Planting Space

I rarely read the newspaper but since I was up early this morning and out of town I grabbed the complimentary USA today and started reading. On the front page of the nation section was a picture of an old church with the title “North Dakotans seek salvation for churches.” Of course I had to read. The article talked about how historical preservation societies are fighting to restore old churches. Three comments in the article were striking.

Insight #1
“Churches were the glue that held rural communities together,” says Dale Bentley, Preservation North Dakota’s executive director. We’ve come a long way from the church being the glue of the community. Now church planters often struggle for credibility in new communities and at times are viewed as unwanted. Glue is what hold things together. It brings unity where there was once division. I believe planting new churches is a way to bring communities together in a powerful way.

Insight #2
“James Coomber, co-author of Magnificent Churches on the Prairie, says pioneers who lived in sod huts built beautiful churches to serve as ‘the living room of their community’ and to escape from their isolated lives.” In the rural setting, people were isolated because they were literally isolated. Today, millions of people live in isolation surrounded by masses of people. The living room is the traditional place to sit down and enjoy each others’ company. What a great image for the church of today to adopt. What would it look like for the church to be the living room of your community?

Insight #3
“Realistically, Coomber says, You can’t save every one, but we would be forfeiting a large part of the state’s history if we let them go.” It should be eye opening that churches are referred to in the past tense. What was once such an important part of the rural landscape has slowly died over the past 50 years. As church planters, we have focused largely on city and suburban areas. This should serve as a reminder that the small and rural towns that make up a large part of our country need new churches too. This is a good reminder of why we plant churches. If we stop planting new churches, the church will be history.

contributed by Doug Foltz
featured on newchurches.com

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