Analysis of Starting a New Church from Scratch by Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas - Book Report/Review Example

Starting a New Church from Scratch In the book ‘Starting a New Church from Scratch’, Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas offer strategies for starting a church from scratch. They base their publication on personal experiences they have gained over the years as pastors in launching their church. The authors give accounts drawing from the events of launching their church with no money, staff and no money1. They watched their members of congregation grow fast from none to over one thousand in a period of three years. They offer clear and practical ways of strategizing for quickly raising funds, planning services, creating teams, rapidly developing a growing membership and creating effective evangelism. They offer specific advice for reaching part of the congregation that is often difficult to reach; the 20-years-olds and the 40-years-olds. The journey of building the church started weeks after the 9/11 attack. The authors acknowledge that building a new church from scratch is a scary work. For the two, it was specially a hard task as the church was to be planted in a strange town. Summary The plot of the book follows a chronology that makes the reading interesting and guides the readers through the process of understanding the text. The authors’ main idea in the Foundation section is to detail how those interested in starting a new church need to prepare for the take off. They reiterate that there is a need for a calling to start a church. Despite this need, they note that the reason for most failures for new church starters is that they lack the divine call. There is then the need to strategize on the way forward and look for funds to start the church. Part of discernment for launching a new church means serious thoughts and prayers about one’s motives. One has to ask himself if he has negative reasons for starting the church2. There is need to have one’s spouse completely on board about the plan. Further, the willingness to do anything and commit fully for the cause is imperative. Finally, one must have the spirit of courage enough to ask total strangers for investment. The publication does a great job detailing the practicality of these foundation concepts. The authors tell their story of discernment as they lead the readers towards comprehending their own path of thought and prayer. The next section of the book, Formation details the process that those starting a new church need to take in building the church staff. An efficient foundation stage pays off at this phase. The formal groundwork begins. It takes the readers about the procedures of planning for the first mass and the significance of that first service. Thereafter, the authors dissect the procedure and detailed steps of gathering a launch team. According to the writers, this phase is the most crucial few months of a new church. It is the stage of incubating the new church. The authors state that there are things one needs to avoid as he concentrates on strategic planning and intentionality. The beginner needs to place his energies in these two primary places. It is an essential stage of building the staffing and systems. New churches need to explain exactly what they need done, how they need it done and the people they need to do it. The authors acknowledge that the phase is unique to each church and each church beginner needs to identify the situations surrounding him and design specific mitigation strategies. The book explains that a new church needs to maintain a lean budget. It explains how a church can utilize $50 a week workforce and concentrate on volunteers. The volunteers need to be paid small amounts to compensate their energy and tie them to the visions and objectives of the church. Implementation phase revolves around reaching people as the main idea and the last phase in the writers’ opinion. Reaching people is the core chore of this stage. After building and implementing the system, it is another challenge of the planter to transit from ‘new’ to ‘established’. This difficult task does not end with church staff having nametags and volunteers having designated areas. The launching of the church opens up for an entirely new season for the planter. At this point, the planter implements the long-term plans of the church3. At this time, the planter creates the ministries that may be essential for the running of the church. These could include global missions, youth missions, and small groups among others. The planter has the task of discerning whether the community has the ability to sustainably make the ministries the fabric of the new church. The book warns over starting too many ministries too soon as the other reason for failure of many new churches. At this point, the planter needs to redirect his energy from starting and launching the church to growing outwards and having disciples who seek to attract new people without denomination into the church. Critique Despite providing a fantastic tool for those assisting church planters, those praying over planting new churches and church leaders seeking new ideas from new church theory, the book have a few critical issues that need addressing. Foremost, the book assumes a simple stance in the way it presents its ways of starting a new church. From foundation to implementation, the authors present the strategies that the planters need to follow in a manner that misleads the readers over the complexity of the process. Whereas the authors acknowledge that the process of starting a new church is difficult and intricate, they do not represent the same ideology in their representation of the launching process4. They offer explanations on the strategies that new planters need to take in a simple and unpractical manner. In general, the authors’ advice on starting and building a new church is more of theoretical than practical. It is all-words without helpful ideas on where a planter could start. The book could make more sense and be of more help to the target audience if it had given ‘Starting a New Church from Scratch’ a practical approach. For instance, the authors could have given the specifics on sources of capital to invest in church. In this view, they could be of more help had they the best mechanism to use in acquiring the capital from the sources. Although ‘Starting a New Church from Scratch’ provides a marvelous outline of the procedures and strategies to take in building a new church, it loses the core objective of building the church. Considering the fact that the authors are senior pastors and mentors of many in the society, they neglect their core role of furthering Christian principles in the direction they take in articulating their views. It is unfortunate that the senior religious role models look at the building of the church more like a business than an institution of proclaiming the moral order of the universe. Whereas the core business of the authors was to detail the process of putting up a church as a building and congregation, it is not right that the authors sidelined the core role of the church as an institution. It would make no sense churches were built and packed with people yet there was no change in human morality as a result of the churches. The church proclaims and explains all aspects of moral order. The moral order is akin to the plan of an architect for some great project5. God is the Architect as human race is His great project. Pastors have the responsibility to co-work with the Architect. Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas fail to provide this moral order. Additionally, Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas fail to address some factors that would affect the creation of a new church. Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas neglected factors such as federal, state and local government policies that have great impact on the choice of a location for a religious building. Other factors such as demographic and environmental factors were not given a thought. This would mislead some aspiring planters that any location would give the astounding results seen in Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas’ church over a period of three years. ‘Starting a New Church from Scratch’ would help more planters and their aides if it had addressed all factors that may affect creation of a new church other than concentrating on how to build the church alone. Evaluation The book, ‘Starting a New Church from Scratch’ offers a deep insight on the strategies of starting a new church. Despite being too theoretical to be applicable to real situations, the book is still a good read and guide to outlining the requirements for prospective planters. One of the most important things from this book is the power of having mentors and life coaches. Searcy gives the revelations on the benefits life coaches played in his life and made him realize his dreams of establishing a church. Further, ‘Starting a New Church from Scratch’ reveals that contrary to the school of thought I subscribed to, some health churches can be launched quickly. The authors believe that churches can begin their monthly services within 2 to 3 months of their launching. Within the next three to six months, a new church could launch its weekly services6. It is astounding that some countries have the whole process of launching a church in less than a week, sometimes in a day. According to the book, the factors that delay this process are lack of a calling, lack of funds and lack of strategies. The text is particularly applicable to my church that has often suffered from too many missions that do not further its objectives. I would recommend the book for families and spouses of church planters, those with plans of joining church-planting teams, and those unsure of their callings and would wish to learn more about church-planting and mission leaders and volunteers helping to start new churches. Bibliography Searcy, Nelson, and Jennifer Dykes Henson. Turning First-Time Guests into Fully Engaged Members of Your Church. Ventura, Calif: Regal Books, 2007. Payne, J. D. (2009). Discovering church planting: An introduction to the whats, whys, and hows of global church planting. Milton Keynes, U.K: Paternoster Publishing. Searcy, Nelson, and Jennifer Dykes Henson.  Starting a New Church from Scratch. Ventura, Calif: Regal Books, 2009. Read More