6 minute read
A time to plant
Pip Florit looks at the exciting ministry of church planting and highlights PCI’s upcoming conference, ‘A Time to Plant’.
Across Ireland, society is changing at a rapid rate. From demographics, to attitudes, to family structures, to morals, there has been, and continues to be, a shift.
Attitudes to faith have not escaped this shift. We live in an increasingly secular society where more people have less experience of church. Perceptions of church have altered, creating a difficulty in reaching out to those who have no first-hand experience of church. And so the divide between church and society, the sacred and the secular, Christianity and spirituality is getting wider. How can we bridge this divide?
The town of Balbriggan is about 20 miles north of Dublin, a popular home for commuters and migrants, but a place with little gospel witness. A couple of years ago, members of Donabate Presbyterian Church, a church planted around 10 years ago, saw the need for outreach in Balbriggan and began to engage with the community. Over the past two years, they have started a home group, played football with locals and held an Alpha course in a local pub. Since January, they have been piloting a Sunday afternoon service and are excited to see where God will lead the community.
Balbriggan is just one of the stories of churches popping up throughout Ireland – churches that don’t necessarily look like we expect, but churches that are reaching people who may never have heard that God loves them and wants to give them new life.
Perhaps this gives you a lot of questions: How do we plant churches? What does the Bible say about church planting? How can the church reach out to people who have little knowledge of God? What is my part in church planting?
If you are asking any of these questions, PCI’s church planting conference is for you.
‘A Time to Plant’ will take place on Saturday 9 May at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dundalk. From 10am to 4.30pm, there will be opportunities to hear from people who have been involved in church planting, both internationally and in Ireland. The conference will seek
to spread the vision of ‘new life, new people, new places’, stirring up passion for what God is doing in church plants throughout Ireland. It will be a chance to meet with others who have that passion, to hear about what is happening and to look to the future, prayerfully considering what could happen.
The conference will welcome Scotty Smith, author and founding pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as its keynote speaker. Scotty has written and spoken extensively about church planting and is no stranger to Ireland. His current congregation, West End Community Church, has partnered with Liberty Church to do inner city ministry in Dublin. Scotty has previously spoken at the Keswick Convention in Portstewart and the Generation Church Planting conference in Edinburgh.
He will be speaking on the first three chapters of Ephesians, looking at the biblical rationale for planting churches and the vision for new life, new people and new places.
New life
People are constantly searching for ways to make their lives better, for changes that will give them a life worth living. Diets, experiences, new clothes, new toys – it’s human nature to crave the new, the satisfying, the fulfilling. But human nature also means that it’s never enough, so our society has become one that is habitually discontented and searching. In the searching, so often the places where people look for a fulfilled life are places that drive them deeper into its absence.
The evidence of this search is all around us. How different would Ireland look if people heard and understood that God offers mercy, love, grace and life? This is the message that God has entrusted his church with – the message of new life full of God and fulfilled in him. It is a message with the potential to breathe new life into spiritually dead places.
New people
In our changing Ireland, increasing in multi-culturalism and secularism, more people than ever are disconnected from the church and have never heard this gospel of salvation. More people than ever do not know the truth that God loved them so much that he sent his Son to die for them. When we reach out, we’re no longer reaching out to ‘first-generation unchurched’, we’re reaching out to people who have minimal knowledge of God, and often minimal interest in him.
We’re not primarily called to do this reaching out in an isolated situation, but as the church. Carnmoney Presbyterian Church has recently started a pop-up church along with other community activities in Ballyduff, a loyalist housing estate, as a means to connect with people with no previous church association. Members are going to where the people are at, rather than expecting the people to come to them.
New places
It goes without saying that new life and new people can happen in places where established churches have been for many years, but it also has to happen in new places, places where there is no other witness.
One of the advantages of a church plant is that it’s often not tied to a building – it can start where the people are and where it is needed. And often that isn’t in a stone building with a steeple. It could be a coffee shop, a school, a shopping centre, or a cinema.
What if ‘places’ doesn’t just mean geographical places, but spiritual, emotional, traditional, cultural places? In Lurgan, members of a large church recognised that they were not reaching their immediate neighbours. As a result, a team from the church has been regularly picking up litter in the area for the past year. This act of service has helped to build relationships with a number of local households and the church plans to run a course exploring faith in a neutral local school.
A time to plant
We need new expressions of church to introduce new people in new places to new life in Christ. Maybe you’ve long since realised that, but maybe you don’t know what to do with that realisation or what your part in it is. Attending the conference may be the perfect starting point to give you an opportunity to explore that.
As well as hearing from Scotty in the main sessions, there will be three breakout sessions, which will allow you to hear more stories of what God is doing around Ireland. These sessions will be opportunities to dig deeper into your own context, determining where you’re at, where you’re going and how you might get there.
This is a conference for anyone with an inkling of interest in church planting, no matter where you are on that journey. Whether you want to find out more about these stories of church planting in Ireland, whether you want to know how you can support and pray for those involved, whether you want to get stuck in or whether you want to explore if God could be calling you to church planting, you are welcome.
For more information and to book your place, go to www.presbyterianireland.org/atimetoplant
