i'm on my way to orlando. in fact, i'm sitting in the calgary airport right now. it's early morning and my pseudo-adhd is kicking in. i'm antsy. on my way to the happiest place on earth.
my eldest son called me a sell-out. i'm being put up in a spa at sea-world, given a nice car, asked to speak at a huge church planting conference. looking over the roster it's a virtual who's who of conservative evangelicals, and me.
it's a funny story actually. i've been asked to offer a 'rebuttal' to the north american church planting movement. as usual my mouth has landed me in trouble and for a brief moment in time on tuesday night i have the ears of some of evangelicalism's finest.
i'm going because i've been perceived of as marginal, different, the wayward son who won't shut up. it seems to be a mantra i have worn all my life. at one time it was a source of great pride, now it's almost tiresome on occasion. marginality seems to have exacted a price in my relationships and career. off to orlando.
i have been asked to give my reasons why i no longer go to real church anymore, why i handed in my ordination and though repeatedly asked, why i refuse to take it back, and why i no longer advocate planting churches for the vast majority of evangelicals. how could i, a career planter, bite the hand that has almost fed me for so long? i hope that it is because of this longevity in a field with few lifers that i have at least a smattering of some credibility. here's an excerpt...

I was getting my passport this week. You know how it is… you sit and wait and then someone calls you up and asks you a bunch of questions. So she asked me, "why are you going to Orlando?" I wanted to say something like, "I’m starring in a Body Building Movie", but instead I confessed, "I’m going to a conference about starting new churches". Then she asked me a question, and it’s the only question I’m going to address. She said this, "well then maybe you could answer this for me… "why would anyone want to go to church?"
That’s a good question and It’s one that as a church planter I was notoriously self-deceived about. You see, most of us have been taught, and we based our entire 'ministry' on it, that church planting is the best way to 'win people to Christ'. And for a few generations, including the one I grew up in, that may have been true. Notice I said "was"?
Here’s something else I always believed – that if you did it right, church plants are the best way to connect with the secular world. And I thought I was relevant. And I thought I was edgy (and trust me, so did my denomination). For a brief moment in history, I was hugely successful by some standards. And I believed I was changing the world.But I contend, and I think history will bear this out, that we are going through a cataclysmic spiritual shift in North America that is going to change everything. Technology and society and social networking is radically redefining how we are going to communicate, relate and live in the next few years…
I spent 21 years of my life believing that i had an answer people were genuinely looking for. That given the right set of tools, most people would want to go to a church that met their needs. I tenaciously believed that i was using relevant and cutting-edge methods to "reach" those people. By almost every church standard i was on the ragged edge of, firmly convinced that people would want that experience if i could only get the message out.Two weekends ago I was listening to CBC and on "the age of persuasion" the narrator said something like, "people consider becoming a pastor about as relevant as (insert your most idiotic/non-relevant career choice here). The show was about how churches are using media in an attempt to attract followers. Names like Saddleback and Billy Graham were tossed around. One commentator argued that these icons were naive and stupid (can you believe it, he called Billy Graham stupid!); that competing for souls by media was using a medium intended to entertainment – and by them doing that they were convincing us all that religion was just another form of entertainment. The end of the show left me with the impression that according to the secular media, church has become so non-relevant in Canadian society as to be viewed as a cult or a cruel joke. People no longer consider going to hear old music and a long-winded speaker a destination of choice early Sunday morning. disturbing.
I am unsure of the answers, but seemingly too long we have been shuffling deck chairs on the titanic, hoping to somehow tweek on the next gimmick, the next 'wave' and suddenly be in the vanguard once again. maybe those days are gone forever, at least in secular Canada. Yet every month we kick off another 'same old same old' church plant or service that is oddly familiar to the one down the street. Here’s what it looks like. You go to Barrie Ont. and you decide to start an church. And you are not dumb and you have read the books by the dudes at this conference, and you think of yourself as a bit of a maverick or a barbarian and so you decide to do things different – you are going to be real, and raw. You are going to forget the hype and be casual and use YouTube and Twitter and Facebook and you are going to get good relevant media and use guitars and grow a goatee. Not only that but you are going to be socially minded, sing songs from U2 and maybe do a coffee shop. Here’s the truth – and I’m not trying to be mean – but there are dozens and dozens and dozens of guys and gals doing that exact same thing right now. I can give you at least 20 plants in the Fraser Valley doing that exact template. That exact thing. And they have one word names for their plants and they use acoustic guitars and they drink micro-brewery beer and they are writing a book and they have women on staff and they set up their office at Starbucks and they are trendy, and they are cute, and they can sing and are an exact clone of the Mennonite plant and the Wesleyan plant and the free Methodist plant just down the street. Everyone is planting that template it seems right now. And every one of them is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are going to change their world.
And here’s my opinion and take it for what it’s worth. It isn’t going to work. It is no different than starting a Saddleback clone or a Willow World clone or whatever is the in thing at Church Planter Boot Camps right now. O don’t get me wrong, for the most part, you are going to be convinced it is working if it goes well. My last church gained a hundred at least a year and we baptized at least that number every year. I was sure we were rocking the world. And you will have lots of visitors and sure enough some people will make spiritual decisions. And you might even be the flavor of the month for a brief time.And you will try to be missional and incarnational and all those other dumb insider words and feed the poor and do everything you can to be relationally relevant.And if you are really really smart you will plant that one church and then write a book like some of the speakers at this conference and never have to do another one.Here’s my take - The Sunday morning service as an outreach event is finished. The attractional model for Sunday morning service is still a great model – for attracting Christians. But as CBC and my secular friends are trying to tell me, and they’re screaming at us but no one is listening – they don’t want to go to church on Sunday! Here’s what I’ve been thinking and field testing for about 5 years now. For my part of the globe – I’m not talking Toronto, I’m not talking Tampa, for my little backwater piece of suburbia – the very idea of starting a Sunday morning service, in the hopes of having non-Christians get involved in that primary venue – is counter-culture and counter-intuitive.In English – it isn't going to work. I have started 7 churches and am right now watching churches being planted in my area at a rate I have never seen before and I got to tell you, as an evangelical idea, it’s lame. Two years ago I sat in Burlington with some of you people and I listened to a guy far smarter than I am tell that group of the professionally religious that churches in Canada were soon not going to even be on the radar for 85 - 95% of Canadians. That nothing you could do on Sunday morning would even touch those people...