Ministering with a Holey Net

On Februrary 10, pastors and elders from across my denomination will be gathering in Florida for a time of discernment, vision-casting, and prayer. The goal of the gathering is to create correspondence that will be circulated denomination-wide and will be the first step in the creation of a new vision for the future of our denomination. For the past ten years, we have operated under "Our Call," a vision for revitalizing existing congregations, planting new congregations, and working toward a "Multiracial future freed from racism." There are other bits to "Our Call," like discipleship, equipping of the leadership, and the biblical call for mission. Our ten-year call has been a lofty undertaking, and one rooted in much prayer and hope for the future of the ministry of the Reformed Church in America. But something happened in the implementation of "Our Call" that has perhaps been an unintended (I hope) consequence of having such a lofty, far-reaching call.

The emphasis on the planting of new congregations has overshadowed nearly all other aspects of the vision for our denomination.

It is my hope that this over-emphasis has been unintentional or, at the very least, a frantic attempt to get existing congregations on board with the idea of multiplication that is so essential to the survival of our denomination.

For many of the existing congregations in the area where I serve as a minister, church planting (or multiplication) is a nearly unknown concept. It has taken the past ten years of "Our Call" for our churches to understand what is meant by church planting. I am guessing that the denominational leadership did not count on the resistence they would face, or the lack of immediate support and understanding they would find when it came to church multiplication and mission in the denomination. Consequently, the majority of effort and focus shifted toward getting existing churches to embrace the call to church planting and mission. After all, not only is a call to multiplication biblical, it is necessary if our denomination will survive.

At least I'm hoping that's how it all went down.

The main problem with focusing on church multiplication to the exclusion of other types of ministries is that the Reformed Church in America has a very large percentage of its churches in desperate need of revitalization. Many of these churches are in rural areas, or smaller towns, where new church starts would be counterproductive. Many of these churches are located in areas where mission is possible. For example, even though I am in a very small, rural area, over half of my community has no church affiliation. Another 25% of the people in my community would identify a church as their "home" even though they have not attended or participated in the life of that church for many years (if ever). There is great potential for growth and vitality in my community, but there is also a lot of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness among the people in the pews. I hear things like: Why doesn't our denomination help us? No one cares about the farm communities. Have we been forgotten? Are we less important than  bigger city churches?

And what can I say in response? The truthful answer, in many ways, is that we have been overlooked as the denomination pursues church planting. And it is because it is far easier to start over than it is to re-wire deeply troubled or dysfunctional systems. It is more immediately gratifying to plant and see results than it is to do the work in the trenches of enabling change - very slowly. Painfully slowly. But I contend that the slow, painful work is necessary.

When I was a seminary student, I would have been more in line with the push for multiplication than I am now that I have served as a rural church pastor for almost five years. The people in my community are desperately seeking change, but do not know how to achieve it. As a relatively new pastor in minsitry, I've been desperately seeking support and answers for how to go about revitalizing a church that both does and doesn't want change. The possibilities are there for rekindling the flame and passion in these rural areas. We just need to provide them with the resources and the chance.

In Matthew 4 we see Jesus calling his first disciples. In verse 21 he comes upon James and John. We read: As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. If you are going to cast a net and hope for a successful catch of fish, you have to take the time to mend all the holes in the net. Though you may catch a lot with a holey net, you aren't catching to your full potential. "Our Call" was designed to catch as many fish as possible, but the net was cast with many holes.

As a minister at a church that slipped through the holes the first time around, I implore the denomination to do the hard and tedious work of mending their nets. My prayers are with everyone at the Conversations event, and I pray it will be a time of fruitful discernment.