Did you know that the Great Wall of China can be seen with the naked eye from the moon? If you believe this, I have some swamp land in Florida I would love to sell you. This lunar visibility of The Great Wall of China is an urban legend that began circulating in the 1700s and has even appeared in some school textbooks! In reality, the width of the Great Wall of China from the moon is equivalent to the width of a human hair as it would be seen from two miles away. The dissemination of this myth, although a bit ridiculous, has been relatively harmless, but in the past several years I have repeatedly encountered certain menacing myths that are much more detrimental because of how they have been used to thwart the advancement of God’s kingdom on earth.
The myths that I am referring to have all been pertaining to the infeasibility of planting a church in an urban area. Most of these myths have been perpetuated with the best of intentions by people who have only shared them because they cared about me and knew I felt called to defy logic and plant in an urban area. The insidious nature of these myths makes me want to expose them all the more. During the past three years, I have found myself testing these false hypothesis disguised as “well meaning wisdom” on a daily basis as my team and I have relied on God to build DC Metro Church.
Here are a few of the myths that have been busted:
1. You will not be able to financially support a church in an urban area.
I remember this one challenging me from the get go. It went something like this, “God will you provide for this place that you have called me to?” Looking back on this internal dialogue, it seems kinda silly to ask God if He will provide for me to be obedient to Him, but this test of complete trust has been one that God has required me to pass in every shifting season of my life from being a newlywed, to becoming a new father, and then to stepping out as a new church planter. A simple, yet profound truth that I have often had to remind myself about God is that: “Where God Guides, He Provides.”
I can honestly say, regarding church planting (or any other area) I have found this to be true time and time again. I still remember the inner intrepidation I felt signing our first office lease (1000 sq/ft space) that would allow us to move the church office out of our basement, but it was going to cost the church $2000 a month. At the time, this sounded like all the money on planet earth! Looking back, I realize it was just a small step of faith that God wanted me to experience, so that He could provide for that too… He was reminding me then, as He still has to today, that it really was only a number and that He would again provide where He had guided us as a new church.
In urban environments, cost is definitely a factor, and it does cost more to do church within these environments. However, remember that it’s only numbers to God. “Where God guides, He provides…”
2. You will not be able to have a permanent location.
This is one that has haunted me for some time, until now. When we moved to Washington DC, I was under the understanding that a permanent facility was in our distant, distant future. This thought did not plague me as I had an understanding that we would do church in a mobile environment for potentially 5-10 years and figure out the future as we go. This line of thinking worked until we started to outgrow our facility. You see, we were starting to have a space problem at DC Metro Church and could not add a third service in our current building. We had all kinds of crazy ideas for how to overcome these obstacles, but when it came down to it, we felt like God was going to move us into a larger location. With that said, we started to look and on Easter Sunday 2009, I saw an amazing building in my direct path to church. That’s right, the same path that I had taken for a year and a half on my way to church every Sunday morning. Even though I had never seen it before, there was a “for lease” sign in the front that to this day, I still believe was a “sign” from God.
Needless to say, it was much larger than I had dreamed, and it was definitely much more expensive than my wildest dreams. None-the-less, we moved forward with a make-shift building program, lots of hard work from the still newly planted church family, and tons of prayer. We completed renovations and moved in the week after Easter 2010- God has met us every step of the way… “If you build it, He will come.”
3. In trendy urban cities, you cannot use the same old tactics that are used in the Bible to reach people.
Part of our job as church planting pastors is to communicate the gospel in a culturally relevant manner. This is done, in part, by making the Gospel as appealing as Jesus Himself made it. The same old tactics he used back in the day still work. He is real, He is relevant, and He is definitely enjoyable – enough said.
4. Marketing is a nightmare, and expensive too…
You know, there is this amazing tip to fishing that my grandfather taught me that has forever changed the way I think about fishing. He simply said, “Fish where the fish are.” When it comes to marketing in the DC Metro Area, I have found that we have a huge benefit that we don’t have all over the country. It is simply this, “There are a ton of fish up here!” I am still amazed at how many fish there really are in most major metro areas in our country. In the DC Metro Area, there are currently around 5.26 million fish, with experts saying that there are 1 million more coming in the next 8 years. I don’t know what your fishing standards are, but let’s make something clear, that is a lot of fish!
Most will readily concur that there is a plethora of fish, but many have questioned if there are already too many fishermen with that many fish? Well, here are a few stats that have motivated me to believe God for one of the biggest churches on earth: In the DC Metro Area on any given Sunday morning, there are 150,000 seats available in life-giving churches. Now I know that this sounds like a lot of seats for people to be able to sit under God’s Word, but let’s calculate the percentage. 2.9% is our net capacity in DC for the local church, and net capacity is also a sign of belief capacity. In other words, the church as a whole does not really believe that God is going to answer their prayers to bring revival to the nation’s capital because we have not made provision to increase the capacity of the local church in DC. Part of the reason that Peter’s net was breaking when he put in the “net” was because instead of lowering all the “nets” (plural) into the water as Christ had commanded, he only lowered a single “net” which began to break. Just think of how many fish Peter could have caught if he had fully obeyed Christ.
I think of us as being on a mission to create as many church “campuses” throughout the DC metro area as humanly possible – wouldn’t that move the heart of Christ to send more fish?
5. There are too many liberals – God forbid…
This one may be a motivator more than anything, at least that’s how I see it… Here is the reality, Jesus died for everyone. This means that it does not matter what a person’s background, race, culture, worldview is; Jesus is still the answer to their greatest problem – Death, Hell, and the Grave. He defeated all three for everyone, and we need to keep that as our central perspective. My staff knows that one of our biggest values at DC Metro Church is that we are A-Political (not A-Moral). In other words, there is no political party that is represented above Christ, or for Christ, or God forbid, in place of Christ. This is something that as followers of Christ we may have to struggle with a bit, but the last I could recall, there were three primary institutions that God set in to place: The Family, The Government, and The Church. These were designed so that each would have responsibilities that the other two did not have. The responsibility of the Church is to spread the Gospel, make disciples, and multiply His presence on earth through God’s chosen vehicle – the local church. That is who we are, and that is what we do – and the vehicle that God chose works incredibly in urban areas as well…
6. Church is not cool in cities.
If you are really into that kind of thing (the coolness factor), then remember that the church is as cool as its leader. The great (and convicting) part is that the church is also as fired up as the leader, as good of a giver as its leader, as excellent as its leader, as real as its leader, as relevant as its leader, and my favorite, as enjoyable as its leader. So don’t sweat the cool factor – the church will look like YOU.
Thinking about urban church planting? Forget about the legend, and “Go urban!” Join the Urban League of Church Planters and let’s watch Christ do the “impossible” through us…
David Stine
www.davidstine.com
Lead Pastor, DC Metro Church, www.dcmetrochurch.org
Member of Association of Related Churches A-Team, www.relatedchurches.com
A ridiculously strong advocate for making Jesus famous in urban areas!
