The passion for church planting in America continues to gain momentum, apparently driven by a zeal to re-create the church to be culturally relevant. I have participated in two local training events focused on church planting, attended by a cadre of young church planters as well as representatives of established churches who are giving renewed priority to starting new work.

Church planting has always been the watermark of overseas missions. Missionaries go to proclaim the gospel to a lost world and rejoice when people come to faith in Christ and are baptized. Unless they are gathered into a congregation or fellowship, however, there is little hope of growth, discipleship and spiritual maturity. A local indigenous church becomes a nucleus of ongoing witness in a village or community that goes beyond the work of a missionary. If spiritual vital, it has the potential for reproducing and multiplying as its members extend its witness to other neighborhoods.

But church planting has languished in America. No one would declare even the Bible belt of the South to be over-churched, but churches tend to want to grow their own congregation rather than relinquish dedicated members to start new ones. Outside the South, cultural traditions and spiritual indifference has created formidable barriers to church planting efforts. Yet more and more Americans are “unchurched” even where there are churches on every corner.

In my own relatively small town there are six Southern Baptist churches and others of every conceivable denomination, yet I am aware of current projects to start three new Baptist churches. The Southern Baptist Convention reports hundreds of new churches started each year, yet the net growth in total churches is miniscule. What that reflects is the fact that many churches are dying.

It is a fact that newer and smaller churches grow faster than older and larger churches. There is a younger generation of God-called pastors who are uninterested in stepping into pastorates or staff roles in established churches and maintaining programs primarily designed to serve members and their families. Massive resources are expended on carrying on traditions and ministering to the redeemed with little outreach and community impact.

Many smaller, historic churches are in the midst of extensive housing developments and areas of demographic growth but more interested in maintaining their sweet, little fellowship and family power structures than changing to reach new people around them. Formerly large, inner-city churches with massive facilities are dying congregations with a few hundred grey-haired worshippers or less gathering faithfully in a relatively empty sanctuary.

Seminaries have been noticing a trend for sometime of students being uninterested in accepting calls to pastor dying churches or even larger, growing congregations that report few baptisms each year. “I’ll start my own church, thank you,” seems to be the attitude of those who have no desire to conform to the time-consuming demands of a traditional church. They want to make a difference in their community, impact our culture and reach the spiritual needs of people who are not inclined to attend a church just because it is there.

It is unfortunate that many established churches see new starts as threatening or competitive. Others recognize the trend and are starting satellite congregations. We need to recognize that new forms of doctrinally-sound ecclesiology are needed to change the pattern of decline and evangelize our increasingly secular society. One group is creatively seeking to establish “missional communities” in apartment complexes and unchurched, ethnically diverse areas. Planting new churches is an encouraging trend for extending God’s kingdom, but they are churches that won’t look like what we have been used to in the past.