Reflections on Church Planting – Part 6
This series of seven reflections were shared by Josh Cockayne at the Plant Course 2022, hosted at St George’s Leeds.
This week, we are thinking about becoming established as a church plant; asking what it looks like to lay down roots and build a flourishing ministry in the places God has sent us. I wonder what the fruit of being established might be? Many people coming to faith and getting baptised? More volunteers resourcing our ministry so we don’t have to keep making the coffee every week? People in our congregations developing a deeper faith in Jesus? Financial self-sustainability?
What about persecution? Political opposition? Theological confusion? How does it sit with you that as we grow as a Church community, we should also see an increase in these things. Today, I want us to look at three encounters from Acts 19 that are the result of the church’s growth, but which we perhaps do not ordinarily associate with being established.
1. Being established means that our churches will contain confusion.
“Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.””
We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. These are people who have been in the church for some time, Luke describes them as “disciples” in this passage from Acts, but their level of confusion about Christian theology is pretty fundamental. They are not expressing doubt about the Holy Spirit’s ministry, they are not telling Paul that they are not really sure whether or not they have received the Spirit. They have not even heard about the Holy Spirit. I find this both astounding and very comforting. Tom Wright tells a story in his commentary on Acts of an old woman who insisted on splitting her communion wafer each week with her pet cat, who she was convinced was the reincarnated spirit of her dead husband.
As Paul finds out here, even the best church planters cannot control what people believe or what people hear. As the church grows this becomes increasingly the case. You can train your small group leaders as thoroughly as you like, but what you cannot do is control what they say on a Thursday night to a room full of impressionable young people. Growth often means less control. Just as Paul goes on to baptise these disciples in the Holy Spirit, we may be called to address confusion at times, to influence, to persuade but what we can never do is control.
2. Being established means that our churches will confront evil.
If we read a little later on in the passage, we read a colourful episode of a demon possessed man running around naked and bleeding after a failed exorcism by some Jewish high priests.
“…they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honour. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.”
Just as we cannot control beliefs, Paul is confronted here with the reality that he cannot control people’s behaviour. Even amongst those disciples who have come to faith and seek to follow Jesus, there are those who are still attempting to live in two worlds; to follow Jesus and continue to dabble in practices of occult and witchcraft.
I’m currently watching the BBC sitcom, The Witchfinder. It does a very good job of ridiculing the medieval church for its approach to any woman who displays behaviour out of the ordinary. The main character, played by Daisy May Cooper, is tried for being a witch because she is an unmarried peasant, who likes to spend time in the local inn, and was blamed by few fellow villagers for the death of a pig. And there are surely Christians today who are quick to shout spiritual attack when really, they are just having a bad week.
But to fail to take the reality of evil seriously is a risk that we cannot afford to take in the Church. Paul later writes to the Church in Ephesus, reminding them that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12). We must take our spiritual battle seriously, we cannot ignore its presence, but as Paul sees in Ephesus, we must also be confident that we have nothing to fear as those who live under the name of Jesus.
3. Finally, being established means that our churches will offend.
A little further on we read about a silversmith who makes money from building shrines of Artemis, which “brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there”. This man then gathered the local tradesmen to speak against Paul:
“You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. … There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited”
This episode eventually leads to a riot, in which Paul and his companions were forced to defend themselves publicly to an amphitheatre full of angry locals. Paul faces the reality here that the gospel is bad news. It is bad news for those who wish to exploit human beings for profit, it is bad news for those who are make profit from temptation and untruth, whether they are craftsmen making money from building false Gods, or those who want human beings to promote the lie that our ultimate purpose can be found in material objects.
We saw last week that Paul sees much of value in his culture, and we too are encouraged to celebrate what God is doing in our own cities. But are prepared to be bad news? Are we prepared to be bad news to those who’s livelihoods are at odds with the gospel, whether they are making money from false gods, sexual objectification, or spreading falsehoods? If our strategy for becoming established involves blending in to our culture as much as possible, then we must ask whether what we are building is really a Church.
Joshua Cockayne
Joshua is the Team Leader at Holy Trinity Boar Lane: a Church with a midweek ministry to love and serve workers in the heart of the city. He is also an honorary lecturer in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews and a tutor at Westminster Theological College. He previously led the G2 Central church plant in York from 2016–2017.
