Story

The Church Multiplication Network (CMN) is where I met Steve. My husband and I walked into his office to share our unique vision of church as a spiritual and economic engine in the community, not sure if our vision for church would fit the CMN church planters community.

To our surprise, after hearing our vision, Steve shook our hands and welcomed us to CMN, then proceeded to show us the business magazines he was reading to expand his strategic thinking on how to start churches that are economically viable and spiritually impactful both to the churched and the unchurched. Since that day, Steve has been a valuable friend and a wise guide who has cheered my husband and me to the successful start of Real Life Church.

My team and I were blessed with many mentors on our church planting journey, but Steve is one of the most insightful individuals I know when it comes to church startups that close the church-to-marketplace gap.

Steve Says:

Part of the reason I’ve been so focused on starting new churches is because of the trend of declining church attendance. Years ago, I took seriously the concept the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. Preferring sanity over insanity, I asked the question, “What does the church need to do differently to reverse the declining church attendance trend?”

The answer to that question led me to become involved in starting new faith communities that were willing to forego tradition in favor of faithfully incarnating the Gospel using contextually appropriate methods and models.

In order for this approach to be effective, I realized we needed to replace the question, “How do we start another church?” With a question, “How do we make disciples in this cultural context?” The first question focuses on the institution of the church. The second question focuses on the mission of Jesus out of which the church will emerge. .

One of those “corners” where the presence of the Church has been rare at best has been the marketplace. The relationship of the church to marketplace leaders has previously been primarily transactional.

The unspoken message to marketplace leaders has been, “You go make money and give it to us so we can use it for ministry. In exchange, we will provide a spiritual haven so you can wash the dirt of doing business off your soul.” No wonder the presence of the church has been rare in the marketplace.

The Church is Moving

However, over the past several decades, as form has been allowed to follow function, the relationship of the church to the marketplace has started to move in a promising direction. Ministry leaders have shifted their view of marketplace leaders from seeing them only as cash cows to be milked to seeing them as anointed colleagues called by Jesus to be with Him on mission. The result is the church is beginning to reestablish her credibility in the marketplace. Here are some ways I am observing this happening.

1. Discipleship processes are shifting from “preparing you to serve in a church ministry” to “preparing you to act effectively as a disciple of Jesus in the marketplace.”

2. Starting new churches in urban neighborhoods has been inhibited by the funding model that assumes all the operating income of a church must come from tithes and offerings alone. This is problematic because urban meeting spaces tend to be smaller and cost more resulting in an unsustainable financial reality of lower income and higher costs. An emerging wave of urban church starters is funding their endeavors with a variety of funding streams that include healthy partnerships with marketplace leaders.

3. Increasingly, urban church starters are utilizing a “diversified portfolio” of revenue streams as opposed to the conventional tithes and offerings only model.

4. Jettisoning tradition based church forms in favor of forms built on mission has led to all manner of creative blends of faith communities in partnership with for-profit businesses.

5. The idea the church starter (or lead pastor) has to be the catalyst of everything is quickly becoming a relic from the past. An increasing number of church starters are recruiting team members to assist them with generating revenue. For example, since, church starters have to be effective at recruiting people to the cause, they can use their recruiting gifts to invite an entrepreneur to become part of the church team and begin a complementary church and business simultaneously. This overcomes the problem of pastors who lack business skills and vice versa. These startups generally take longer to get off the launchpad, but also tend to be much more financially stable for the long haul.4

Reflection

I’m convinced that overcoming the faith-and-marketplace integration gap will lead to a significant expansion of the presence of the church in the neediest sectors of our society. Successfully overcoming this challenge will be especially impactful in urban communities, which tend to have a disproportionate impact on the trajectory of popular culture. Faith and marketplace leaders, working in alignment, can be used by God to change the destiny of cities and nations.

An Excerpt from the book, “Church for Monday” by Dr. Svetlana Papazov.

Svetlana Papazov is Lead Pastor and Founder of Real Life Church, President/Founder of Real Life Center for Entrepreneurial and Leadership Excellence, a first of its kind model of church and business incubator that educates in entrepreneurship, leadership and faith praxis.