Diverse Culture, Diverse Church Planting?

A few days ago, I was sitting in a restaraunt in BWI Airport with almost 3 hours before my connecting filght home. . As I sat there eating a burger called a Gringo Burger (definitely a Mexican eatery), i practiced the art of something that my incredible wife taught me..the art of people watching.As I looked, a little boy passed by with his family. He wearing some sort of dinosaur outfit. What caught my eye is that it is blue...not your typical color of brown or purple. Then there was an African American woman wearing a bright yellow ethnic dress. Soon after that, an airport employee, as trash collector strolled by pushing a cart loaded with trash bags. I also saw a woman with a large brimmed straw hat glide by on the level escalator,reminding me of all the different people wearing different hats.  It does not take long, if you really look, to notice that the culture of our great nation is is vastly diverse to say the least.


You may be wondering why the rambling, especially on a church planting blog. I wondered as well.At least until u I reflected upon the conversations in a meeting earlier in the day.  The meeting was one of seeking God and brainstorming issues like strengths, weaknesses, dangers and opportunities that exist in the planting movement that I am priveldged to be a part of.

Over the course of that meeting, the conversation changed. Things that our teams saw as strengths perhaps were not as strong as thought and, our weaknesses began to look more like faith issues,Over time, the dangers all seemed to fade into the background as we realized that God had our back. We were left with opportunites. The list was not huge for we had narrowed it down for focus purposes. The take away? Perhaps, the opportunites are the greatest they have ever been, at least in my life. Some statistics suggest that as many as 85% of American culture is unchurched, that as much as 40-50% of our population will never connect to current expressions of church and therefore will never find Christ.

That brings me back to where I started. If people that are vastly different can be found in an airport, then they can be found anywhere. Therefore, should not our church planting efforts be producing expressions of church that will be as radically different as the people we seek to reach?

More than 10 years ago, my wife and I, along with a few others knocked on 1000 doors in the community we planted in. We had a spiritual survey with 5 questions, one of which was "if you were to look for a church, what would it look like?"  To my surprise, people did not have a clue. The primary reason was that in our area, Catholicism is the major spiritual influence, and Catholic churches all look and do alike. My reaction to this revelation was one of sadness.

Today, with church planting becoming more and more a normal part of the "church scene" , I find church planters' vision for the church they want to plant to be less creative and more cookie cutter. That saddens me as well.
We serve a creative God who was creative in the methods He used to reach lost people.  I am looking for planters that have a vision to get totally out of the box with vision to reach people for Jesus in new and fresh ways. Are you one?