You think of how many church plants, unfortunately, often happen today. Maybe they happen just down the street of another church that agrees with them entirely in their theology. And you think, well, maybe we should have had a conversation before you started a church just down the street. Was this going to be a conversation? What’s going on here? (Caleb Morrell)

When I moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2002, I spent the first six months of my tour there in church parsonage situated in Ringgold, Georgia. Driving from the church where I worked to the home where I lived I must have passed a dozen Baptist churches. Coming from Michigan, I was astounded at the number of Baptist churches in East Tennessee. Sort of like Bubba in Forest Gump, there were Southern Baptists, Fundamental Baptists, Independent Baptists, Missionary Baptists, and Primitive Baptists—not to mention all the Baptists who were ashamed to call themselves Baptist.

Speaking with only a slight sense of hyperbole, there was a Baptist Church on every street. And sometimes right across the street. I mentioned my living quarters above because on the road to my house there two Baptists churches—Salem Baptist and New Salem Baptist. The actual name of the church has been changed to protect the (not so) innocent parties.

Driving past those churches I always wondered what the backstory was? Was this a church plant, with a new method for evangelism or a worship style? Or more likely, was it a church split? A group from Salem Baptist decided that they knew better and so they formed a committee to start a new church. Yet, instead of finding a location down the road, they took up residence right across from the church.

Now, I don’t know what actually happened and it may not be anything like what I imagined, but even if this story was entirely like something that came from the mind of Joseph Bayly, it would caricature a real problem—churches begun without any consideration for their neighbors. Indeed, for all the healthy ways churches plant churches, there are also unhealthy church plants that actually undermine the testimony of the gospel in a given area.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I found myself in such a situation in 2015. And I am grateful to God that he prevented our band of eager church planters from starting something that have been born with a spirit of competition. Indeed, with the perspective of hindsight and from a number of recent conversations with pastors and aspiring church planters, I am increasingly convinced that too many church plants are begun in ways that compete with other local churches.

Yes, God loves to grow his church and to plant new churches even in places filled with churches. Yet, as Ecclesiastes 8:6 has said, there is a proper time and procedure for everything under heaven, and that includes planting a church. And so, in light of a recent conversation with Caleb Morrell on the importance of Baptist associations, I want to republish some of his remarks from our podcast and then offer four brief reflections on how church plants can love their neighbors by working together with other churches.

The Capitol Hill Baptist Church

Today, many know Capitol Hill Baptist Church for the gospel-centered ministry of its senior pastor, Mark Dever, and the church-equipping ministry of 9Marks. In 2004, when I went to seminary I stumbled across The Center for Church Reform (now 9Marks), and ever since my understanding of the church and its mission has largely been shaped by the resources, events, and friendships of Mark Dever and his interns. Yet, for all that I knew of CHBC, I did not know the story of its founding, or the way other churches played an important role in its establishment.

Here is what Caleb Morrell (CM) told me (DS) when we spoke about Baptist associationalism on the Christ Over All podcast. Time stamps in brackets.

CM [18:45]: When a new church would get started in an area, so, for example, my local church, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, when they were thinking of getting started, these members of these various churches living on Capitol Hill in the 1870s, they ask their local church, they ask the association, what do you think? So they ask the local churches, do you think this is a good idea? And the pastors, the messengers of those churches all get together, they gather, and they deliberate and they say, “Can we lend our support to this effort?”

And the first time those, those messengers got together, they said, “You know, now’s not a good time. We’re not sure you’re ready.” And so they waited and then they had them come back together again. And they said, “Okay, we think you’re ready to go. We’re going to lend our support.” But they didn’t consider a church legitimately formed according to Baptist custom, unless they had the affirmation of the other local churches supporting them, which is just remarkable.

You think of how many church plants, unfortunately, often happen today. Maybe they happen just down the street of another church that agrees with them entirely in their theology. And you think, well, maybe we should have had a conversation before you started a church just down the street. Was this going to be a conversation? What’s going on here?

And that’s, that’s an example of kind of—I don’t know what to call it—a competitive spirit or just kind of an indifference toward Christians around it. But if we could recover something of that humility and that willingness to cooperate with each other, it seems like that would be a good thing.

DS [20:23]: Yeah, so I’m curious about that. Go back to Capitol Hill when they said they weren’t ready. What were they waiting for? Was it that they didn’t have a pastor? They didn’t have someone who could handle the Word? What was it they were waiting for and what changed?

CM [20:35]: It’s a good question because they had been praying for four years, doing prayer meetings for four years. They had started a Sunday school. They had a Sunday school going for four years with children because they’re trying to evangelize the neighborhood. They had bought a property. They had constructed a building. And the local church were like, we’re not sure you’re ready yet.

And to consider, one, the country was in a recession. And so they were concerned about the viability of the church. And that actually became a real concern six years into the church’s existence. It almost went under because of financial strains. I think it’s also just, it’s going to cost those churches. If 50 members leave three other churches in the area and stop giving to those churches, it’s going to affect those other churches. And so I appreciate the concern, the sensitivity.

At that time, the D.C. churches had seen a few church plants, so to speak, fail for these reasons and so they said, “Hey, let’s just wait a little longer. Let’s wait until you’re in a little better shape financially, and then we’ll let you move ahead. Again, they [the other churches] had no formal authority to do that; the fact is everyone affirmed church autonomy and associational accountability. So they could have just said, “Well, forget you guys we’re going do it ourselves and we don’t need to be part of your association.”

But again, it’s hard to exactly put your finger on what the spirit or the dynamic animating all this. If you can think of a word for it—I mean, catholicity is the best I can do. Lower case ‘C’, catholicity, is just kind of a generous spirit toward other Christians and a desire to cooperate.

As you can tell, insights from Baptist history are something churches should recover today as we think about planting churches and partnering for the gospel. As Caleb notes, there are too many churches in our day who do not consider what Christian catholicity means and too many leaders whose ambition to serve the Lord harms the larger body of Christ.

This is the point that comes out so clearly in our podcast—namely, that a spirit of independence and indifference to other churches fosters an unhealthy competition between churches. This competition is both inimical to the kind of association that churches should enjoy and it is ultimately harmful for the gospel witness in a given area. Accordingly, churches should do everything they can to foster cooperation among gospel-preaching churches, but this includes church plants initiating efforts with consideration for their neighbors.

To that end, I want to offer a positive exhortation for those planting churches. This exhortation would have been helpful for me in 2015; it is applicable for those who are considering a new church plant; it is relevant for the NAMB church plants popping up in college towns without any consideration for established churches; and I pray it may be helpful for you too.

In the last few weeks, I have had multiple conversations on this subject with friends near and far, and so I know the matter is relevant. In what follows, I pray what you find is edifying, as we long to see healthy churches planted around the world and down the street.

Local Churches: Sisters in Christ, Cousins in Membership

Jesus taught, to put it simply, that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love others (Matt. 22:37–39). Likewise, he told his disciples in John 13:34–35 that the world will know you are my disciples by your love for one another. Surely, this is most visible in the covenant bonds of a local church, but it also has application for local churches, in the way they conduct themselves with one another.

As John teaches elsewhere, independent congregations are sisters to one another (2 John). Writing to the “elect lady and her children” (v. 1), John closes by saying, “The children of your elect sister greet you” (v. 13). With these two verses, we learn that every church is a sister to every other church, and that members belong to independent households, all the while sharing the same Heavenly Father. Indeed, the way John frames it, members of independent churches are cousins—i.e., children born of two sisters. Yes, in Christ they are also siblings, but John helps us to see they are siblings living in separate houses. This is an important point and one not often considered.

Applied practically, Christians should delight to see their cousins and to spend time with them, but as cousins live in different houses, so Christians return to commune in different houses too. As good fences make good neighbors, there is something right and healthy about not blurring or blending local churches together. Far better, is a commitment to a single local church, where the brothers and sisters in that church can appreciate the brothers and sisters of Christ in another church. Such joy of having cousins! There are distinctions between local churches that make different churches different, while at the same time there is family tree that makes these churches united by Christ. When local churches acknowledge this, they learn how to broaden Jesus’s command to love another to multiple churches.

What Is Missing Today: A Proper Understanding of Church Association

Such a vision for an association of local churches is often missing today. As many Christians have self-defined commitments to their local church, they often struggle to understand how to relate to other churches. For example, many participate in multiple churches and consider this good and normal. Like shopping at multiple groceries, they look at what they need and they stock up accordingly. Yet, such a vision for church is entirely based off a view of church membership that comes from Costco, not the new covenant.

Such unbothered consumerism is endemic to the American church. It turns churches into hotels, instead of households. It fractures the bonds that are supposed to be formed between brothers and sisters. And it makes sisters in Christ (i.e., local churches) rivals to one another. Fearing that the prettier sister will get all the suitors, every church begins to adorn themselves with activities or advertisements to compete for children, instead of worshiping the Father and waiting for the Son to give them children who are born of the Spirit.

Now, it is possible to overplay the familial metaphor here. If we deny the way all Christians share the same Father in heaven, local churches can become too autonomous and independent. But, I suspect that is not the tendency most prevalent today. More often individual Christians underplay Scripture’s familial language, and do not appreciate the covenant bond that is made with those who take the Lord’s Supper together. Equally, they do not appreciate the distinct covenant bond that is made at another church’s table. When this happens, well-meaning Christians fail to consider what it means to commit to a local church, as opposed to being part of the universal church. Practically, many Christians spread themselves among multiple churches, and as a result all the churches are weakened.

To take a lesson from human anatomy: God did not create human cells to float freely in midair, he intended life-giving cells to serve the body in which they were members. Amazingly, when a child is in eutero cells from one body (the babies) can integrate with the cells of another (the mother), but this is only for a season. Likewise in the church, there will be the transfer of cells from one body to another, as members go from one congregation to another. Or better, that transfer will occur when the mother church “gives birth” to a daughter church. But in that instance, it is still a transition from one body to another. It is not cells living on their own, floating wherever they will. It is members of Christ’s universal body finding a home in particular church.

This is a truth that should be recovered today and one that has implications for church planting too.

How Churches and Church Plants Love One Another

When planting a church, church planters would do well to know who their neighbors are, to understand where evangelistic work is most needed, and to avoid planting a church that is just like another church down the street. Even better, by receiving the blessing of a mother church, and by working in coordination with other churches, it may be that certain members leave their local church to help start another. Indeed, one of the ways that local churches are, and should be, connected is by planting churches together. This is what the story of Capitol Hill Baptist Church illustrates above. But sadly, this often is not what happens.

Embracing a spirit of individualism, there are many churches that begin without any consideration for their neighbors. This is the testimony that I heard from a pastor of a church in a college town, who has seen multiple church plants, from his own convention, begin without ever talking to him. By contrast, I spent an hour last week talking to two potential church planters who were doing everything in their power to plant wisely. In that conversation, we discussed the need to be at peace with the church they were leaving and I would say here, they should also make time to get to know the other churches.

To be sure, every church plant is different. The ideal is a healthy mother church planting out of the overflow of her resources, sending forth elders and members to begin a work (Acts 13). On the other side of the scale, are churches that are born in frustration, because the desires for ministry of a certain segment of the church can no longer work well together. This would be a situation analogous to Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15). Equally, there may be other circumstances where world events cause mass migration that result in the need for new churches (Acts 8).

In our world today, God will use any number of events to birth new churches, but in all such cases, the command to love one’s neighbor remains. If a new church is being planted down the street, it should do more than set up shop by itself, it should look to associate with other churches who are preaching the same gospel. It should consult the leaders of those other churches to consider the impact of their ministry. And, if humility and good-will are leading the effort, it should be willing to wait.

At the same time, if that church is planting because they are splitting from their last church (the Chattanooga example), they would do well to be at peace with the church they left as much as is possible. Equally, the church they left would do well to seek the counsel of other local churches for the best way to relate to this unexpected church plant. And both would do well to consider the counsel of those local churches who share their convictions about Scripture.

Indeed, bringing the gospel to the world is not the work of any one church, is it? No, it is the work of Christ by his Spirit to plant churches that bear witness to his resurrection and that offer the bread of life to a world feeding on death. In this way, churches do this best when they are rightly ordered internally and rightly ordered associationally.

In truth, in places like Northern Virginia, where I live, we need a new church down the street. But that new church also needs to love its neighbor, even as our church does the same. As Baptist churches once provided accountability to one another, going so far as to assist with doctrinal disputes and church discipline, so local churches today should aim to recover such associationalism, as well.

Just imagine what would happen if local churches partnered together to plant churches, and eager church planters waited on the wise counsel of others? Imagine what would happen if a church member who refused to deal with sin in one church was confronted by the same commitment to holiness in the next? Imagine what would happen if a doctrinal dispute or a charge of spiritual abuse was assisted and adjudicated by other local churches? Consider the impact it would have on the health of local churches and the witness of the gospel in a given area?

Such a vision of church life is not a dream. It was the historical Baptist model. And it is one that is needed again today. To that end, may the Lord raise up such associations among local churches and may he teach churches and church plants how to love their neighbor churches as themselves.

Soli Deo Gloria, ds

Photo by Vlah Dumitru on Unsplash