There are, I think, two fundamental ways to grow something larger; you plant, or you prune. You separate and divide, like cells; or you cut away pathways that are stopping fresh growth.

Basic nurturing ingredients towards growth (water, sunlight, nutrients) are not growth strategies. They’re essential care ingredients. Regardless of your desire for the size or yield of anything organic, basic care is essential, and lack of this care is negligent and abusive. This is worth another conversation at another time.

So, for new growth, it comes down to plant or prune.

If you’ve spent time with me on this topic, then you’ll know I’m not a huge fan of the word ‘planting’ for churches, because as you’ll know—if you’re a gardener—that to have a successful new plant, you will need to begin with lots of options knowing that many won’t make it and will die in the soil. We don’t do that with children. Each child is carefully nurtured as if its life and growth and health are utterly indispensable – which of course it is! I’d rather talk about birthing churches this way than planting them—but for the sake of the metaphor, here we are: plant or prune.

Planting

Planting is a known quantity, even if it’s very often done badly. I’ve written about poor approaches to church planting previously, which you can read here. Planting begins with pruning, because it takes a small, healthy piece away from a larger plant, then places it in a smaller, high-resourced, mostly protected space. There it can propagate into something sustainable. Usually this means taking a group of good people out from a church, moving them into a different area, handling a lot of the oversight and administration for them for a while, letting them establish themselves and begin a rapport in their new community, then backing off from them almost completely so that they can grow fresh on their own. After a while, that church grows similar to its ‘mother’ church, but because of the new context, is distinct in its own ways.

Two of the most common issues with church planting are 1) a lack of fresh growth—so not taking to new soil well—or 2) reconfiguring other churches around your new plant. In the former, the issue is usually because of poor research of the new area, and a lack of effort to truly understand the new culture that you are moving into. The issue with the latter is moving people from other churches into your plant, so fresh growth isn’t truly happening. Everyone has just moved a seat to the left. Usually, this comes down to having poor ecumenical relationships to begin with.

There is also another set of issues surrounding plants that come out from other churches, but not with those churches’ blessings, so are functionally rebellion or deconstructionist movements, rather than truly church plants. Usually, the problem with these types of plants is isolation, arrogance, and ongoing hurt.

All these issues show, briefly, why church plants are much more complicated than we sometimes think. It’s why I prefer the phrase ‘birthing’, as it demonstrates better the levels of commitment and care involved in creating a ‘new’ church.

So, what about pruning?

Pruning

Basically understood, you prune for three reasons: 1) There’s dead stuff that stunting pathways to new growth, 2) There’s too much badly weighted growth in one area that’s draining resources from being properly distributed from the whole, or 3) You have a particular shape in mind that you think the overall thing should take that needs moulding.

Applying these to church:

1) ‘Dead stuff’ is where you need to be very careful. This can’t just be ‘people that you don’t like.’ There are, however, people who are so toxic to community growth, who are also given far too much power and influence. These people need to be directly challenged and their roles limited. They might represent unrepentant and divisive behaviour, in which case needs to be placed under church discipline. They might need to be removed all together. It will be ugly, and it will be painful, but this kind of pruning is essential for a church to grow.

2) ‘Badly weighted’ is where a certain ministry area, value, or topic has become so much in focus that its success is effectively stealing from the health of the whole. This can create single-issue churches that eventually turn into cliques, or they can create huge stewardship problems where all a church’s resources are eaten up in one need, so the local mission pot is left empty… or you can’t afford to pay your staff a fair wage. Sometimes pruning in these areas means releasing this group from the church to start their own trust or charity. Sometimes you need to connect them to a parachurch group with a similar focus. Other times, you need to be more brutal and speak directly to the movers and shakers about redistributing their resources more intentionally. Again, this kind of pruning is needed for a growing church.

3) ‘A particular shape’ cannot be a vanity exercise. Wanting your church to embrace a certain style, or feel, or model that you’ve seen elsewhere is rarely a good idea if it doesn’t stem naturally from the community it’s in. However, God calls churches specifically to meet certain needs in certain areas with certain skills and resources. Maybe your church sits right in the middle of a busy high street—in which case embracing a high street missional model will be important. Perhaps you’re next to a local school and would like to steer your resources to developing a relationship with that school. These kinds of pruning need a great deal of intentionality, looking strategically at all your focuses and resources and directing them away from anything that doesn’t grow in the shape you feel called to.

Pruning, as opposed to planting, has its own issues. It will always invite direct confrontation, it will always fundamentally change something, it will always involve losing something. It takes a great deal of community care and spiritual wisdom to do it well.

What’s the right option for you?

Church growth is never a straightforward or comfortable topic, but it’s well worth some considered time in an eldership board. Perhaps the time is right to plant, and you’ll need to start a long journey of prayer, conversation, and resource reallocation. Perhaps, though, there’s some dead, or mis-weighted, or poorly stewarded parts to your church that need pruning. This is always hard and should be done with accountability, oversight, and bags of care. Pruning, in lots of ways, is the relationally harder option. The question that should be asked, though, is ‘what will this church be like in five, ten, or even fifty years without it?’ Will it even be?

Planting or pruning? What do you think? Remember, no option is easy, and in both you’ll either have dirty hands or be holding scissors – so make sure you’re pursuing God every step of the way.

 

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash