, most of our church planting efforts seem to be optimized to attract churched people to come to a “better” church…”better” is defined as “casual” or “relevant” or “friendly” or “river” or “exciting.” These “new” churches are offered as a superior version because they claim to fix the irritating characteristics that often show up in maturing existing churches… “casual” replaces “formal,” “relevant” replaces “irrelevant,” “friendly” replaces “unfriendly,” “river” replaces “frozen,” and “exciting” replaces “boring” and so on… But at the end of the day, the new churches only give a new place to sit for people who already know Jesus. So, in my opinion, we haven’t actually really planted NEW churches. We’ve simply given believers new rooms to sit in and listen to someone preach a sermon. Now I’m yawning and my eyes are glazing over. No wonder many leaders realize there has to be something more. Planting the same kinds of churches gets us no where.

Thankfully, there are major exceptions to this trend. I’ve written about them on this blog. Red Rocks Church in Denver, Elevation Church in Layton, Utah, National Community Church in Washington, D.C., and Gateway Fellowship Church in Helotes, Texas, are all great examples of a new breed of new churches that started out by discipling their community first and allowing the church to emerge out of the discipling process. There is nothing to yawn about with these stories. Rather than just moving Christians around, they are connecting with people who were sociologically disconnected from the church and helping them know and follow Jesus. Discipling communities is what we need to do to end the boring cycle of chasing after the latest fad.

So, how do we help leaders stop yawning and start engaging in strategies that transform their communities? I’m not sure of all the answers, but it might start with telling the stories of the pioneers who have recaptured the genius of the early church. I think Alan Hirsch has given us some great clues as to what this looks like in his book “The Forgotten Ways.” I think we stop yawning when we hang out with leaders like Earl Creps who have abandoned the familiar path and launched out on a mission with Jesus to go out into the wild country where the church has been scarce for too long. My eyes feel clearer already!