Acknowledging the increasing spiritual lostness in the Lone Star State and the evangelistic success of new churches, the SBTC has made the connection and developed ambitious plans to reach Texas for Christ through biblical church planting.

“A key ingredient to successful church planting, regardless of the model, is the planter himself,” said Terry Coy, SBTC missions director. That’s why the convention has matched its ambitious church planting strategy with a rigorous screening and approval process for each applicant.

“The process is long and arduous,” said Brady Blevins, SBTC church planter/pastor of The Ridge Baptist Church in Grand Prairie. “I appreciate that the process is difficult because it’s designed to find those men who are called of God and are ready to start a new church.” 

“The assessment and training processes are amazing,” added Danny Price, SBTC church planter and pastor of Hope Community Church in San Antonio. “They can really encourage a church planter and help clarify his vision from God.”

The qualification process also ensures that the prospective planter’s theology and doctrine are distinctly biblical and unmistakably baptistic.

“We also assess how a church planter is wired,” Coy said. “We assess his personality, giftedness, leadership qualities and entrepreneurial skills. Can he start something and see it through?”

“I love it that they are willing to look you in the eye and say, ‘We don’t think you should be a church planter’ because some guys aren’t qualified or ready,” said Zak White, planter/pastor of Revolution Church in Schertz. “The SBTC weeds out those who may launch and fail, and then give the effort a bad reputation.”

The assessment process includes several critical questions, like these two: “Who is God calling you to reach? How has God uniquely wired and prepared you to reach them?”

Such questions help avoid a common mistake, and that is a planter who is intent on a specific model of church plant, but who hasn’t researched and exegeted the local culture to see if the model will fit the group or community he’s trying to reach.

Once such issues are settled, and the planter embraces the principle that church planting itself supersedes any consideration of style and model, then the assessment process may continue.

“We also want our planters to remember that the Great Commission is about making disciples,” Coy said. “Nowhere does Jesus command that we plant churches. However, we believe the best way to fulfill the Great Commission is through church planting.”

A common question among prospective planters is: “What qualifies as a church plant?” 

The SBTC defines a church plant as being led by a planter, who has successfully completed the church planting process of sponsorship, assessment, and training, and is focused on reaching a clearly defined and previously unreached group of people. That means the new church isn’t competing for existing Christians, but is committed to growth primarily by conversions. Beyond its own growth, the new church must see the multiplication of itself as its reason for being, and as a means to expand the kingdom of God beyond its own walls.

Prospective planters are free to ask any questions during the qualification process, but they also will be asked such questions as:

• Are you in agreement with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000?
• Do you practice public or private glossolalia (speaking in tongues)?
• Have you consumed alcohol as a beverage in the last 12 months?
• Have you or your spouse ever been divorced?
• Are you currently affiliated, or planning to affiliate with a church planting network?

Planters are encouraged to expand their supportive networks or sponsorships. However, each planter must be sponsored by an SBTC-affiliated church. That strong relationship with one or more sponsoring churches is key to successful church planting, according to Coy and other missions staff.

Barry Calhoun, the SBTC’s church planting team leader, said the role of a sponsoring church may vary, according to the needs of the church plant and the desire of the sponsoring church. 

“A sponsor may be a seeding church that sends a team with the planter to start the plant, provide monthly to the budget, a lump sum to the budget or specific equipment or office supplies,” he said. “Some sponsors might send teams to help with surveys, block parties or provide administrative help with accounting. The range of opportunities for sponsoring churches is vast.”

First Baptist Church of Pflugerville serves as the sponsoring church for Abundant Life Community Baptist Church in Pflugerville where DeChard Freeman serves as pastor.

“Church planting helps First Pflugerville keep our focus on sharing Christ with people—especially those who may be better reached by another church,” explained Mike Northen, missions pastor at FBCP. “We are open for all to worship and serve Christ at FBCP but we cannot reach everyone. If we can’t, then who can? Starting new churches is the answer. It is part of our response to Jesus’ Acts 1:8 directive.”

Northen said any church that puts a priority on reaching people for Christ can participate with establishing a new church. 

“It is not a financial or leadership decision but a commitment to be an Acts 1:8 church and allowing God to provide the resources needed. He may only want you to provide printing or mentoring, prayer or simply building space for them to hold their services,” he suggested. “Be available as a church.”

Leon Moore at Mesquite Friendship Baptist Church serves in the areas of evangelism and discipleship and shared how his pastor, Terry Turner, set the vision for church planting about five years ago. The Mesquite church offers counsel in different areas of church life and has provided other types of support in planting Trinity Friendship Baptist Church of Wylie where Raymond Perry serves as pastor.

“Church planting is a challenge,” Moore told the TEXAN. “It looks nice on Sunday morning but there’s a lot of work that goes into having a successful church that Christ would be proud of.” He said the ministers of Mesquite Friendship Baptist work as a team alongside the church planter. 

“The brother that is leading that church knows it has a great potential for growth and will yield many benefits to the kingdom.”

In addition to ensuring church planters have a strong network of sponsors, candidates are asked about their evangelistic experiences outside of a church event or setting, whether the planter’s wife is supportive of his call to plant a church, and a willingness to serve bi-vocationally or receive a salary that is smaller than what is currently earned. In fact, Calhoun said about 95 percent of church planters he works with are bi-vocational, at least for the first few years. 

The SBTC provides a portion of a church plant’s operating budget, but even with all the sponsors contributing, few plants can support a pastor’s salary. 

And because Cooperative Program receipts help fund church plants, every receiving church plant in turn agrees to a covenant of supporting the CP as soon as they affiliate, in the range of 6-10 percent of undesignated receipts.

“I won’t say our church wouldn’t exist without the Cooperative Program, because I believe God wanted to see my church planting desires fulfilled,” said White of Revolution Church. “However, we value the CP, and our people love it. We’ve been giving to it all along. It’s a great strategy and a great strength. Even a church as young as we are—a toddler church—we can be a part of helping to plant other churches. We call it ‘kingdom equity.’”

Every prospective planter must either complete the SBTC’s Basic Training Journey—a three-day workshop to prepare the planter, spouse and up to three core leaders for the rigors of planting—or an approved training elsewhere. 

The SBTC also requires ongoing training, some of it from its extensive network of church planting coaches.

Brett Stair, planter/pastor of the Church at Sendera Ranch in Haslet, said. “It’s been a great experience to be an SBTC church planter, especially the training and resourcing that a church planter needs.”

White expressed gratitude for the on-going training, mentoring and wisdom of the SBTC church planter coaches. “I think it would be stupid not to tap into the wisdom of church planting coaches as those who’ve gone farther, faster. They tell you the dangers and the pitfalls.”

One such coach is Sam Douglas, of whom White said, “He has saved us from making financial, strategic and logistical mistakes. He is amazing.”

Blevins commends the SBTC to prospective church planters because “the convention cares about you as a person, your church and the equipping that is necessary to be a successful church planter. The SBTC wants to see the kingdom of God expanded, and they are willing to do what it takes to make that happen. As a church planter there is nothing more that you could ask out of a supporting organization.” 

“The entire process is the best I’ve ever seen,” said Scott Mills, planter/pastor of Harvest Church in Martindale. “Not only do [SBTC leaders] do a thorough job of screening applicants, one of my favorite things they kept harping on was ‘Are you called?’

“When I asked why they kept harping on this, the answer was: ‘What matters most is that the man of God is called to the area; God will take care of everything else. We want you to remember this,’” recounted Mills.

“I have clung to that thought many times.”

For more information on SBTC church planting, visit sbtexas.com/churchplanting.

Judging by the dollars, planting churches is No. 1 on the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s to-do list.

It’s the largest line item in the SBTC’s annual in-state budget—that portion of Cooperative Program giving kept for Texas ministry. In 2011, that amount is $1.4 million, plus an additional $400,000 from the Reach Texas Offering to supplement CP funding. 

Yet the convention’s church planting philosophy is only partly about being a funding source, crucial as it is. More significant, says Terry Coy, the SBTC’s director of missions, is its partnership—monetarily and otherwise—with local churches, associations and networks in developing sustainable, healthy, doctrinally sound and evangelistically growing congregations.

Texas continues to attract international immigrants and transplants from other states, creating a diverse and missiologically challenging landscape, Coy explained. Church planting remains the optimal strategy for advancing the gospel, he said. 

CHURCHES PLANT CHURCHES
In a collaboration of church planting partners, a sponsoring church is the essential piece and the leading partner, Coy said.

“We believe, biblically, that churches plant other churches. That is primary in our church planting philosophy. The stronger the involvement of a local church and association, generally speaking, the stronger the church plant. We want the local church to be the first line of doctrinal, moral and ethical accountability.”

Last year, the state convention had its hand in 25 new church starts; the number will approach 40 in 2011. Meanwhile, about 70 prospective planters have submitted applications with the SBTC; the convention will likely end up working with about 25 of those.

Coy said his team struggles with the tension of how much to fund a given planter, and with balancing the temptation to plant more churches at the expense of quality. 

“By 2020, our goal is 100 church plants a year,” Coy said. “But we want 100 healthy, growing church plants a year.”
In years past, the five-year success rate for SBTC plants was more than 70 percent, which was above the national average. In the last few years, with a honing of the process, the rate has increased to around 85 percent, Coy said.

“The reason the percentage has gone up is better coaching and better assessment of prospective planters,” Coy added.

On average, the SBTC provides church plants about $1,500 monthly over a three-year cycle, with the amount decreasing each year. A few churches receive a little more, some less. Coy said it is a “prayerful, strategic, case-by-case” process with multiple considerations, including how many other planting partners are involved.

“The idea is we build a budget alongside all of the other partners—churches, associations, etc. We want a budget the church will be able to grow into and sustain down the road,” Coy explained.

Provide too little or too much funding and “you are setting that planter up for failure.”

About 14 percent of SBTC congregations have been involved in any recent church planting. Coy said he wants to see more churches catch the vision for reproducing.

Church planting involves much more than dollars, and some churches participate through prayer, mentoring, and doctrinal or methodological accountability, Coy said.

“Bottom line, we may be putting in the most money in a given situation, but the boss is the local church.” 

“You need not be a megachurch to be a church planting church. Even if a congregation is giving $50 a month, they are the planter’s best friend.”

WHAT KIND OF CHURCH?
Whenever someone asks Coy what kind of churches the SBTC plants, his answer is often “All kinds” or “Whatever kind it takes,” provided it is sufficiently biblical and baptistic. Besides some basic ecclesiological standards, Coy said, matters of taste and method are up to the sponsoring local church.

“What we are going to say is, ‘Local church, you determine those questions.’ Of course, we stand ready to say ‘no’ on something that is unhealthy or unbiblical.”

“We want the right church planter doing the right thing in the right place at the right time,” Coy explained. 

Barry Calhoun, SBTC church planting team leader, said the types of churches the SBTC has helped plant range from cowboy churches to traditional to contemporary to multihousing. They reach groups indicative of the cultural diversity of Texas, among them Russian, Burmese, Asian-Indian, Egyptian and African in addition to more traditional Anglo, African-American and Hispanic congregations.

SELECTING PLANTERS
The vetting process for prospective SBTC planters includes doctrinal and lifestyle questions, personality and skills assessments, an interview and assessment with the planter’s wife, reference and background checks, and a willingness to be coached through the planting process.

For example, “If the wife is not on board, the process doesn’t go forward,” Coy said. 

The SBTC isn’t seeking perfect candidates, Coy insisted, but rather God-called candidates who have the maturity, gifts, and vision to plant a viable New Testament church.

Once a prospective planter is identified and he agrees to the process, an orientation is required to ensure he understands the place of the local church in the cooperative endeavors that form the basis of the SBTC. He also agrees to be coached and mentored through the three-year process.

The orientation includes a good dose of history explaining the convention’s core values and the shared missions funding strategy of Southern Baptists—the Cooperative Program.

“Barry (Calhoun) and David (Alexander) on our staff have worked very hard to develop an awareness of who the SBTC is and why it’s important and healthy to stay connected once their funding process ends,” Coy said.

“The heart of our strategy is we want to do the right thing and we want to work hard at doing it the right way. It’s not perfect. But it has to be done prayerfully. It has to be in partnership. And it has to be purposeful.”

FORT WORTH—The book of James instructs Christians not to merely tell naked and hungry people to be warm and well fed; instead, true faith is demonstrated by clothing and feeding them.

Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth has done that over the years as it has ministered to the needy through its benevolence ministry. That’s how Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana de Travis began.

“Travis Avenue’s benevolence ministry reaches about 1,200 people each month, and that’s what wrought vision for the church plant,” said Homer Hawthorne, Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispana de Travis’ pastor. “A number of people came to Christ through that ministry, and the need for a church was born.” 

Launched in June 2010, the church is supported by Travis Avenue, the Tarrant Baptist Association and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

Travis Avenue “chose to stay and minister to this community that was predominantly Anglo but has now transitioned to 70 percent Hispanic,” Hawthorne said. “There is a great need for Christ in the Hispanic neighborhoods all around us here at Travis. There are so many Hispanics that, for Sharon, my wife, and I, it is almost like living again in a Hispanic country.”

Reaching the unreached

 “Our goal is to reach the unchurched,” Hawthorne said. “If someone is already involved in another evangelical church, we don’t invite them to our church. Our goal and desire is to reach those who don’t know Christ so the church will grow from conversions and not transfer growth.”

To reach unchurched Spanish-speaking Hispanics, the Hawthornes asked the first few believers of the church plant to list several people they knew who were not Christians, and to pray daily for their salvation as they expressed “Christ’s love to them,” said Hawthorne, who also led church members to pray corporately for the unbelievers every Wednesday night.

As the prayers proved effective and others became Christians, Hawthorne repeated the process to reach more unbelievers.

Not only is the prayer ministry teaching the new believers “to be sensitive to the Lord’s working in those lives but also how to share the gospel. We now have 45 baptized believers and an average of 50 attendees every week, and we continue to see conversions to Christ every month.” Hawthorne said.

A Hispanic woman volunteering in the benevolence ministry had previously committed her life to Christ, but had never been baptized, Hawthorne related. After her baptism, the church prayed for her husband. He soon allowed Hawthorne to make a home visit, but the man wasn’t yet ready to respond to the gospel. He began attending some church meetings, after one of which he invited Hawthorne back to his home.

“I went over there and asked him if he was ready to receive Christ. ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ he said. And he got on his knees and gave his life to Christ,” Hawthorne recounted. “Out of that the daughter of the family, who is 20, was converted and baptized, and so was the 19-year-old son. It’s really something to see how the Lord works through the Hispanic culture, where relationships are everything.”

Citing a “great victory,” Hawthorne recounted the conversion of an unmarried couple and their 9-year-old daughter: “I was on the verge of sharing with this couple that, now being Christians, they needed to be married. But they came to me first and said, ‘We need to be married. This is not right that we are living together.’ This was truly a work of the Holy Spirit,” Hawthorne said. “The couple’s wedding drew almost 150 guests, many of whom were not Christians.”

Hawthorne said that such converts to Christ “face a lot of peer pressure and persecution” because Hispanics have an intensely cultural Catholic background.

“Many Hispanics aren’t active Catholics, but when peers and parents hear that they attend an evangelical church, the pressure mounts,” he added. “But the great thing is to see these converts live for the Lord.”

“The Lord didn’t command us to make decisions,” Hawthorne said. “He commanded us to make disciples. It’s not enough to lead someone to Christ. We must baptize them, teach them how to walk with the Lord, how to share Christ with others and how to grow in Christ’s likeness. It’s so exciting to see God change people’s lives.”

Practical and financial support

“The SBTC’s church planting process—the training, equipping and follow-up—it’s the best I’ve seen anywhere,” said Hawthorne, citing quarterly church planter evaluation sessions. The meetings are “very encouraging. The guys help you see what’s working and what’s not, and they are very constructive in suggesting any changes that would help. We feel a great deal of support.”

The advice and the support network “is essential in ministry, especially for first-time church planters,” he added. “You’re out there working hard. You’re challenged emotionally, spiritually, financially. You really need someone to support and encourage you.”

Also encouraged by Cooperative Program support, Hawthorne said the CP “made it possible for Sharon and me to fulfill our call through the IMB for 29 years in Brazil, Belize and Mexico. Now, after retirement, we continue to be blessed by it as well as the Reach Texas Offering. This support is vital to church planters, and to the SBTC’s church planting ministry.

“I’m amazed at the initiative the convention is taking, the amount of churches they are planting. I especially applaud the SBTC’s missions department—the motivation and emphasis on training Hispanic church planters—it’s tremendously important since more than half the Texas population is Hispanic.”

“Our heart’s desire and the DNA of Primera Iglesia Bautista de Travis,” Hawthorne said, “is to be a reproducing, multiplying church of disciples—a Hispanic church that will start other reproducing, multiplying Hispanic churches.”

When it comes to counting church plants, one person’s dozen may be a “baker’s dozen” to the next guy counting.

Although most evangelistic and church planting strategies lead to new converts, not all can rightly be called churches, said Terry Coy, SBTC missions director. 

Unfortunately for those who track such things at the North American Mission Board (NAMB)—Southern Baptists’ domestic missions agency in suburban Atlanta—the 43 Baptist state conventions it cooperates with use varied criteria for determining what a church plant is.

“Nationally, it’s been apple to oranges,” Coy said. “What we’ve discovered is the need for a more standardized definition of a church.”

NAMB’s new president, Kevin Ezell, has said NAMB will implement such a standard.

At the SBTC, a church plant is regarded as a new work planted with some SBTC funding and accountability—in partnership with local churches and associations—that practices the New Testament functions of a church. A church plant practices the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, has a pastor, and is intentional in its formation and identity as a local church.

The convention doesn’t take credit for churches planted without the church planting team’s involvement or new congregations formed from church splits. Organic strategies that involve Bible studies, multi-housing outreaches, or other similar ministries are also not counted as church plants until, and only if, they grow into intentional congregations.  

“That is, there are many ministries that might be church planting strategies, but they do not always nor necessarily lead to a new church. All should be encouraged and celebrated, but we’re calling it a church after the fact, not before,” Coy explained. 

Last year, the SBTC helped plant 25 new churches, with about 40 expected this year.

Ezell, speaking to state Baptist paper editors in February, said that in his assessment of NAMB’s work with the various state conventions, a plethora of accounting formulas led to “a lot of smoke and mirrors” to make numbers look better than they were.

For example, Ezell said, “One time I got five different answers to the same question because I asked five different people on purpose. … It’s very hard to solve a problem when you don’t have the right components to add or subtract.” He wants uniform counting standards that don’t tempt people “with skin in the game” to pad numbers.

In annual reports to NAMB, some state conventions counted as new church plants those that had “been alive maybe 30 to 40 years but on a church plant list.” Others have included Bible studies held at campgrounds, Ezell said, or recounted the same newly planted churches two or three years consecutively. 

“Southern Baptists, when they hear that number, assume those are new church plants,” Ezell said.

Coy said the SBTC would rather undercount the number of church starts than overcount. 

Organic strategies that involve multi-housing and people group strategists may be supported with church planting funds and are considered planting strategies but not considered church plants on the front end.

“Let’s plant the seeds, let’s start it, and let’s see what it grows into,” Coy said. “If and when it has the New Testament functions of a church, then we’ll call it a church.” 

Some of the catalytic approaches to church planting “will become New Testament churches; others will become feeder ministries for existing churches,” he said.

“I am willing to call all of these methods church planting strategies and they all need to be celebrated, but they are not necessarily church plants.”

One most often-cited and easily demonstrable reason for our denomination’s emphasis on church planting is the contention that new churches reach more lost people per 100 members than do churches over 15 years old. According to Professor J.D. Payne of Southern Seminary, new churches reach more than three times as many lost people as older churches. 

Some mature churches do reach their hundreds, even thousands. Maybe you’ll think of a church of 30,000 members that baptizes 1,000 they win to the Lord each year. It sounds good, and a thousand baptisms would put even a large church near the top of SBC baptisms, but remember the ratio. At an average three baptisms per 100 members (according to Professor Payne), a church with 30,000 members would have to baptize 900 people just to be average. The fictional church noted above has baptized 3.3 per 100 members. It’s the same problem, only multiplied by 300. Church planting still seems like the best way to reach a community, even in a place with many churches that are no longer as effective as they once were in evangelism.  

I don’t know why this is true. Over the period of my ministry, hundreds of books and thousands of articles have taken a shot at the problem. Some pastors have found notable success in their ministries but almost none of those who buy the books or attend the conference spawned by one church’s success are able to transfer the spark to their own ministries. “It’s a leadership problem,” many have said. “It’s a prayerlessness problem,” others chime in. Still others note the lack of outreach by many churches. Maybe the laymen need evangelistic training. Maybe we need revival in America. It’s hard to gainsay any of these ideas but some churches are doing better than others, seemingly based on being smaller and newer than the church in the next block. 

Higher baptism rates are not the only reason to plant churches, by the way. In many places there are language groups that do not have a church that preaches the gospel to their culture or in their language. In other places, tens of thousands of people do not have a Bible-preaching church in their city. Most of the United States is not over-churched. 
Do the characteristics of churches at different stages of maturity give us any clue for differences in evangelistic effectiveness? I think they might. 

Smaller-newer churches don’t have enough money—Yes I know that a 40-year-old suburban church doesn’t have enough money either but that church spends 40 percent on personnel and another 30 percent or more on other fixed expenses. The newborn church can’t afford fixed expenses, yet. They have to do ministry without program money. They use what they have, people, every one of the 30-100 people they have. 

Larger-older churches have obligations—They have a lot more ministry categories than their new sister churches. Each category needs a staff member to devote or split his attention to the success of the ministries contained therein. And each ministry has a constituency that will list that thing the church does as a very important reason that they attend the church. It becomes something the church must do, so long as they are able. Smaller-newer churches often look forward to the day when they can have a broader set of obligations. They can’t take them on, yet. 

Smaller-newer churches are more motivated in evangelism—They need people. Yes, they strongly desire to see the lost come to Christ and so does the church down the block. The smaller-newer church also needs people to do the work and to fund the ministry. The Lord uses need to motivate us to do more energetically the things to which we’re committed already. A smaller-newer church has fewer distractions from the main thing in addition to a real need that may be less keen in churches that reached critical mass decades ago. J.D. Payne has also noted that the evangelistic effectiveness of a new church begins to decline after three years of life. Maybe the urgency fades a little at a time during the first decade. 

Church planters are more likely to seek experienced help—The pastor of a mature church has decades of experience and has pastored two or more churches already. He’s less motivated to look for help. If, as many say, 80 percent of our churches are plateaued or declining, why aren’t 80 percent of our churches desperately seeking revitalization? Is complacency a temptation that follows experience? 

No one goes to a new church plant to hide out—It’s a blessing of being smaller and newer that the church membership is thoroughly mixed up in the lives of brothers and sisters. The mature church, of 1,000 members or so, is a place where a person can usually attend and watch without anyone bothering him. It’s a difficult problem that grows with time as more and more people come and go or just come and sit. In that church of 1,000 members, nearly the same number of people are intimately involved in what the church does as in the newer church of 100. In the small-new church the percentage is near 100 percent. That drops with time and success, in most cases. 

It makes me wonder why a church planter would ever look at another ministry and think, “someday.” But there is another way to look at it. 

Mature churches are a resource—Remember those ministries and categories and staff members and fixed expenses? Well those are the things that make many community ministries possible. Smaller-newer churches may want to go to a youth camp planned by a staff member of the bigger-older church, in an office, in a building facilitated by some level of bureaucracy. 

Mature churches give money to missions—The concept of missions is that more established ministries give to establish gospel outposts in less-reached places. Those are relative terms, but the life of a missionary or church planter or seminary student would be much more difficult without the missionary hearts of churches over 15 years old. 

Larger-older ministries baptize hundreds of thousands each year—Their percentage effectiveness may, on the average, drop over time, but a lot of people are saved in mature churches.  

Older churches currently minister in places where we’re not planting churches—Rural counties and small towns need love too. Unless we respect ministries in small traditional places, we’ll neglect the spiritual needs of millions of our countrymen. Our talk, even among our friends and co-workers, should indicate that even churches that might be gone in a generation are not yet gone or irrelevant. 

Churches with a long history are tempted to forget their reason for being. I believe revitalization is possible if the church courageously focuses on first things. The focus, energy and almost desperate closeness of a new church start has much to teach churches that are dragged too often into maintenance. Older churches can reach people for Christ if they can shake off ossifying comfort. These churches have a responsibility to remain vital for the whole of their lives. In fact, their responsibilities grow as they are trusted with more influence and more resources.  

From observation, it seems true that churches have life stages like people do. Some churches do remain healthy over the course of a hundred years but it’s rare. Most slow down and come to a stop long before that. That doesn’t mean they cease to have a purpose or that there is no hope, just that each stage of life has its own challenges. But if a church can be like a person, a denomination of churches can be like a family—an amazing collection of diverse individuals bound by cords not easily broken. Without new members, the family declines and without the generations of parents and grandparents, the young ones lack nurture. Like families, we also tend to take one another for granted or squabble over nothing. Let’s hear no more cynicism about the well-established need for church planting or, on the other hand, calling ministries different from our own “irrelevant.” It’s not the way families should talk about each other.