Church Planting as a Means of Cultural Renewal

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

David Powlison is well-known for saying, “There are plenty of reasons to be afraid. But there is a better reason not to be.” That’s a good word for the church today.

The Evangelical church is in a panic. From all angles, it feels as though Christianity is on the losing end of the culture wars. We are told that the culture, politicians, and academics are against us, churches are closing, and as a result, more of our children are walking away from the faith. There are plenty of reasons to be afraid.  

But fear is never a good mindset for significant decision making. In our panic, many Christians are running around blindly throwing darts at anything that might stick by way of cultural change. Raise money for a candidate. Sign petitions for a drive. Start a new unbiased media website. All good work, but not the best long-term strategy.  

Instead of panicked, short-sighted solutions, what we need is to take a deep breath and remember the better reason not to be afraid. God is still sovereign. And then, with a clear-mind, get back to doing what the church has always been about—preaching and planting. If you look at Paul’s mission in the Book of Acts, his purpose is clear. He preaches and disciples leaders all with the end goal of planting local churches. And once a church had been planted, he trusts that through the good works of those local believers the broader culture might be impacted.

Instead of cultural change through legislation alone, Paul aimed deeper.

Best long-term strategy for cultural change?

Paul Tripp has a helpful analogy he uses for counseling, but the analogy has broader implications. Imagine owning a fruitless apple tree. In a panic, you run to the grocery store, buy a bag of apples and begin to staple the apples to the trees. For a few days the tree looks impressively healthy, but the deeper rot still remains. The external looks healthy, but inside the tree there is a deeper disease. Eventually the stapled apples will rot. What the tree needed was not a quick fix, but the deeper work of caring for the roots.

Unfortunately, a quick fix is what many Christians are presently trying to do. They are trying to make America look Christian externally without ever actually being Christian internally. Law is good for restraining evil, but not for changing the heart. And unless hearts are deeply changed by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, then this cultural battle will ultimately be lost, even with great effort.

And so, what do we do? What is the best strategy for engaging the greatest number of hearts with the good news of the gospel? In other words, what is the best long-term strategy for cultural change? It’s the simple strategy that Paul gave himself to—planting churches. And by planting churches, I mean not simply starting new churches that are better than the ones across the street. Reshuffling the Christian deck won’t get us very far. I’m talking about filling churches with those who were once outside the church.

What we need today is a strategy of planting more faithful, Christ-centered, evangelistic, gospel-proclaiming churches that are able to engage multitudes of people on a heart level.

Where Heaven and Earth meet

The kingdom of God and the church are not identical, but these two spheres have significant overlap. The place where the kingdom is most clearly seen and felt is each Sunday morning in the context of local church worship as the triune God of the universe engages his people through the ordinary means of word and sacrament ministry. God, each Sunday morning, is graciously changing his people. He is putting to death, by the Spirit, the old man and bringing us to new life in Christ. It is often slow work. As Paul says, it is work that is one degree of glory at a time. But it is the deepest and truest work. It is the work that is desperately needed.

Our church plant in Detroit was able to recently move into a century-old Roman Catholic church. Our building is beautiful. Vaulted ceilings, marble floors, and stained-glass windows. We are in a gorgeous sanctuary that is dripping with meaning. The ceiling is decorated to reflect the heavens: high and lofty, colors of gold and pictures of the cherubim. As the eyes move downward, the building becomes more ordinary in colors and imagery. The ground level is just wood pews and beige walls, a heavenly ceiling and an earthly floor. The idea is that each Sunday morning, as the word of the Christ is faithfully preached, the kingdom of God is breaking forth into this present age.

Heaven and Earth meet. God, by his mercy, is condescending to minister to us.

Engaging culture in meaningful ways

What we need is to meet with God, and we need more of him in more people.

And for this to happen, we need more churches planted. Bandages over cancer won’t ultimately help. We need more local churches that are faithfully providing opportunities for people to meet God. We need churches in cities and suburbs and in the countryside. We need churches filled with people of all types of skin colors, churches full of poor people and rich people, white and blue collar. We don’t need to overthink the strategy with cutting edge cultural insights on what it means to engage boomers or millennials or Gen-Z. We just need to be the doing the hard, but simple work of planting.

Yes, the culture is rotting. There are plenty of reasons to be afraid. But with a clear and calm mindset, let’s engage the culture in the most meaningful way.

As John Calvin says, ““We must make the invisible kingdom visible in our midst.” And where is the best place for this to happen? Faithful local churches.

©2022, 2025 Jon Saunders. All rights reserved. Used with permission.