Quote:
Originally Posted by North Jersey Baptist  This is a sidebar discussion inspired by the House Church thread.
I suppose there are many different methods of planting a new church. In our situation we were planted by a large Baptist church that "seeded" us with a large cash gift and monthly support checks for a period of time. Unfortunately we never had to give account for the money we were given. Our sending church never came along side us to help. We were truly on our own except for assistance with our book keeping. Looking back on that experience I wonder whether starting off as a house church would have been better than the way we took. We were saddled with a lease for office space and rent for a school we used twice a week. We also had two full time salaries (pastor and music pastor) and benefits; all for a brand new church that was not established in the community. Had we started in a house or a smaller facility we would have being better stewards of God's money. I also believe the sense of community among the members would have been stronger.
What is the consensus on the PB about church planting and meeting in homes? Have many of you been down this road? I'm interested in hearing different stories. |
Bill, I wish things had gone better for you in your effort...
We've been on the "church planting" road for about 16 months now. The Lord has provided most graciously for us in that we hold our services in a historic old schoolhouse that we rent for an astoundingly low weekly fee. The schoolhouse is maintained by the township in which we live; township employees even set up the chairs and the "pulpit" for us. Another church plant uses it in the morning and our service is at 3:30 p.m. Our rental fee includes the use of the building's kitchen for a short time of fellowship after every service.
The Lord has also provided for us in that since we've been holding regular, Lord's Day services, starting Jan. 6 of this year, we've been able to pay our church planter/evangelist/minister a stipend, but he does work at a part-time job - and his wife works as well - necessarily in order to supplement their income. We hope and pray that these aspects will change if it's the Lord's will that we grow.
The whole effort has required some substantial outlays by those who are truly interested in the type of worship that we do, but it's all been worth it. It was only a gleam in my eye in January, 2007 - but when I look around on Sunday afternoons and see the people gathered, and hear the type of Gospel preaching that we hear now, I can only thank the Lord for what He's done. We have no competition for what we offer in an approximately 20-county radius around us (that would extend, by definition, into Essex County in Canada) and it probably gives us some advantage. Last Sunday, we had some visitors from an adjacent state who drove almost two hours to reach us.
Church-planting and/or house churches require the Lord's will that they be started in the first place. They also need prayer and our reliance upon God's grace and strength, plus a strong, unwavering commitment to dedicate time, effort, energy and resources to them. They require an eagerness to reach out to other Christians and to the lost for Christ, no matter what the personal cost is and no matter how unlikely success seems to be at first glance. "His ways are not our ways..." This church-planting effort has taken me
way beyond what I thought was my personal, social "comfort zone," but that had to happen.
We are blessed also in that we're only about 140 miles from the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids.
If this schoolhouse had not been available, we would be meeting in someone's home (probably ours) every week. Would we then have been able to accommodate some of the numbers of people who come some Lord's Days? Probably not, and so all of this may not have happened at all.
We've been blessed...
Margaret