Church planting is a relatively new term, and a lot of people may have trouble with the idea. The short form of the idea is that church planters are, essentially, domestic missionaries. While we may be sent to parts of the country that differs geographically and culturally from where we grew up, church planters generally stay within their own country or one very similar, culturally, to it (the North American Mission Board, the church planting arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, includes the United States and Canada, for instance, while other networks may include countries in western Europe or further abroad).
The goal behind church planting is always to expand the Kingdom of God. Healthy church planting is not done as a church split over some drama or disagreement, and it is not fueled by pulling people from healthy churches to build a new body out of old parts. While people from other churches are welcome, and there must be some number of mature Christians working at the core of the mission, the primary goal is to reach those who do not know Christ and invite them into a relationship with Him and with each other.
Church planting is a process that works outside the megachurch model. Megachurches are fine at what they do – settle into a location and continue drawing new people to Christ and helping those in the community grow into a deeper relationship with Him – but their impact is limited to people who have the means to reach them, people that have the desire to seek them out, locations which can support such a mission with both people and finances, and people that feel comfortable in the environment they create. This is why they often speak of being seeker-sensitive: they are very effective at, and rely upon, reaching people already seeking Christ, or hope, or something they can’t quite place their finger on. This is great for that population, and we are glad to see God working in this way.
In more rural areas, or in neighborhoods which lack some of these criteria, or for people who are not seeking or don’t know how to seek or don’t feel comfortable in that setting, something else needs to happen. One such approach is to send a small body into these areas who will seek out the lost rather than be sought, to financially support the body (at least for a while) from outside sources, and will seek to continue sending out such bodies to other, often even very close, areas. This is church planting. And we hope you will help see this happen.
Crossroads Baptist Church 