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Why
We Need to Plant New Churches… in the City of Spokane
and Spokane County
82%
of the population of Spokane County is not in Christian
worship on an average weekend.(1)
People who have yet to become lifetime followers of
Jesus Christ in the fellowship of his Church are all
around us. We live on a mission field. It is imperative
that we lift up our eyes and look at this
harvest field as the Lord commanded.
At the present time, all of the Christian congregations
in the county are barely gaining ground as we attempt
to reap in this harvest field.(2)
We are not even winning those closest to ourselves.
Even if every Christian in every congregation were to
successfully win each of his or her family, neighbors,
friends and coworkers to Christ, we would still miss
most of the unreached people in our county.
We are not closely related to most of the unreached
urban poor, ethnic and English-is-a-second-language
families in our region. It will take missionary church
planting to reach and disciple this large unreached
population successfully and quickly. In fact, it will
take a church planting
movement like we are seeing on the non-Western mission
fields of the world.(3)
Mission Spokane's God-sized goal is to double the number
of Christian congregations in Spokane County by 2005
in order to bring in the full harvest.
Why
We Need to Plant New Churches… Nationwide
Source:
"Harvesting Churches Newsletter"
Quoted by the National
Pastors Prayer Network
According to the January, 1996 Gallup Princeton Religion
Report, there are an estimated 195 million unchurched
in the United States. During the last ten years the
total combined membership of all Protestant denominations
declined by 9.55%, nearly 4.5 million people, while
the population of the U.S. increased by 11.4%, or more
than 24 million.(4)
In 1991, 49% of those polled said they attended church
regularly. In 1996, only 37% said they did.(5)
Evangelical churches have failed to gain an additional
two percent of the American population in the past fifty
years.(6) In other words, we are
not even reaching our children!
No county in America has a greater percentage of churched
persons today than a decade ago and half of all churches
did not add one new member through "conversion growth"
last year.(7)
Add to this the estimate that churches lose 2,765,000
people to nominalism and secularism each year, and between
3,500 to 4,000 churches close their doors each year
for the last time (10.27 per day, 72.11 per week); while
only 1,100-1,500 churches are started each year (3.42
per day, 24.03 per week).(8)
The church in post-Christian America is seemingly losing
the battle for the hearts and minds of the American
people. North America is the only continent where Christianity
is not growing.(9)
Tom Clegg, National Director of Church Planting for
the Open Bible Standard Churches says, "What once was
the number one sending nation of foreign missionaries
is now the thirteenth largest receptor nation."
(10)
References:
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(1) Dan Grether, A
Brief Look at the Harvest, 1999.
(2) Dan Grether, A
Look at the Harvest, 1999. Available from
dgrether@soar.com
(3) David Garrison, Church
Planting Movements
(4) Charles Arn, ASCG Journal of Church Growth,
Autumn, 1996.
(5) George Barna, Church In The World Today.
(6) George Barna, American Profile.
(7) Arn, op. cit.
(8) Ibid.
(9) George Gallup, Church In The World Today.
(10) Thomas T. Cleg, paper entitled The Need for
Church Planting in America, 1996. (Note: Each
of the above references (#1-6) were cited in this
paper.)
(11) Charles Ridley, adapted from How To Select
Church Planters,1988, Fuller Evangelistic Association
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