Reflections of a Church Planter

Last week we had a theme day at Porterbrook Training and Al Barth (left) came all the way from New York to give us his thoughts regarding church planting. Al is currently working for Redeemer Church Planting Centre a global church planting movement linked to Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York. Not everything Al said I completely agreed with but here are some of the things which I got out of a great day of discussion.

Al shared Redeemer’s experience of planting a church in the Upper East Side area of New York and the issues which impacted how the church there shaped it’s minstry to be relevent to New Yorkers. The church planting team needed to identify the idols of New Yorker’s hearts in order to apply the Gospel into their situation. This has to be true of how we apply the Gospel in any context around the world. We need to firstly see what people place their hopes, dreams and fears in, so that we can demonstrate how these ultimately won’t deliever the happiness or sense of worth people crave. I was suddenly stuck about how little we as evangelical christians in the UK engage with the prevailing culture of our society. For example, how will we ever reach the more marginalised people of Britain if we aren’t even prepared to read the newspapers they read (i.e. The Sun)? Go to the places they spend their time (e.g. the local working mens club then on to the Kebabish)? Or live where they do (e.g the local council estate)? Ultimately, how can we expect to bring the Gospel to bear on such people if we don’t know what they are really like or what drives them?