April 18 ‘Church Planting’ Sunday

If you have been at New Life for any length of time, you know that one of our long-term goals is to plant a new congregation. In fact, should the Lord be pleased to enable us to do so, we’d like to plant multiple Gospel-centered congregations in the central Indiana area.

Why are we so committed to church planting? Well, one way we want to answer this question is by bringing Ted Powers to New Life on Sunday April 18. Ted is Church Planting Coordinator for our denomination (Presbyterian Church in America — PCA). He devotes his time to encouraging and training churches as they prepare to plant new congregations, and also helps to recruit and assess church planting pastors.

Ted will be preaching at both services at New Life on April 18, and will be teaching Sunday School as well. I want to urge you to do all in your power to make sure you are at New Life on this Sunday, including the Sunday School hour. All adult classes will be postponed on this day so we can all meet in the sanctuary to hear Ted.

Ted will be talking to us about the importance of church planting, and about the current state of the church in the United States. For instance, an organization called Church Planting Resources reports that almost 4,000 churches in the United States close every year. In 1900, there were 28 churches per 10,000 people in the United States, but in 2004, that number had decreased to 11 churches per 10,000 people. We believe God is calling us to fight back against this trend.

While it has been popular in some church traditions to pursue unlimited growth and “mega-church” status, the leadership at New Life has always been more interested in channeling our growth into new congregations. This involves the collection of a “core group” of people, the hiring of a church planter (a pastor with evangelistic gifts), and the targeting of a community for the new church. It’s a large task, so we are looking to Ted to help us get started.

The church planting arm of the PCA is called Mission to North America (MNA). MNA has begun a campaign called “Every Church Plant a Church” as a way of educating local churches about this process. I recommend again that you watch a short 13-minute video about this campaign at MNA’s Web site — www.pca-mna.org. Scroll down to “Every Church Plant a Church” and click on the link for the video.

Be there on April 18. And please pray that the Spirit would speak through Ted to teach and equip us for the exciting task of church planting in central Indiana.

My love to you

In Christ,

Bob

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