The planter homage: there’s much shame in being a church planter: a response to Stephen Kneale

I was recently pointed in the direction of an article written by Stephen Kneale, a pastor and blogger serving Christ in Oldham, entitled “The planter mirage: There’s no shame in being an ordinary pastor”.

The post was thought-provoking, but I found less to agree with here than some of Stephen’s other contributions and would like to respond to a couple of the points raised, as someone who has been actively engaged in UK church planting for 14 years, am pastor of a church that has in the past twelve directly overseen the planting, replanting, and revitalisation of over ten churches, and from which a larger church planting cooperative effort has sprung in the form of Grace Baptist Partnership.

I should start by acknowledging this note from one of Stephen’s friends highlighted in the article:

Stephen is not against planting… but believes we need more honesty about what is actually happening.

I am glad to hear that Stephen is not against planting and completely agree that we need more honesty about what is actually happening – although our application of this second point is perhaps somewhat different. For there to be full honesty, there must first be clarity and I hope that some of what I say might contribute to such.

I am increasingly dubious of our use of the term ‘church planter’. I am, in fact, inclined to go so far as to say there is no such thing as a church planter.

A bit of an overstatement is it not? I seldom find overstatement helpful or clarifying. Especially from someone who is “not against planting”, I would expect there to be some logical acknowledgement that planting requires a planter – unless we adhere to the hyper-Calvinistic idea that only God plants. The apostle Paul said of the church at Corinth “I planted.” What is someone who plants but a planter?

I am increasingly sceptical of the sheer number of people appropriating that term who have either never been involved in planting a church or have only ever sent others off to a plant. I’m entirely unclear how either of these things makes one a ‘planter’. What, precisely, distinguishes these guys from being pastors who have sent people to pastor other churches?

Perhaps I move in quite different circles to Stephen but I am not at all wowed by the number of professed church planters, never mind “the sheer number” of illegitimate ones he mentions. Be that as it may, misappropriation of a term is surely not the term’s fault but that of those who have misappropriated it! The role of “church planter” is precisely worded and clearly defined in itself to the point that if someone who is not doing “church planting” says they are or if they call themselves a “church planter” without a planted church to show for themselves, it should be so easy to see no exposure is necessary. Stephen wonders of the two types of person in view, what makes them a planter? I’m afraid I cannot help him with the person who has never been involved in planting a church. For such a person to call himself a church planter is not only disingenuous but dishonest. As for the one who has sent others off to plant – I would first make an ecclesiological clarification to the person: it is the church - the gathered assembly of Spirit-empowered, repentant, believing, baptised, followers of Jesus Christ - not an individual, who should send people off or set them aside for church planting. The church, like my own, can then rightly be called “a church-planting church”. Depending on the nature and expression of the pastor of such a church’s role and his oversight of and involvement with such a church planting project, he may or may not rightly be referred to as a church planter. What distinguishes such a person from a pastor who has sent people to pastor other churches?

1.     Again hopefully, it is not this person but the church who should send the people off. A pastor cannot and should not in his own authority send anyone off, but can and should lead the church to do so, as guided by the Spirit through the word in response to open doors.

2.     The pastor of such a church is, sadly, at present quite unique among other pastors. I remember accompanying my father, who leads Grace Baptist Partnership, to a midweek meeting at a church in another part of London. The hall was full, and I gathered the church must have at least a couple hundred people attending on Sundays. Afterwards we talked with the pastor about the church potentially being involved in a church planting project in a needy area much closer to them than to us. It became clear to me that planting was not a priority for this, by British evangelical standards, large church – or at least for its pastor. So it fell to our church, under my father’s pastoral leadership at the time, to do the work. We had maybe 30 people. The brunt of the ministry, leadership, vision, and external teaching support fell on my father overseeing three men on the ground, each of whom had other jobs. Pastoral ministry at our local church would increasingly fall on me, immediately preceding and following my appointment as assistant pastor now eight years ago. I would become the pastor of a church planting church, but my father was a church planting pastor, and really, a church planter. While we can pray for the day when the majority of churches commit themselves more faithfully to reproducing other churches, the reality is at present very different in this country and until the situation changes, the pastor of a 30 person church who leads in church planting when the 200 person church won’t has earned whatever nice title people choose to give him, in my opinion.

3.     There is a massive difference between sending someone to plant a church and sending someone to pastor a church. There is no church to pastor, necessitating a church to be planted. Those sent out to work on the ground often require direction, oversight, counsel, care, emotional and pastoral support, administrative assistance and a host of other things that most pastors would not expect to do so much of when one of their pastors/elders is sent off to pastor another church.

I understand why the term is applied to those who have been sent off as leaders of core teams to establish new churches. But once you have sent a group of people, established regular meetings at which the Word is being faithfully taught and you are taking communion, why do we continue to call that a plant and the guy leading it a planter? It’s not a plant; it’s a church. He’s not a planter; he’s a pastor (or elder or whatever term your particular polity favours).

To be honest, I don’t understand why the term is applied to those so described! These people have basically been sent out with a small church and the “church planter” is basically pastor of a new fragment of an old church started in a different community. Nothing wrong with that, but it is not church planting – more like church transplanting. The for-real church planters I know seldom have the luxury of a core group of people beyond their family – if they even have one of those. If they have such a group, it is very small – more like four or six, not the 30 plus I have seen recommended by some. In time, through faithful evangelism, Bible study, and preaching I have seen the three become 30 – sometimes more, sometimes still less but plodding on for the glory of God and advancement of the kingdom.

I suspect the term ‘planter’ is favoured because we have built an ethereal sense of wonder around planting. At the moment, church planting is in vogue. Evidently, we need more churches and I’m not implying that we shouldn’t be pushing for churches to establish more churches. But as Dave notes in his write-up, I do think we need more honesty about it. Whilst I know there are places making real headway on these things, all too often a snazzy website and shifting believers from one church to another passes as great gospel success.

Perhaps some have built an ethereal sense of wonder around planting – but I am not quite sure who. Those who have must be like those aforementioned guys who call themselves church planters but have never done the work of church planting. There is nothing ethereal or wondrous in planting itself and as someone who does not self-identify as a church planter but to whom the word could by some be applied, I make it a point to disabuse people of such notions. It is often more brutal than beautiful, at least at the subjective level, but the hope is that it is beautiful indeed to the Lord and blessed by him. Church planting is fundamentally an evangelistic endeavour, and in Britain’s varied secularist and idolatrous missionary contexts is incredibly challenging, gritty work undertaken by faithful, prayerful men committed to long-haul ministry with little if any immediate or sudden fruit.

One of the problems here is that we have so fetishised planting that we view it as the summum bonum. We will call ourselves ‘planters’ because it carries a level of cachet that being an ordinary pastor doesn’t. It sets us apart even though, to those looking on, we appear to be identical to every other pastor pastoring a church. Often, when we do plant, we cling onto the label ‘church plant’ for as long as we can because being a ‘plant’ is sexier than simply being another church. Where we choose to plant is often telling too. Again, whilst there are people genuinely seeking to establish churches where there are none, there are also churches happy to establish congregations on top of other existing churches or in areas close to us that we could reach from where we are. Much of this is driven by the view that church planting is a good of itself. As a result, instead of establishing churches where they are most needed, we set them up wherever we are able and argue that it is simply a good thing to have more churches.

Fetishised? Really? I could almost say I wish! It would be preferable to the pessimism, cynicism, sniping, snarking, slandering, opposition, and general faffing about 15 years of such work here has taught me to expect. There has been something of a shift in some ways: from talking about closing churches to planting churches especially in the last 10 or so years has been incredibly heartening but most seem to need persuasion. Perhaps to others the idea of church planting is acceptable, so long as it is not happening near them and does not have the potential to involve any of their members. None of the church planters I know personally bandy about the term in the manipulative, attention seeking way you describe nor do they have the self-absorbed motives and intentions you would ascribe to them, and again if said person appears to be identical to every other pastor the observing people are not looking at the right person or they are not looking at all close enough. The church plants I have known have longed to reach a stage of viability and autonomy as a constituted church. Anyone who has been at all involved close up and personally with church planting should find the idea that “being a ‘plant’ is sexier than simply being another church” so bafflingly bizarre and contrary to their experience it beggars belief. As for the oft repeated claim, the myth really, that because “an area” (variously defined) has a church it doesn’t need another: a church may say “that’s an area close to us that we could reach from where we are” but if that is the case, why aren’t they reaching that area? You could reach that area, but are you? When asked the question, I have yet to hear anyone answer in the affirmative. But suppose they are… People’s minds are so selfish and small they don’t really expect God to do such a great work in their area that their small chapel can’t contain them let alone people from other nearby areas. Not I, so far as I can help it - thus I am in the very early stages of thinking through a church planting opportunity in another area quite literally on our doorstep, worshipped on my day off at a church plant in another area on our doorstep, and will meet today with a brother planting a church in yet another such area. To God be the glory! I really don’t see what the problem is. We can’t reach all the 28,500 people in the 1.8 sq. miles of Wood Green never-mind those in Bounds Green, Palmers Green, and Winchmore Hill. I can’t help but suspect the concerns expressed by anti-church planting churches are rooted in frustrations with attendance numbers, finances, congregational apathy, and so forth that are taken out on the proposed church plants.

It may be that we want to own the label ‘planter’ because we are keen to see churches planted. But apart from a handful of megachurch pastors who want to build as big a church as possible, who isn’t interested in planting? Whilst some are simply overly cautious, having 300 members or more and still feeling like everything is too fragile to consider planting out, most pastors I know talk about wanting to plant ‘when they’re able’. Does that make them planters? If a guy has sent people out to start a new plant, does he become a planter then? If the guy leading the new church is a planter because he’s leading a church plant, what makes the bloke sending him a planter when he hasn’t led a church plant? How do we account for churches who have planted churches but whose pastors remain adamant they are still pastors just as they were before?

Who isn’t interested in planting? Loads of people. I sometimes fear the majority of people. Though not privy to all of the details, I do not think there is a single church plant, replant, or revitalisation we or Grace Baptist Partnership has been involved in that has not encountered some opposition from the very people - professedly Christ’s people - who really should support and encourage it. If most pastors (I would love to know how many ‘most’ constitutes, and who and where these people are as I have certainly not met them!) really want to plant when they are able, I rejoice. There are so many dark swathes across our land, and more than a few dark corners in our cities desperately in need of such men. When they are able, or preferably when they learn that they are never able but God is always able, they will get a standing slow clap from me. People can work the titles out for themselves, the semantics are not particularly of interest to me. What is of interest is the proclamation of the gospel of Christ and the establishment of Christian points of light across our spiritually gloomy landscape.

I have no problem with people planting churches for a variety of reasons. I accept that if you outgrow your building, it makes sense to send a chunk of your congregation off to another unreached area and establish a new work there. Whilst it is not what we would hope for, sometimes churches are established out of painful church splits. These things do happen and the Lord can turn them for good. Nonetheless, I think we need a bit of honesty about it when it happens. Sometimes it is not a result of strategic vision, it is just a sensible – or inevitable – consequence of what is going on. That’s no bad thing, but let’s just be upfront about what it is. By the same token, let’s stop planting churches just because we decide planting churches in inherently a good thing to do regardless of where they are and what they are doing. Let’s plant where churches are needed rather than for the sake of being able to say, ‘look! We planted a church!’

As mentioned before, I don’t believe that first scenario rightly constitutes a church plant. It is a church transplant, or a church start. Church planting is rightly understood intrinsically organic and intensely evangelistic. Likewise with the new church from a church split, sometimes called a “splant”. As the paragraph continues, again I find the motives and attitudes expressed foreign to the church planters I know. Does anyone really plant a church just because it is a good thing, without thought or care to the area and the approach? They must be mad! Do churches plant for the sake of being able to say “Look! We planted a church!” If so, they are having a laugh. Like the green patriot who eagerly enlisted with visions of glory and dreams of getting the girl then made it to the trenches of the Somme, their excitement will soon fade when the reality sets in.

At the same time, let’s recognise that we do not plant church plants. We plant churches. Once you have planted a church, it is a church. Once you have established your plant as an independent church, you are no longer a planter but a pastor. And yes, you may well grow your church and plant again. But you will not be the planter, you will have been the pastor who sent off someone else to pastor another church. When we recognise that there is no special category for pastors who may ascend to the dizzy heights of being ‘planters’, we might just find fewer people adopting the term. There are pastors and there are those sent to pastor newly established churches. There is no shame in it.

The church that has been planted may for a season be pastorally led by the man who led in planting it. Indeed, he may be recognised as its pastor. Such a person, unlike any pastor who follows, is unique because he was there when it began, helped in or initiated its beginning, and went through the ups and downs, the highs and the heartaches of the planting process that those who follow him may never fully know or appreciate. He may remain as pastor. Or he may see his role more like the apostles and evangelists of the early church – planting a church, entrusting it to someone else to water, and moving on to the next place. In any case, again the title is not particularly important, except to clarify the nature of his role and function. It is, after all, God who gives the increase.

I do not recognise the “dizzy heights” of which Stephen speaks, albeit sarcastically, and any church planter worth his salt won’t either. Stephen says “there is no shame in being an ordinary church pastor”. Fair enough. Perhaps that is the difference then, between a pastor and a church planter. A biblical church planter, after the great Church Planter, will know much shame and shaming – but endure it all for the sake of future joy. Far from dizzying heights, church planting is a dark garden of agonised prayer and weeping face down on a cold rock, a room of betrayal, a courtyard of condemnation, a path of suffering, and if there are dizzying heights to be had they are those of a cross on a hill overlooking a wayward and wicked people. There is much shame in it – sadly dished out by unsympathetic and resentful believers and hostile unbelievers alike. But as the seed goes down into the ground and dies, out of its rotted shell springs new life and with it a newly realised hope for lost people.

“To be sure, some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of good will. These preach out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, thinking that they will cause me trouble in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Only that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice.” Philippians 1:15-18

For more on the subject, lest anything I have said be unclear, you can read:

Mythbusters: dispelling common myths about church planting 

Church planting from 1 Corinthians 2:1-5