The Avenue Blog

Plant Churches!?
by Orion Berridge

For some, church planting sounds exciting and enticing! It feels like it’s the entrance into a plan that is bigger and grander than us – and all to advance the gospel. But for others, it sounds scary and uncertain. It’s what we think older churches do after they’ve perfected their ministries and become great at everything. Those feelings are natural. It’s actually how our church plant team felt when we began to meet about planting The Avenue. As we prayed about what type of mission God had for us, it was clear that God was calling us to be a church planting church. I remember the room being filled with uncertain excitement.

Church planting is more than a fad. It is well documented that new churches are more effective in reaching un-churched people groups than older established churches. Our hope is to never grow “old” as a church but to remain a church planting movement that is never content with 100 or 1000 members. We will continuously seek to join God on his mission to “seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), and we feel that to do this in our culture means to church plant.

In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says to Peter, “...I will build my church.” Reading this passage I realize that the fears and excitement that we all feel about church planting are valid. But those words “I,” “Will,” “Build,” “My,” “Church,” are all of God’s own words. He’s used them to tell us that He’s got it all under control. Our role in planting is to join him in that building. We’re not on His mission to create physical buildings, organizations, or even to grow the fame of The Avenue. But instead, our calling means that we’re to love people around us, and He wants us to connect with them through starting new churches.

We have recently announced that we are excited to begin the process of joining the Acts 29 Network. In November, Nick and I traveled to Louisville and met with Acts 29 leaders and partner churches. We came away refreshed and excited about the awesome possibilities of this relationship. This will not change anything with our sending church, LSCC, that we love and we will continue to partner with in ministry. This also goes for Great Commission Heartland, which is the regional network of Great Commission Churches - the association of churches that LSCC and The Avenue are part of.

It is our hope that God would work through these networks and relationships to create in us a strong dynamic of missional church planting DNA. We are joining Jesus in “Growing followers of Christ to plant missional churches” in obedience to Him and taking serious his words in Matthew 16:18 “I will build my church!”