Whoever wants to save their
lifechurch will lose it, but whoever loses theirlifechurch for my sake will find it.
I first heard the word “replanting” in 2013, when I was sitting across from my friend and seminary classmate Alex Douglas. He was talking about a word that God had put on his heart during a recent retreat day. Actually, it was more like a bullet list than an actual word. The list read:
- Heritage Green
- Family Ministry
- Replanting
As he unpacked what this meant to him, Alex talked first about Heritage Green, an aging congregation surrounded by a vibrant neighbourhood full of young families in upper Stoney Creek. It was a church that many in the Presbytery felt had tremendous potential, particularly since the congregation had only been planted a mere 25 or so years earlier.
Next, Alex talked about Family Ministry. This is a topic he was personally very passionate about, because of his extensive experience working with children and families. He knew that growing spiritually healthy children meant investing in spiritual healthy families and parents. He had also developed a strong sense of the importance of the overall narrative arc of Scripture in teaching families God’s Word.
That left just one word: “Replanting”. Alex wasn’t sure what exactly this meant. It contained the word “planting”, which in church language represents the beginning of a new ministry. When we talk about “planting” a new church, we think of team of leaders and church planters launching a new worship community in an area where “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37).
What did it mean exactly to “replant” a church? Did it mean starting something completely new in the ashes of failed church? Did it mean planting an entirely new community in an existing building? What exactly was God putting on Alex’s heart?
With that question still hanging, Alex switched the conversation to talk about the journey. He knew he wanted to say “Yes” to this prompting. He also felt strongly that this was too big of a job for just one minister. So he was looking for a partner with whom to co-replant – whatever that meant. And he thought that person might be me.
I said no. And I was sure God was leading me somewhere else, but I said I would be happy to help him work on a plan – something I enjoy doing – and pray with him and for him in his journey ahead. I had already been studying church health and growth for a number of years, so I felt like I could help in putting together a strategic plan.
Well, God had other ideas, and within a matter of months He had turned my resolute “No” into an overwhelming “Yes”. That’s a story for another blog, but the bottom line is that the Holy Spirit clearly and compellingly showed my wife Nancy and me that this was where He was calling us to go next.
But we were still stuck with the question, “What is replanting?” One of the fundamental issues bothering both Alex and me was that there was already a congregation in place. How could we plant when there was already something growing, even if it wasn’t bearing the kind of Kingdom fruit anyone would have hoped for?
And that’s when Jesus turned on the lights. Replanting wasn’t about the plant – it was about the soil.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a story to his followers about a man who is sowing seed. He casts the seed all around. Some falls on rocky soil, some on thorny soil, some on shallow soil, but some falls on good soil. Only the seed that falls on the good soil ultimately produces a harvest.
The problem with unhealthy churches is that the soil is no longer healthy. The plants that are not able to bear good fruit because the soil underneath them won’t allow new growth. And new seed that might come along quickly gets choked out by the unhealthy plants around it, or starves because of a lack of nutrition.
The “aha” moment was when we realized that replanting is not actually about saving the plant. It’s about creating new soil. Rich soil. Healthy soil. Soil that embraces and nourishes and feeds new seeds until they become a harvest a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Replanting is about composting what was there before in order to create healthy, nourishing soil for something new.
That sounds a bit harsh at first, doesn’t it? Who wants to be composted? And isn’t that being unfair to the church that was already there? Who wants to be called an unhealthy plant? Who wants to give up what they already have in order to become something they have never experienced before?
Except … isn’t that exactly what Jesus promised his followers?
In Matthew 16, Jesus had just told his followers that he was going to have to suffer and die in order for his mission to be completed. Peter, upset with what he was saying, tried to take Jesus aside to get him to stop. But Jesus uses one of his harshest rebukes against Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!”
Replanting is about composting what was there before in order to create healthy, nourishing soil for something new
Why? Because Peter needed to know that God’s ways don’t always look like our ways. We want to avoid change. We want to avoid suffering. We want to turn away from the cross. But in God’s economy, the way the new life was by going through the cross, not by going around it.
And then Jesus says to the disciples these powerful words: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25, my emphasis). What does this mean? It means that, if your primary goal is to preserve your own life the way it is now, with all your current comforts, habits and ways, then you will won’t be willing to go where Jesus is leading. Because his way requires obedience, sacrifice and surrender.
However, if you are willing to surrender your life to Jesus – to lose your life for his sake – then you will find true life. It is only when we surrender to Jesus that we find the life God intended us to have, both in this world and the next.
It is true for our lives, and it is true for church replanting. If we are desperate to hold on to what we already know and have; if we are more concerned with our comfort than in reaching new souls for Christ; if we would rather keep what we have then receive what Jesus might be offering, then we are doomed to lose our churches. Because Jesus has no use for a church that is serving itself.
When we hold on tightly to what we have, we are unable to receive anything new. But if we are willing to open our hands and offer up our whole church to Him, not only will we be able to release to Him what is no longer needed, but we will also be in a position to receive the new things that He has for us. It also means that if he gives us back something we have offered up, we can receive it back with joy and confidence that it is part of our Kingdom mission.
This is what we learned in our first replanting journey at Heritage Green: Replanting is about surrendering what we are in order to become the soil for what God is going to do with us next.
As a footnote to this story, we brought the Replanting Proposal to the Session of Heritage Green, and we talked about this metaphor of becoming the soil for something new. Obviously we were nervous about sharing such a difficult message, and were anxious to hear how they would respond. After thinking about it for a while, one of the elders responded by saying, “Well, if Jesus wants us to become a pile of soil, then we’ll become a pile of soil. And if Jesus wants us become a pile of something else, then we’ll become that too. As long as we get to see new life here!”
Amen to that! Lord, compost us for your glory!