Church planting recognized
as a top priority in PCA
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, The Layman, June 19, 2009
ORLANDO – In following a call to spread the Gospel, Philip Glassmeyer found he didn’t need to go to the ends of the Earth. As it turned out, there was plenty of need in his backyard.
Glassmeyer, a church planter in Las Vegas, numbers among hundreds in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) who’ve felt called over the past decade to plant a church in North America. The PCA, despite having only 340,000 members, plants an average of one new church each week in the United States and Canada. In the years ahead, the denomination aims to double that rate.
The cultural challenge is a tall one. Offering a theologically conservative and intellectual brand of Presbyterianism might seem an unnatural fit for Vegas, for instance, where bright lights and get-rich-quick promises are never in short supply. But Glassmeyer finds people to be hungry for personal connections that stem from a common faith in Jesus Christ.
“People that are living out the Gospel [in Las Vegas] are easily noticed, and those who are doing it graciously are very attractive,” Glassmeyer said in an interview. “There’s not a lot of sense of community in Las Vegas because people work different shifts from their neighbors … It’s a very lonely culture. When they get a chance to get to interact with people who have a sincere interest in them, it actually shocks them.”
Church planting received recognition as a top priority this week (June 16-19) as the PCA convened its 37th General Assembly. Coming off the denomination’s first-ever, year-over-year drop in membership in 2008, commissioners elected as Moderator a veteran of the church planting business – Brad Bradley, founder of the PCA’s Southwest Church Planting Network.
Winning support for the idea of spreading the Gospel isn’t difficult in this evangelical denomination, according to PCA Church Planting Coordinator Ted Powers. But getting some congregations to think anew about their own neighborhood as an urgent mission field can at times be difficult.
“We have churches that are very committed to world missions, and give generously and sacrificially to world missions, but they just don’t see North America as a mission field,” Powers said. “There’s still the perception that America is pretty well churched … I don’t think people realize what a vast and diverse mission field America has increasingly become.”
Re-conceiving of the mission field is exactly what’s required, Powers said. The vast majority of Americans in communities from coast to coast aren’t attending church on any given Sunday morning, he noted. (David T. Olson of the American Church Research Project makes the same observation in Zondervan’s 2008 title, The American Church in Crisis). And the best way to reach the unchurched, he said, is often through new church starts.
The PCA is taking aim at America’s crossroads. Urban centers, as well as regions teeming with ethnic and cultural diversity, are among the targets of this denomination, which has to date been largely concentrated in rural and suburban areas where Presbyterianism has historical roots. Now PCA churches increasingly offer English as a second language classes as a crucial ministry for building cultural bridges with immigrants.
This strategy of spanning cultural divides requires lots of grassroots, church planting networks, Powers said. Rather than rely on the denomination to fund and coordinate new church plants, presbyteries are encouraged to work with others in their regions to fund and staff local resourcing organizations. About 26 such church-planting networks now exist across the country, he said, adding that the denomination needs more.
“With these networks, there are more local support systems – mentoring, coaching support systems – that are in place,” Powers said. “That’s contributing to healthier churches and more successful plants.”
On the ground, especially in regions where Presbyterianism is hardly known, church planters are introducing people to the basics of Reformed practice. On the U.S.-Mexico border, for instance, the PCA’s Border Evangelism and Mercy Ministries (BEAMM) program is trying to grow its network of 10 current church plants to 42 by 2020. In this largely Catholic and Spanish-speaking region, that means church planters find they need bi-lingual abilities, class sensitivity and loads of patience.
Progress can be slow, BEAMM Coordinator Gary Bowman said, in part because “very few Catholics [in the region] read the Bible.” But that doesn’t diminish his sense of urgency.
“You have all this U.S. influence in the region, but it’s usually the worst kind of U.S. influence,” Bowman said. “And on the other side of the border, you have all these people looking for jobs, and they aren’t interested in much else. But they need spiritual food, too. They need the Gospel.”
Powers said he’s pleased with the PCA’s church-planting progress, especially in the area new church retention. A recent survey conducted by the PCA’s Mission to North America office found that a remarkably high 94 percent of churches planted between 2002 and 2007 are still operational. If presbyteries keep creating strong networks, Powers said, the church has reason to believe failure rates will continue to be low.