When The Planters Become the Planted

It is now a well known fact that the chaps and chappesses at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity in the Archdiocese of Brompton are buying up pretty well all of Greater London. "Church Planting" they call it, so we don't worry too much. Like a game of ecclesial monopoly, the Alpha-cash-advantaged posse of Jesus Lovers at SW7 are staking their claim on every empty church in the area. 

I will say now, that I favour "church planting", and that it is a credible way of reaching out to new communities. Perhaps where I struggle with it, whoever the planter of choice, is when it imposes a single-mode approach to our broad faith, or if by the advantage of cash it can replace the impoverished. If I had millions in the bank, I could church plant to my heart's content - badge them all as contemporary modern catholic and staff them with those of my own perspective. I wouldn't because I am not sure that the Gospel would want that of me. This is just my perspective - as one who favours breadth of expression in a geographical area - not one that says we are all the same, thank you very much. 

But there is a new peril on the horizon for the spare un-planted bits of very-planted London. It is this. 

Saddleback Church is of the American model of church - which is to say that it is big. There are smaller Anglican Provinces. I can't claim a great knowledge of its workings, but it is a very large organisation. You may have heard of others - Willow Creek, the one that invented leadership is another such example. In fact, in the case of the latter, its members all have good thighs, because the church has so many summits. Enough if that.

I have to say here that I don't get this idea of MegaChurch. Is bigger better? Is size important? Is success and the appearance of success a key factor in church growth? How must it be when the 'vicar' is a world-famous, away on conferences sort of person whose time you will never get? There may be answers to all of things, and good answers too - and I am not setting my stall out against these organisations. If I believe that the Holy Spirit is present in my church, then I have to believe that The Lord knows what he is doing over there! I am almost certainly a product of my middle-class white English upbringing, so a parish gathering that exceeds 150 gives me a nose-bleed! 

However, I do have a problem with this idea of church planting London from the comfort of US high-octane Holy Spirit central. This sort of feels like "our way is best, so we are coming over to set up our corporate model and do the job that we think you aren't doing well enough". The idea of 'church as franchise' is where I have a fundamental issue with planting - because I believe a church is a contextual gathering of Christians in a geographical area (you know, like a parish) that bears the specific characteristics of the interaction between the people and their spiritual leader. I don't believe that I can cut off a limb of Ss Philip & James Whitton and shove it in the ground somewhere else (already served by a parish church and its priest, lest we forget) and believe that it is another, new, Ss Philip & James. What we do works here because it is of us and for us, and for those who live around us. 

So, will American MegaChurch Inc work in London? The business side of my cerebral cortex feels that the market is saturated in these parts, and the other part just thinks this is, well, arrogant. Even before we count the churches outside of the Church of England, there are 400 odd parishes in London, over 500 worship centres. Add to that the Catholics and the Free Churches, the independents and Uncle Tom Cobbly and All, and I think that we have London covered thank you very much. Yes, you could buy my church with your cash and yes, you might even get more bums on seats in the short term but there is more, so much more, to London parish life, or indeed British parish life, and money just won't cover that. 

However, in the end I sense that this won't be my battle. I do wonder if Saddleback aren't going to queer the pitch of my brothers and sisters over at HTB. Upon their turf of choice will this fight be fought. 

Is Church Planting a One-Sided Game?

In the natural world of nature, beasts grow by dropping seeds or sprogs, or by sending roots through the dark earth. I am not sure that I believe in magical storks or pink pudgy babies falling from stars, so I am left with this clumsy biological fact. And it works. Just look out of the window - life everywhere, all born of an older life elsewhere. 

Now that I have earned a PhD in the natural sciences, I can make a pronouncement or two about the life of the church.

I live in the heartlands of what is affectionately known as Aitchteebee - a super-church in the City that gave birth to that rarely seen thing, the Alpha Course. You speak to Christians around here, you fast discover that a great number of churches in this part of the world are Aitchteebee Plants. Frankly, they are almost without exception successful, growing and thriving places - and good for them. Someone has to be. 

Sometimes, I lose heart. I lose heart because as a catholic kind of Christian, it feels (even if it only a feeling) that our 'end' of things is well into terminal decline, with half our people leaving to be what they would now term as 'proper Catholics'. This means that there are precisely eight Anglo-Catholic priests in the whole of Britain, and so I lose heart when I see my brothers and sisters of the evangelical wing having it away with new churches, world-famous nurture courses and growth beyond all measure. 

In trying to work out why this is, I have to ask what might be going on. Is evangelicalism the only expression of faith supported by God? Nope. Is it about money? Possibly. Is the whole world evangelical except for the eight of us who like to faun over thuribles for a living? Nope. So what is it then?

It has to be a heart to church plant. Like every organic being in the whole of God's creation (and we could argue that a perfect model exists for us right there), big things emit little baby things that grow into the next big things. Yet we Anglo-Catholics just don't seem to want to bother. The sad thing is, we are easy transplants - all we need is a Mass Set, and a Bible and we are a liturgical body. I do not believe that my friends in the evangelical wing of the church have the only successful plant-model - they simply have the only plant-model (and cash, which helps, of course). 

I know that there are successful catholic communities that could plant a church (and if any of us simply waited for enough cash then we would get nowhere fast). I am not advocating a fight-back on the part of the catholics, because I believe that the world needs all of us. But it needs us by balance. For this to happen, people like me could learn a lesson from those who seem to know better, to look beyond the stylistic issues (or even celebrate the differences) and get on and grow as nature intended.