No Longer Children: reflections on a decade of church planting

Branded on the leather key chain to the keys of my 2008 Ford F150 are the words "Southlands: A Gospel Constellation." It speaks of our multiplying vision. We are not trying to grow to be one giant planet of a church. Instead, we want to be a constellation of churches shining the light of the gospel into the darkness of this world. 

My truck is as old as my American sojourn. In 2008, we joined a church that had multiplied 12 times in 14 years. Southlands was a bit like my old truck. Sturdy, willing, productive but showing some signs of wear and tear. She was a medium sized church -  about 500 people, which is remarkable really, when you think that only 1% of American churches under 1000 ever plant churches. She was the little engine that could.  

When the apostle Paul described a mature church in his letter to the Ephesians, he seemed to mix his metaphors with ships and children. 'Then we will no longer be children, tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine." What he seemed to be driving at, was that stability is a mark of maturity. A mature church has  enough ballast in its boat to navigate through the storms of heresy and theological faddishness without getting blown over, whereas an immature church is easily blown off course, or pushed over like a little toddler trying to stand in the ocean. 

What is true of doctrinal maturity, is also true of missional maturity in a church. One may need to navigate different seasons and weather conditions, but mature churches can hold their course against rip tides and cross winds, tacking along until the tides turn and the winds are at their back. There was a year that we somehow made it into Christian Leadership magazine for being one of the top 100 multiplying churches in the nation, but honestly, much of the time we have flown beneath the radar, and our journey has been a bit like that of the missionary William Carey who said, "My only genius is I plod."

By God's grace we have multiplied 8 times in the last 11 years and are preparing to plant again next year. One of those churches was folded back into the base at Brea during the pandemic, having lost its venue and many of its people due to the strange socio-economic dynamics of that time. But all of the others have grown in health and strength, some steadily, some slowly and a couple more rapidly. What makes me most joyful is that one church has already planted another two churches amongst unreached people groups in Thailand. I heard about one of our plants that is around 150 in size that baptized 11 people last Sunday. This is the dream. This is the why of church planting. Ultimately it is not about pins on a map. We plant new churches because we believe that they are the most effective way of fulfilling the Great Commission. As Ed Stetzer, a prominent missiologist and president of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism once said, "In winning new converts to Christ, church plants are light-years ahead of the average church because of their focus on reaching the unchurched. Healthy new churches have an outward focus from day one, communicating every month that the goal is to be a multiplying church.” (He is now the Dean of Talbot Seminary)

Another benefit of multiplication is that it creates a healthy vortex that draws spectator Christians out of the stands and on to the field of play as active disciples. This is true of leadership, volunteerism, generosity and prayer. In multiplication, the saints are equipped to do the work of ministry with a greater sense of urgency because multiplication creates a crisis of need. Larger churches that meet in one place tend to gather a larger crowd of consumers  who assume that the work of ministry will be done by professionals. This is true of smaller churches too, who can assume that it is only larger churches that will multiply. This is why I wrote Broken for Blessing  (Broken-Blessing) about the underrated potential of the medium sized multiply church. 

One of the tensions we've had to manage as we've matured into multiplication, is what I refer to as managing home and away game wins. Until 2010 we were like a team that won its away games but lost many of its home games. We had to push pause on planting for three years to regain home game wins - like financial and leadership health and seeing new disciples come to Christ regularly in our own zip code. Still today, more than ten years later, we are trying to find a sustainable rhythm of multiplying that enables the sending base to thrive, not just survive. That can be tricky, but we remain convinced, that like the boy with the loaves and fish in the feeding of the 5000, Jesus is asking us to put our loaves and fishes  in his hand to be broken, blessed and multiplied. He is able to multiply what we give him to feed the hungry multitudes with His life, and is able to replenish what we entrust to Him in good time. 

But the question remains, to every disciple and every church, "What will you do when Jesus asks you for your lunch?" When we respond willingly, we are caught up in His stunning multiplying miracle. 

A Fresh Commissioning

 I am so grateful to God and to Southlands for the gift of a sabbatical once every 7 years. This is our second sabbatical, and it is a chance to visit family in South Africa, reconnect as a family and lean in to slower rhythms of grace for God's refreshing and fortifying before the next season of life and ministry. 

The start of this sabbatical brings with it a convergence of change for us as a church and for us as a couple. I would describe this convergence of change as a season of fresh commissioning. 

How so?

First, this month we moved from One Church Multiple Congregations, to A Family of Churches. For ten years we have been planting Southlands congregations with Brea carrying a central burden of finance and administration. This has enabled congregations to get up and running without being weighed down by too many administrative details.  Now, both Southlands Chino and Southlands Santa Ana have experienced sufficient growth and strength to be able to carry their own administrative and financial responsibilities. So, from here on, we will be able to maintain meaningful rhythms of togetherness such as prayer, fasting, worship, leadership training and church planting, while giving full autonomy to these Southlands churches. It is like the training wheels are coming off each bicycle, and I believe we will all ride faster because of it, while continuing to ride together.  So, we celebrate a fresh commissioning for our Southlands family of churches. 

Personally, Rynelle and I have also experienced a fresh commissioning, having been asked to lead the Advance Global team. We have led as part of this remarkably gifted team for around 8 years, and it is an honor to provide a catalytic, collaborative leadership role to men and women of such great capacity and integrity.  To be clear, we have not been asked to lead the movement, but rather to lead the team that leads the movement. Advance is a family of around 150 churches on a mission to plant and strengthen churches into over 20 nations around the world currently. Our team has experienced God's enlargement, peace and joy in this leadership transition, and we are so grateful to have been helped by our broader partnership with New Frontiers. We are beginning to witness real momentum and gospel opportunity as we emerge into a season of greater clarity as a movement. 

I will continue to provide visionary leadership to Southlands and will continue to lead the team of elders,  but this is also a moment of fresh commissioning for our Southlands leaders to step into greater roles of responsibility and authority. I want to ask you to give them your full support as we all follow Jesus, our Chief Shepherd. We are in a season of God's life and growth and I am confident that Jesus does not want that to slow down because of our new role in Advance. I believe it is a moment of fresh commissioning for all of us in the Southlands family as we embrace God's call on us to be a resourcing church for a global movement.

Ryan TermosHuizen had this word for us that frames our season well, I believe.

"The name Southlands is about a people, but not about the boundaries of your mission. You will be enlarged to reach the highlands and the lowlands, the inlands and the coastlands. North, South, East and West freshly impacted. There will be an increase of people coming in for seasons of healing and learning. There will be fresh growth and generosity for the nations to be well served. I think of swimmers whose lungs are freshly filled with capacity for fresh air for a new race. God wants to fill you with fresh capacity for fresh wind for a fresh race." 

Southlands, let's inhale the life of God's Spirit deeply, so that Jesus enlarges our capacity as a people commissioned to see the gospel take root and bear fruit all over the world. 

God's Methodist Moment: reflections on the Asbury Outpouring

I was raised in a Methodist church, shaped by the Wesleyan holiness tradition. My parents have been immovable pillars in that Methodist church for some 50 years. The great legacy of the Wesley brothers - magnificent hymns, revivalistic preaching and deep piety - is gratefully mine.  But the emphasis on personal holiness drained my soul of the assurance I craved as a young believer. I have vivid teenage memories of kneeling at the altar to take communion and sticking my fingers through the communion cup holes to grip the altar rail as I confessed my sin, terrified I'd lost my salvation. It took me until my 30's for the doctrines of grace to anchor me in gospel assurance. I also longed for an environment of greater openness to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So, a year after getting married in that church, my wife and I left it for a church that met those longings.

Several years after leaving, I found myself pastoring in a large church that put a lot of effort into the quality of its music, media,  lighting and sound on Sundays.  If something went wrong with these production values, our team leader would would say, "Well, that was a bit of a Methodist moment, wasn't it?" This was his way of saying, 'That was a bit clunky and old-fashioned.' We would laugh and make sure it didn't happen again. I am actually not against high production values, but looking back, I cringe a little at how smug we were and also that I didn't speak up and say, "Hey, that's my parents' church you're talking about!" But I didn't. 

So, you can imagine my surprise on hearing two decades later that there was an outpouring of the Spirit on a small Methodist college campus in Wilmore, Kentucky called Asbury University. 

What began as a standard students' chapel on February the 8th, 2023, with a local pastor preaching a no-better-than-average message, led to sustained repentance as students knelt at the altar rail. Zack Meerkreebs recalls, “I called my wife after my message, told her I had preached a stinker and cancelled my two afternoon meetings so I could go home and take a nap. But after a couple hours of worship and repentance I realized Jesus had something else in mind.” 

Such was the heat and weight of God’s presence in that chapel, the President of the university emailed all students and faculty at 9 pm that evening, encouraging them to go to Hughes Auditorium and told them that classes were canceled until further notice. That chapel service morphed into a 16 day continuous prayer meeting that attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to Asbury and touched millions online around the world. Eight months later, Asbury has become something of a revival catalyst, with fires of gospel awakening flickering on many college campuses across the USA. 

After a group of us led by my friend, Todd Proctor, visited with faculty, student and pastoral leaders who stewarded the outpouring this past week, I can only conclude that the  Asbury Outpouring is God's Methodist Moment.  

By this, I mean that on the surface, there was absolutely nothing flashy or produced about what was going on there. Zero hype. It was unpolished - even a little clunky at times. The worship and the preaching were biblical and heart-felt, but unspectacular. There were multiple authentic testimonies of miracles, but they were told in understated ways.   There were no big names attached to the outpouring. No book deals or record contracts thus far.  In fact, the leaders had an aversion to celebrity culture.  And yet despite this, perhaps because of this, the veil between heaven and earth felt paper thin. It felt like what the Celtic Christians called, a thin place. There was a kind of naive purity about it all that I hope will remain unspoiled. Jesus was the only spectacular attraction. 

Make no mistake though, the leaders there carry some wise values that left a deep impression on me. I would describe them as follows:

 Consecration

The four words emblazoned above the Hughes Auditorium stage at Asbury University - Holiness unto the Lord - best describe what I encountered when meeting with the leaders there. What left the deepest impression on me was the sense of consecration among them. The repeated theme of repentance and dying to self marked every conversation. One lady described the Hughes Auditorium as a beautiful graveyard where I crucified my old self and buried it. Worship leaders and preachers would rush to pray in the consecration room before getting on stage to crucify pride, confess weakness and declare dependence upon the Holy Spirit. 

David Thomas, the pastor/theologian described by the group as the man who fathered people through the outpouring, insisted that repentance came from kindness rather than severity or manipulation. “People were so enraptured by the beauty of Jesus that they were only too glad to be rid of their sin. Holiness was no longer a set of behaviors. Holiness became a Person.” 

The consecration looked like genuine humility and hard work on relational unity. Impressive. 

For me personally, returning to my childhood environment of consecration with my soul more tethered to the grace of God, was beautiful and needed. As I knelt at the altar God’s presence reminded me of C.S Lewis's description of Aslan the lion when he peeled off Edmund’s dragon skin in The Voyage of the DawnTreader. 

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. " 

Grace is not permission to sin. Grace is the power not to sin. And this grace was available through an atmosphere of consecration.

Leadership Courage  

I heard repeatedly about the courage of the University’s leadership to allow the outpouring to interrupt the normal rhythm of their institution. This went further than merely suspending classes for two weeks. Dr. Kevin Brown, the President of Asbury, insisted that all giving buttons be turned off during the outpouring on their website so as not to leverage it for financial gain. One student leader told me the university had also refused to leverage the outpouring as a marketing ploy to grow their student body. Both  President and Vice President were integrally involved in the prayer ministry during the outpourings too.  They were ministers, not just administrators. Dr. Brown explained, Asbury has a revival history, so if there is an outpouring, we are a riverbed that means the water knows where to go.”  

His institutional courage acted like a river bed for the outpouring channeling it purposefully towards consecration and mission. Imagine the courage it took to interrupt normal academic rhythms for 16 days, allowing hundreds of thousands of revival seekers to inundate the campus? Imagine the courage it took to bring the prayer meeting to an end after 16 days when it was still in such full flow?

I wonder if there have been hundreds of other chapel or church services that have experienced a deluge of grace but there was simply insufficient institutional courage to welcome the interruption?

Lingering Worship

 The third virtue was lingering worship. Perhaps the small town affected this, but nobody was in a rush. Planning center was nowhere to be found. Worship was unhurried, uninterrupted singing; congregational in nature, theologically true, but more adoration than description about God. I am all for rehearsing rich gospel truths in our singing, but if worship does not lead to adoration of Jesus it can be a theological exercise. Do we have such an environment in our churches at some point in our calendars?

Travailing Prayer 

David Thomas taught a profound message of travailing prayer, from the Old Testament prophets, to Jesus to Paul to the 'Spirit who intercedes with groans too deep to express." (Romans 8:26) He warned about the American Churches' affair with casual prayer, calling Biblical prayer a language of tears. Here is a link to his book  on Travailing Prayer. I believe leaning in to travailing prayer is going to be a mark of awakening in our churches and on our campuses. 

Generational Risk

Finally, the generational risk was impressive. Asbury was primarily an outpouring for Gen Z led by Gen Z. Included in the leadership team who met with us was an 18-year old freshman who preached, and a student in her twenties who single handedly directed the 4 prayer rooms that operated adjacent to the main auditorium. The 24-hour worship was co-ordinated by a young white woman who was married to an African American man who led the gospel choir. Their willingness to be mentored and coached by older leaders was remarkable. But the older leaders' willingness to have them take the lead  was beautiful. Our church has hundreds of Gen Zers and I returned intent on taking more risks with them as leaders.

So, I'm considering these values deeply and crying out for God for a Methodist Moment in our church and the college campuses we serve. Won't you join me?