I was doing my Bible study this morning in Romans 12:3-8 and I was putting together my notes for Sunday morning Bible study. I started thinking about something that I've been pondering for a while now. Now, the passage talks about Spiritual gifts, but it also mentions the body of Christ and how the body fits together. I also was drawn to Matthew 28:19-20, which is known as the Great Commission to the church. The very words of Jesus command us to go and make disciples. I have thought about church planting recently (not planning on leaving New Bridge to plant, just thinking about planting in today's church culture", as well.
A few things have been bothering me about church planting in today's culture and I just wanted to air them out and maybe get some feedback on what I'm thinking here. I may be completely wrong here, but I have a little bit of a criticism for church plants/planters and I think we need to reevaluate our methods and mindset towards opening the doors to new churches.
The trouble in my mind revolves around a question that I have. The question is this: why do so many of today's church plants have to have the same name as their parent church? Don't get me wrong. I don't want to come off as a hater here. I'm not opposed to church PLANTING. What I am opposed to is church FRANCHISING. I currently minister at New Bridge Baptist Church in Sandston, Virginia, which is just outside of Richmond. Let's say that we decide to plant a church. If we follow the model of the megachurch (again, not hating on megachurches. Just making an observation), our church plant will be called "New Bridge: 'New Location'" (i.e. New Bridge: South, New Bridge: Mechanicsville, etc). The daughter church may have a campus pastor, but will air messages by the planting churches pastor (I am NOT saying that our pastor has this mindset, by they way! I'm just creating a fictitious example here). The plant will probably be under some control, if not mainly controlled by the planting church. Maybe I'm wrong, but this seems to be the pattern. I thought church plants were supposed to be comprised of a team that was raised up, supported, and then eventually cut loose to do their own ministry.
Why are churches building earthly empires instead of the Kingdom of God? It just seems to me like there are some churches who want to talk about the number of campuses that they possess way too much instead of just planting a church and letting it just be a church. Can a church do good things if it has the name of the parent church? Sure, it can. I just wonder if the franchising mindset behind planting churches isn't contributing to the celebrity of churches and pastors, which is contributing to an increasing dropout rate in the church today. Maybe I'm just not making any sense here. Am I alone here or am I being way too hard on the church? I would love to hear some thoughts on this.
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