Contemporary Models of Church Planting

Pastor John’s initial success in Marin garnered him a teaching slot at the seminary, where he offered a course called Contemporary Models of Church Planting. I eagerly signed up for the class after John mentioned that it would be more “practical” than “academic,” which I translated as “an easy A.”

Once the class started, John began by carefully outlining the characteristics of Baby Boomers, a generation whose vast numbers and pot-addled minds apparently called for entirely new forms of church life. This generation was defined as all Americans born between 1946 and 1964. As it happened, Mimi was born in 1964, while I came along in 1965, the year “Generation X” (or “Slackers,” as many of us prefer to be called) arrived on the scene. This critical difference in our ages would, I quickly realized, allow me to drop statements like “You just don’t understand my generation” or “That’s just what I would expect from a Boomer” whenever Mimi and I had a disagreement.

But John also pointed out that not all Baby Boomers were alike, so each new congregation had to be carefully designed to fits its particular community. To discover the preferences of one’s target audience, John taught us to conduct brief surveys that could be used to assess the needs, likes, and dislikes of potential church members so that worship services could be designed accordingly. Our first class assignment was to design such a survey, use it to interview 5 unchurched people, and write a report on our findings. Keeping things simple, I focused on 2 key questions:

1. Why do you think most people in Marin don’t attend church?
2. If you were looking for a church to attend, what are some things you would look for?

The responses I got to this little questionnaire surprised me. Virtually all the respondents mentioned the wealth and fast-paced life of most Marinites as the key impediments to both church attendance and the development of a spiritual life. One interviewee named Darrel went so far as to describe American society in general as “greedy, status-oriented, sterile, and phony” and recommended starting a church with “a revolutionary attitude” that would spark a “cultural jihad.”

Based on these results, my best bet would have been to start a church which addressed such topics as Don’t Come to Us—You’re Already Way Too Busy! and Looking for Inner Peace? Lose That Bothersome Fortune! And there would have been plenty of biblical material to draw on, as everyone from Jesus to the crusty prophet Amos took a dim view of striving after riches. But even with my limited understanding of church planting methods, I knew that it was probably better to forego the “cultural jihad” and stick with a cookie-cutter approach.

Because, truth be known, there were very few differences between any of the seeker-sensitive churches that were springing up around the country. They all followed the same basic formula, and most of them were growing like gangbusters.