Transforming Church

Pastors nominated to participate will be asked to describe how multiplication works in their congregations. Through the three years of our learning journey, each participating church will be challenged to demonstrate the principle that all healthy organisms reproduce, with a starting point of discipleship.

Shifting the Culture from Membership to Discipleship
The biggest challenge in remaking a membership church into a discipleship community is getting the buy in of the lay leadership. Most membership churches do not have a commitment to discipleship as a requirement for being a council leader. Hence, when the pastor starts preaching discipleship from the pulpit, the laity looks at the leadership and says, “When I see them buying in, then I’ll consider it. Until then, I’ll treat this as a fine idea, but it’s just rhetoric.”

Because of the critical need for lay leaders buying in, we will ask each pastor participant to develop a personal board of directors. These lay leaders will serve as a sounding board during the three year learning journey, and accompany the pastor to signature ministry visits. This team will get the chance to experience healthy congregations, learn about discipleship, their spiritual gifts, and to be a ministry team together (as contrasted with a committee; to see the difference, see this related article).

Together, the participating pastor and the personal board of directors will develop a vision and strategy for creating a healthy body of Christ with discipleship and multiplication in the DNA.

The DNA of multiplying churches
DNA was the theme of the Exponential conference. I hear the term used quite often in describing the healthy body of Christ we aspire to create. The question is, what is that DNA? One of the keynoters at Exponential put it this way: “The D is divine truth, the N is nurturing relationships, and the A is apostolic action. We do a pretty good job on the D and the N, but we need a kick in the A.” For the TLi, the divine truth is the Gospel as understood within the framework of our Lutheran theology. The nurturing relationships will be fostered in small discipleship groups to lead people into a deeper spiritual journey. Apostolic action will come as churches in our network establish multiple sites and new church plants to spread the discipleship DNA.

Churches planting Churches
Before World War II, existing churches started new churches. Churches planting churches was the natural way. After the war, we Lutherans began to institutionalize the development of mission congregations. Funding flowed from churchwide agencies and Synods, and we created a national network of mission directors to lead this work on behalf of the larger church. Across time, most congregations lost the desire and capacity to start new churches on their own. Now, we are deep into an era of budget constraints and dwindling resources available to continue this model. The idea of churches planting churches is gaining renewed urgency among our church leaders.

At the Exponential Conference, 2700 people gathered with the express intent to plant churches. We heard from several churches that plant as many as five new churches in a year. Andy Stanley, the nationally known leader of Northpoint Community Church in Atlanta dedicates 5% of their annual budget to church planting. The Presbyterians (PCA) have a church planting network in Atlanta that is a collaboration of interested churches in the area. One of the norms of these church-planting networks is that if you, as a new church plant, build a building before you plant another church yourselves, you are kicked out of the network. Now, that’s a strong commitment to multiplication. (For more on the theme of multiplication, see this article.)

Luther Seminary develops Mission Developer Track
I met with Rick Bliese, the President of Luther Seminary, for a couple of hours when I was in Minneapolis. He is working to create a Mission Developer track at the seminary that would prepare candidates for ordination into a new mission start. The idea he shared is similar to the approach that Mike Slaughter has taken at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church near Dayton, Ohio. Mike has sent out teams of lay leaders under his supervision who have redeveloped several dying rural churches in the surrounding area.

Under the model Rick described, mother churches would send teams of lay leaders who understand the DNA into a new plant or a redevelopment. Luther could then send an intern from the mission developer track. This intern would be surrounded by the lay leadership team, and supervised by the pastor of the mother church. This idea is an exciting model to consider as we move forward in our Transforming Leaders Initiative. A number of our larger churches in the ELCA are already creating second campuses and multi-site ministry. Some are already planting new churches. We hope to help build momentum in this movement towards a world where most new churches are planted by healthy churches with multiplication and discipleship in their DNA. Have you multiplied lately?