A THOUGHT ABOUT CHURCH PLANTING

In the early 1880s American Methodists were planting  one or two churches every day that rolled around. Dur-ing this time, C. C McCabe headed the UMC’s Church Extension Board. While McCabe rode the rails. he read his newspaper. One day, McCabe read his Chicago newspaper and found a story that greatly interested him.

A Reporter had picked up on a meeting in Chicago of the Free Thinkers Association. Attending that Free Thinkers Association in Chicago was the noted Orator-Agnostic, Robert Ingersol who was bragging about the fact that “the churches are dying out all over the earth; they are struck with death.”

This struck a chord with McCabe and at the very next rail stop, McCabe sent a wire cabling Ingersol, saying, “Dear Robert: All hail the power of Jesus name! We’re building one church for every day of the year, and propose to make it two.”

Some of the singing Methodists got together and wrote a song that went something like this:

              “The infidels a motley band,
              In counsel met and said:

              The churches are dying throughout the land

              And soon they’ll all be dead.

              When suddenly a message came
              That put them to dismay,
              All hail the power of Jesus’ name
              We’re building two a day.

              We’re building two a day, dear Bob.

              We’re building two a day.

              All hail the power of Jesus’ name.

              We’re building two a day.”   

It was sixty years later when Herman Thomas found himself pastoring one of those two-a-day churches in Wisconsin—1941. While out calling one evening, Pastor Thomas met a young engineer, recently moved into his city. The newcomer met the pastor at the front door, saying, “I have some questions you may be able to answer.”

The young engineer listened intently, but briefly; then interrupted his visitor with this question: “Pastor Thomas, can you tell me how I can become a follower of Jesus Christ.”

The following Sunday, that new convert walked forward to profess his new-found faith in Christ. The next week he received baptism. His name was Robert Ingersol III. In 1942 Robert Ingersol IV was baptized in that same church.

This prompts me to imagine that I once again hear the refrain of those early Methodists as they lustily burst forth in song with that earlier refrain,

              “We’ve building two a day, dear Bob.

              We’re building two a day.

              All hail the power of Jesus Name

              We’re building two a day.

I heard Dr Charles Chaney tell this story in Chicago one year as he recalled his challenge to Southern Baptists to increase their three-a-day church plants to four-a-day, or 1,460 x 10. They rounded off Chaney’s number as SBC’s “15,000 Campaign.”

At the time I did my Church Growth study, the Church of God was proposing to plant 750 churches. I don’t remember if we made our goal or not, but this is what I believe, after being in ordained ministry for sixty-eight years: faithfulness to the biblical agenda of church planting will vitalize the church at large as nothing else can!

New church-plants will achieve two purposes:

(1) Fulfill our part of the Great Commission of evangel-izing and congregationalizing our Global Community;
and
(2) Do our part in reversing today’s moral decline by multiplying colonies of righteousness all across our Global Community.   
This is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
Reminding church folk that
Church Planting will renew a luke-warm church as nothing else will.