Developing Innovative Faith Communities

Twenty-First Century Church Planting for North America.

Mission Alive is a church planting organization. From the beginning, Mission Alive has sought to identify people God is calling to plant churches, equip them, and send them out to plant new churches. Of course, with the ever-changing cultural landscape of North America, we realize that church planting in the twenty-first century will require a new imagination for how missionaries plant new churches.

The need for a new imagination is why Mission Alive uses the language of developing innovative faith communities when we talk about church planting. Sending missionaries to clone existing churches that were started in the twentieth century, or sometimes as old as the nineteenth century, seems unwise. There are missiological reasons, rooted in both theology and praxis, for not wanting to simply replicate the past. In short, the organization and operation of any church should develop from how the Spirit gifts the group of believers to serve as followers of Jesus Christ. Replicating existing churches begins with a pre-determined organizational and operational form that forces the group of believers into that mold, resisting and even inhibiting anything that doesn’t conform with that form. In other words, the predetermined church has space for people whose Spirit-empowered gifts fit within that form but not so much for those whose giftedness does not fit with the form.¹

Practically speaking, the number of people serving full-time in vocational ministry is in decline. As existing churches decline, so do their budgets and this also means less money to support missionaries. So those called to plant new churches will often need to do so as bi-vocational ministers.² A bi-vocational approach also requires a new imagination for the mission of church planting.

It is for these reasons that Mission Alive has started using the language of developing innovative faith communities, particularly within marginalized communities. Yet that raises the question of what might innovation look like and that is what I am thinking about in this post. Practically speaking, how might a bi-vocational missionary engage an increasingly dechurched and unchurched population in marginalized communities, where there is often a suspicion towards churches?

The first step is always to dwell within the community, listening and learning how to love the people where they are as servants to the people. Any attempt to engage a community of people without this first step is out of sync with Jesus, who came as a servant. Having spent time within a community, learning about its history as well as its struggles and needs, there might be an opportunity to start a small business that meets the needs of that community and allow that work to open space for engaging the people with the gospel. I got this idea from overhearing an ideologically driven podcast where the guests were talking about how to increase their influence. The idea the podcasters had was to open coffee shops in various communities that would also be a place to influence people through discussions, available literature, etc… at the coffee shop.

Well, overhearing this idea about starting new coffee shops as a means of increasing influence got me thinking about the future of the church and the endeavor of developing innovative faith communities. An innovative approach would be for a bi-vocational ministry team to develop a small business that would meet a need in the community. A coffee shop is one such business but there are already plenty of coffee shops in most communities. However, there are other kinds of businesses, from laundry mats to small grocery stores or even a restaurant that might be viable.

The bi-vocational approach would mean that a team initially finds jobs that can provide income but then someone with good entrepreneurial skills would begin a small business. Starting such a business would require some fundraising but that is a doable task. Given also some of the suspicion that certain communities might have towards Christianity and organized religion, I believe this approach needs to be wise enough not to only draw those who are already Christians. I know of two local coffee houses that began as Christian ministries and only seemed to draw people who are already Christians. There’s nothing wrong per se about attracting Christians but the purpose of developing innovative faith communities is to reach those who are not Christians.

If this bi-vocational approach is the way forward in developing innovative faith communities, then Christian universities will need to prepare those who are called by God into ministry for bi-vocational ministry. Fortunately, this is starting to happen.

1. K. Rex Butts, Gospel Portraits: Reading Scripture as Participants in the Mission of God, Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2022. In Chapter 10, the last chapter, titled “The Spirit-Filled Church: All People Blessed to Bless All People” goes into more detail on the formation of church based on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit rather than a predetermined form or pattern for the organizational and operational form of church.

2. Like almost anything, there are pros and cons to both full-time and bi-vocational ministry. While a new church may discern the need for a person to serve as a full-time minister and raise enough contributions to make this possible, the reality is that we need to start preparing those God is calling into ministry to serve bi-vocationally.

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K. Rex Butts, D.Min, serves as the lead minister/pastor with the Newark Church of Christ in Newark, DE, and is the author of Gospel Portraits: Reading Scripture as Participants in the Mission of God. Rex holds a Doctor of Ministry in Contextual Theology from Northern Seminary in Lisle, IL, and a Master of Divinity from Harding School of Theology in Memphis, TN. He is married to Laura, and together they have three children.