This weekend at the Healthy Reproducing Churches Conference, our speaker Glenn Smith was talking about three kinds of churches that most church planters start. He said that most people start either:

1. The model they have known.
2. A reaction to a model they've known and don't like.
3. A copy of another church's successful model.

Glenn obviously wanted us to be forewarned so we wouldn't let these approaches keep us from planting churches that are truly contextual to the unique needs and culture of our particular situations.

However, in our group discussion a young man by name of Scott Potter suggested that perhaps there is actually value in combining each of these three approaches to a limited degree. For instance, it is a good thing to look back on the churches we have known and learn from their strengths. Why not borrow the good things we've experienced in the past? But likewise, we should also learn from the mistakes of the past, and react in such a way that we try to do differently the things that were not so good. And shouldn't we also be open to learning from the successes of others, while not feeling the need to directly copy them? For example, our leadership team right now is reading Doug Pagitt's book, Church Re-Imagined, which is kind of a week in the life of Doug's church, Solomon's Porch. We don't want to copy their model point-by-point, but we do want to learn from their experiences, take inspiration from them, and adapt some of their ideas for our own context.

Labels: church planting