I read on the Acts 29 Network site today that church plants have an 80% failure rate and only pain and frustration will result for those who are not called to plant. I had a moment...after 6 months of meeting as a "house church" in the "living room" of my home, I wondered if we would be a statistic. I truly believe we are called (why are earth would anyone want to pastor in this day in age unless God didn't let you sleep at night and followed you around everywhere with confirmations). But the truth is that planting a church as Latinos is difficult. For some reason, I feel that there are all sorts of planting networks that search out or are available to Blacks and Whites but what of Latino churches planted for 2nd/3rd generation English speaking folks?

Hmmm, 80% failure rate huh? I wonder what it could be? Could it be...

Money. For a small baby church, I have to say that the people that consider themselves members of WHF give. I know it is sacrificial because they are all struggling financially. We ourselves have invested our money in buying equipment, paying for our current websites, etc. etc. But it is not easy to even run a house church with no money. How can we advertise that we even exist without money? How can we rent a space to accomodate people with no money? Being led by a bi-vocational pastor doesn't help much either. The time that could or should be spent developing relationships in the community is spent at work making the donuts to pay for the essentials of life.

Churches that can give, are motivated by extraordinary guilt to send money to overseas missions. I never got that. I totally believe in overseas missions, don't get me wrong. But aren't there urban mission opportunities right here in our own backyard? So many churches turn their backs to the poverty and disenfranchised people right in their community. Again, I think there should be giving overseas but that should not be the only giving. Get me?

How do big mega-churches or just plain over 400-people Latino churches connect with small, struggling with "much vision and little provision" church plants?  I see alot, read alot and hear alot about all the church planting movements across the country but it seems that only certain cities matter...isn't the gospel to be preached everywhere? Why funnel the dollars and the resources to certain areas only? I get that  the "major impact" areas are important but what are we saying here? If you live in Fort Lauderdale getting you saved is not as important as getting the folks in Miami saved? H-e-l-l-o, that is extremely myopic.

Yeah, money could be a reason for an 80% failure rate.

Core teams. These aren't easy to come by. Most people who have "made it on the church corporate ladder" don't jump at the opportunity to join a start-up church plant UNLESS they are sent by the Mama church. Why? Because they are comfortable? They don't want to do "too much" (they paid their dues already).

Sometimes the folks that do want to join are church hoppers or worse, people who carry inflated egos, high self-importance and a chip on their shoulder. Church plants would do well to be slow to add to the core team because, let's face it, many church leadership teams don't know how to tell someone they ain't flowin' with where you goin'.

And believe it or not, sometimes the people that you think would be perfect for a core team turn out to be the biggest headaches for you. You spend more time trying to hammer out issues on the core team than dealing with the issues of the folks coming to the church.

Bottomline? Church planters need to remember that "many people are there for just a season and few are there to stay long term". Some church training materials call folks "scaffolding people" because they are usually Christians already attracted to your church plant because they "were peculiar" and not accepted where they were at before. They say church plants are scaffolding magnets!

Yeah, human resource issues can be a reason for the 80% failure rate.

Mental Maps. The pre-conceived ideas of what church should be are difficult to attack. Why? Because most people are not even aware that they have iron-clad mental maps floating around in their brains. They just know that when they walk into a church and it isn't doing something they think a church "should be doing" they don't come back.

I had someone call our church asking Hiram if "we bring the presence of God down". As a church who believes in the gifts of the Spirit we said yes. She came for two Sundays. Hasn't come back since. So we wondered... I guess we weren't "bringing the presence of God down" the way she believes the "presence of God should be brought down".

Others just cannot see themselves worshipping on Sundays in someone's house. Now granted, I want a building because our vision is to do more than "have a church". But right now "it is what it is". Isn't the important thing to find God's presence, to find a community of people trying to be authentic, and burden bearers for one another? In the Latino community it is harder to do the house church, coffee house church, dinner church thing. What can I say? 

Going back to the building issue, our vision is a holistic missional one. We want to be a center of transformation for everyone in our community. To us that means meeting people's needs, building families, etc. It would be easier to do with a building. I know I could get some grant money to fund some community projects but I don't have a building. We asked a church not far from us and in the same denomination if we could utilize their building for our church and community projects with the promise that within two years we would have it fully funded. There are still trying to figure out what the "benefit" is for THEM. They apparently don't give a heck about the people in their own church much less community that would also benefit from their building being fully utilized. It is a 3 story, gigantic building with an elevator. It isn't utopia (ac needs work, furry wall paper in bathrooms) BUT when you just want to serve that isn't the main problem. So we wait.

Established hardcore mental maps, yeah...that could be the reason for the 80% failure rate.

There you have my 11:10 pm, after a long exhausting day of teaching, thoughts on church planting.

And I am sure I ain't seen nothing yet (good AND not so good). Tomorrow another exciting adventure of a baby church plant in South Florida. These are my chronicles.