Truth from the "old suburbs."
1. What is your current context?
Wyoming, MI is a growing, diverse, blue-collar community with all the challenges of the inner-city yet none of the cool architecture or redevelopment of the urban core. It’s the place where stuff used to be built. Factories led to thousands of small homes, schools and institutions. Fast-forward 60 years and the factories are closed but the people remain.
According to the Pew Research Center, upper-middle class whites make up the core of evangelical Christianity yet upper-middle class whites don’t live here. We have a growing number of mixed-race homes and first-generation immigrants. Schools are struggling to keep up with needs while support structures (families, churches, large employers) dwindle. Even with multiple churches on our block, the vast majority of people here have no relationship with Christ. Local churches are largely made up of people who live elsewhere and people who live here and who do belong to a church, typically drive out to a suburban, established church.
2. What are some of the unique joys/blessings of that context?
As a “family of missionary servants” we get to see the gospel take root in people’s lives—often for the first time. We see real community form. We walk people through storms and they experience the love of God tangibly. In place of nuclear families, we are family to many. We’ve baptized entire families! Seeing someone trust in the promises of God despite their painful, messy circumstances is a testimony to the One in whom they trust.
3. What are some of the unique challenges of that context?
Working with people who hover around the poverty line means “leadership development” looks a lot like helping someone create a monthly budget, talking couples through infidelity, raising money to cover medical bills, and sometimes it means making sure someone has a place to live after Thursday. “Regular” attenders show up (at best) a couple times a month. Getting them to serve or to “go deeper” is nearly impossible since they don’t have capacity after working inconsistent retail hours, making less than living wages, or juggling childcare issues.
In order to get a handful of people together you must tap into the regular rhythms of life without adding on. Folks here don’t have the space in their lives to add something new. That means providing a meal for every gathering and providing a plan for kids since they don’t have money for a sitter and kids will not “sit quietly” during the meeting/conversation/service.
4. What do you wish people knew about being a church plant/ church plant pastor?
Not all church plants are the same. Applying suburban church planting expectations and milestones to our church sets us up to fail. Discipleship and multiplication here takes longer, costs more and looks different than other settings. Time that established churches put into strategy, staff meetings or sermon planning, I put into outside fundraising, driving down to the county courthouse or starting a Community Development Corporation nonprofit. “Church” means smaller gatherings, stronger emphasis on establishing and cultivating long-term relationships, less money, less staff, slower discipleship multiplication and will always include social action.
Established or suburban church approaches just don’t work here. An urban pastor friend likes to tell suburban churches “Greetings from the future!” since what we experience is moving to the suburbs very quickly. We know what it means to minister in a post-Christian world. We are bi-vocational, we raise our own support and we have more in common with foreign mission. That's becoming mainstream soon.
Yes, it’s true that church plants don’t have the large overhead or legacy of committees and traditions that keep existing congregations from living on mission. I’ve heard established church pastors tell me they envy this. But the institution of the church (even with its committees, buildings, and traditions) offers the foundation to “do church” that plants don’t have. That foundation takes time to build so l may never see the real fruit of my own work.
5. Anything else?
Please stop asking “how many people do you get on Sunday?” You mean no harm and are supportive of our cause but that question is a tremendous discouragement to a planter. We've had as many as 125 and as few as 12 and I have no way to know how many will show up on any given Sunday. It is a punch to the gut every time.
Just like any pastor, I long to see many come to know Jesus as savior. I plant seeds, I cultivate the soil, I water it and yet God gives the growth. This is true for every congregation. But to plant a church requires momentum, to get momentum you need consistency, and to get consistency you need stability. Most days we’re working on stability—both in the lives of our congregants but also in our church. Any way your established church can partner with us to offer this stability (through funds, people, babysitting, partnership, meals, free space or even simple encouragement) is a tremendous blessing to an urban church plant.
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