Do Churches Care About Church Planting?

I scratch my head as I ponder why churches don't invest more in the hard places, doing church planting

Disclaimer: I love all types of ministries. I like the people in the parking lot who make sure I don’t kill anybody as I park. I like immigrant ministry. I really like prolife ministry. I appreciate so much the folks that run seminaries and Bible colleges. Christian podcasting is high on my list of cool stuff that Christians do. Preachers, well, maybe not so cool, but certainly necessary and I love all of you, too. I even like church picnics.

But I must say that when it comes to missions, the priority of churches and how they spend missions budgets is a mystery to me.

I recently saw the missions budget of a big church in a southwest city. It came from somebody on their missions team, who said I could write about it as long as I don’t mention the name of the church.

They are spending about $450,000 on ongoing missions projects. When I look at what they call missions, though, I am a little confused. Don’t get me wrong - it is all great stuff. But… can we call this stuff “missions?”

There is a pretty significant allotment of funding going to help disabled kids in a program downtown. Wonderful stuff. There is a center for immigrant outreach (mostly with no customers these days because they fear ICE) that the church initially funded as a startup ministry and now funds on a regular basis. A Christian counseling center somehow got themselves onto the rolls, and there is a homeschooling group that gets their rental costs covered by the church. Most of this activity takes place within a few blocks of the church except the disabled ministry which is downtown.

Now we get to the real “missions stuff.”

The biggest global item is a fund to subsidize short term teams that the church itself sends out annually, mostly to impoverished Caribbean nations. There is a fantastic Bible translation effort (the pastor visited there and got pretty excited about this project), support for a Kenyan missionary group (same pastoral trip), and a monthly support check going to a European ministry that partners with a group of churches in the area. There is a school project in Haiti (a destination for some of the short-term teams they send). They also support a seminary in Uganda through a US based organization. The final item is a water ministry in Africa, though that appears to be a one-off contribution.

I note that no American missionaries are getting funded. I asked about this. A few years ago, the pastor concluded that missionary sending was not a good investment because nationals were going to do the work of the Great Commission.

The stated goal of the missions spending plan was that 50% of the money would be spent locally, and 50% would go global. As far as I could tell, they were pretty close to these numbers.

Calling this a “missions budget” reveals the way local churches have co-opted the term “missions.” For many (most) churches, “missions budget” really means “any spending outside of the operational budget of the church.” That word “missions” in my world has a more cross-cultural spin but not in most churches. It would be better to call this a “project budget” or a “not our own church budget budget.” Certainly, it is a stretch to call it a “missions budget.” But, alas, I cannot think of a church that does not do this. They probably exist, but not in my experience.

Personally, I do not believe that missionary sending is a strategy which can be substituted for another strategy, like giving to nationals. In the book of Acts, the model we see is a church setting aside leaders who go. If we fight all of our wars using mercenaries, we fight a different kind of war. It is also a false choice - you can do both. Obviously, many churches do not see things as I do. But this is an aside from the bigger observation.

What really struck out to me in this budget was the almost total lack of focus on two missiologically important priorities: planting churches and the unreached. I would think that a local church (which I hope values its own reason for existence) would consider starting other churches as a priority. In the pages of the New Testament, the outcome of evangelism and discipleship was new churches. Why would that not be a priority for any local church as it spends its missions dollars? I do understand that some of the global activity noted may contribute to new churches being started. Yet, with perhaps the exception of the Kenyan work (and I don’t really know what this ministry does) there is no direct church planting supported by the dollars of this congregation.

Similarly, the extent to which Paul emphasized working where there were no churches should influence our choices in how we spend the “missions budget.” At least a part of our spending should reflect concern for the unreached. Missions objectives should include an “ends of the earth” and “all nations” emphasis. I am not saying that the only valid ministry is to unreached people groups or places. I do think, though, that some reflection of this priority should be found in the budget of a Bible believing church. Often, this is best delivered alongside compassion-oriented ministry. The overall goal, though, should be planting churches for at least some of these dollars.

Here is a fun activity that might get you into a little bit of trouble. If you are not aware of the missions spending priorities of your own local church, you might ask for the budget. Create a spreadsheet and do a little analysis of the figures. You may be pleasantly surprised with what you find. But you might also find that they are not prioritizing the unreached and they are not focused on planting churches. If this is the case, you might be a little naughty and see if you can be an agent of change.