Putting the "Hip" in Church Planting Fellowships . . .

I'm Not Cool . . . and That's Getting to Be More and More Okay

     About ten years ago, I had the honor of serving for two years with Campus Crusade for Christ. (Yes, for the most part, I still refer to it as Crusade.) One of the tremendous blessings of serving with Crusade for that time period was working with some other Christians whom I still think of fondly. I remember there was a song that my good friend Seth and I latched on to for a little while by a guy named Scott Krippayne. The title, "I'm Not Cool," pretty much conveys the gist of the song. Scott Krippayne had come to the realization that a lack of coolness didn't ultimately undermine God's love for him. (If you want to check it out, I put a link to the song on YouTube at the end of this post.)

     The song gets across a pretty fundamental reality that should be held close to the heart of every Christian, not only because it's comforting to those of us who would rather go to a historical sight than Six Flags, but because it's biblical. And if that doesn't run like rebar through our lives as Christians, we better double-check what is, right? Being cool, hip, good looking - none of these things are commended to the church of Jesus Christ as being a focal point of our identity. If anything, we're given some pretty clear ideas that God delights to use those who aren't in those categories for the very purpose of showing how great He is through those whom the world at large would write off as unimportant, obscure, and undesirable. It's a hard thing keep in view when sin is in the business of self-promotion, but it's necessary. Which brings me to what this post is about - and what I'll be writing about over the next number of days in the hope that it resonates with some folks and provides perspective on what I believe is a subtle, yet pervasive issue affecting church planting fellowships in the United States.

Putting the "Hip" in Church Planting Fellowships

     I really need to kick this off by stating something with crystal clarity: I am thrilled at the resurgence of church planting as a focus among denominational and para-local church organizations. It's a blessing and I rejoice that there are more and more who are heeding a call to serve the cause of Christ by proclaiming the gospel to communities devoid of significant and faithful gospel witness. I have friends who have left and are leaving the "security" of other positions to pursue church planting in the very contexts that I'll be talking about here. Further, what I'm going to be discussing over the next handful of days isn't something that should be discarded as worthless or unworthy of pursuit. Let me write, in bold letters, that my desire is that we would become aware that an over-emphasis on a particular "kind" of person or subculture can have unwanted consequences that we would do well to check ourselves on. That's my disclaimer. So don't get hot under the collar because of stodgy old Chris. I hope that's clear at the outset and should be clear throughout the posts on this issue. Good deal? Alright.

     The posts to come will talk about specific aspects of the concern I'm voicing here, but today I'm giving the birds' eye view. It's been alluded to already in the bolded words above, but what my intent is over these posts concerns a pattern I've become concerned about lately for a few significant reasons. Essentially, what I've become troubled by is the increasing tendency among church planting fellowships over the past twenty-five years to focus church planting efforts on what are seen as majority or emerging subcultures. The efforts are put forth to send out a church planter who is passionate about - or identifies with - a particular subculture, in the hopes that the shared affinity, concerns, likes, appearance, clothes, you name it, will serve as a magnet to draw people into the new church. Take a guy who has a heart for evangelism and also happens to really like fishing and drop him off in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. That's a really boiled down, over-simplified idea of the approach.

     So what's wrong with it? Well, frankly, nothing - inherently. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with a church planter liking the same music or sports team as the folks he's seeking to reach. It can be an asset. However, the inherent non-issue can become a real issue fast. And the fact that is an issue can stay well under the radar screen until some damage has been done. So as we move into looking at this trend in church planting - particularly the unintended "side-effects," I want to pose a few questions to stir some thought related to why this inherently benign approach can quickly undercut some very important priorities of New Testament ministry:

• How does this square with Paul's missionary heart that reveals a design to maintain a gospel-centered focus and still work to serve "all people" in the proclamation of the gospel?
• Who decides what communities/subcultures are more or less in need of church planting? Should Anytown, which has 30,000 residents (20% of which are considered "aging") and an employment environment of low-mid income manufacturing and only two decent churches, be deprived of a gospel-centered church in favor of Cooltown, which has 50,000 residents, twenty decent churches, and a large percentage of unchurched baby boomers and tech professionals?
• When targeting subcultures, what can inevitably become the missional focus - the people in the subculture or proclaiming the gospel to the community as a whole?
• What happens to the non-targeted subcultures? Honestly speaking, are there many church planting initiatives seeking to incorporate the elderly? The "religious yet unsaved"? The home-bodies? The guys working shift jobs?
• When riding cultural trends, is there a danger of losing connection with the larger history of the church throughout the world?
• And finally, When church planting takes on this approach as an identity, is there a real danger to rely (inappropriately) more on these cultural affinities than on the power of the Holy Spirit to bring dead sinners to life and put their trust in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

     These questions are important. And again, they're not meant to lop off anyone's legs. But they are there to provoke some thought about why we do what we do and how we do it. By way of extension, most of these questions are equally applicable to existing local churches and the way we approach our "philosophy of ministry" in our relationship to ministry and culture. Over the next number of days, I want to draw out what I believe are some unintended, yet major consequences that attend an over-identifying our philosophy of ministry with the targeting of sub-cultures small and large. I do hope that this can be truly edifying and perhaps stir up some of us not to avoid church planting as a ministry, but to pursue church planting with even greater vigor and dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ.

As promised, here's the song "I'm Not Cool" by Scott Krippayne:

(I appreciate the reference to the bizarre nature of the El Camino.)