Against church plants
I thought that headline might be intriguingly provocative!
There are large areas of our land where there is no witness at all for the biblical gospel of Christ. Vast areas of rural Britain, enormous run-down housing estates and many new developments on ‘greenfield’ sites have no gospel church holding out the word of life to them. Here, for certain, we should be doing our best to plant new churches.
But often I am finding that various Christian groups are making efforts to set up a church in towns which already have strong gospel churches. Why are they doing this? Of course, it can be said that there are more than enough non-Christians to fill lots more churches. And if the group is successful we should rejoice. It could also, no doubt, be said that the existing churches could be doing more to reach out. But is church-planting in such places as high a priority as seeking to plant where at present there are none?
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …