Church Planting Is for Wimps by Mike McKinley

Author:Mike McKinley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781433524646
Publisher: Crossway Books & Bibles

5

God Always Gets

His Way

In 2004, when the members of the church formerly known as Guilford Fellowship were still looking for a pastor, they called the local Baptist association for help. The association dispatched a consultant who met with the church, learned about its history, and talked to the congregation about its hopes.

After taking time to assess Guilford’s future prospects, the consultant, also a pastor and church planter in the area, met with the congregation a second time and presented his conclusions. He said that the church had two good options. They could shut Guilford down completely and allow a Spanish-speaking church plant to have the building. Or they could restart the church. This latter option would mean closing the doors for six months and then reopening it with a new name and none of the existing members in leadership. In other words, let the local Baptist association plant a new church in your building, and the plant will let you attend its services.

In light of Guilford’s circumstances, I honestly believe that both of these suggestions were reasonable. But the idea of giving the building to a Spanish-speaking church was a particularly good idea. While official statistics indicate that about 15 percent of Sterling’s population speak Spanish in their homes, the number is much higher in the run-down neighborhood of Sterling where my church is located. Not only that, official government statistics probably underestimate the number of Spanish speakers. Illegal immigrants make it a point not to show up on such reports. If you’re looking for the real demographics of an area, the teachers and administrators of the local public schools are a gold mine. They live in the neighborhoods, they care about the community, and they actually know the people and not just the census data. According to the public elementary school down the street from our church building, 61 percent of the children in the school speak Spanish at home. Many of those children speak no English at all.

As this church consultant correctly surmised, the area greatly needed more Spanish-speaking churches. It’s not that no churches conduct services in Spanish; it’s just that most of them are either Roman Catholic or Pentecostal churches that have abandoned the gospel. A few English-speaking evangelical churches have begun side ministries for Spanish speakers. Local Baptist groups have started some evangelistic Bible studies. But there were not many actual churches preaching the gospel in Spanish.

For whatever reason, Guilford Fellowship chose not to disband and hand the building over to a Spanish ministry. This left them two options: close down completely or call me as a pastor. Apparently they chose the lesser of two evils and called me.

That said, the logic of a Spanish ministry became clear to me as soon as I took over the church. We were in a great position to reach the many very poor, unevangelized, illegal immigrants in the area. There was only one problem: no one on our church planting team was able to speak any Spanish beyond the menu at Taco Bell.

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