Five Portland church plant killers

Image: Waka Jawaka

Church planting in Portland is an extreme sport of sorts. Would-be church planters from across the country routinely move here to try to plant a church in the notoriously secular Pacific Northwest. Maybe we should thank Donald Miller for putting us on the map. Maybe it’s the “conquer the hard places” mentality so prevalent in church planting circles. For whatever reason, Portland is a church planting magnet.

Of course, Portland is also a church planting graveyard. Of the dozens of planters who parachute in from Texas and Missouri and Pennsyltucky every year, few make it to their first birthday. In other parts of the country, churches are setting up franchises faster than Starbucks. Here, the going is slow. Every failed attempt only serves to inoculate the city against future efforts. What are we doing wrong? Let’s look at 5 common missteps:

• Importing what “worked” back home. Most church planting teams are transplants from the Bible Belt. Oftentimes, they’re coming off of a success in a suburban Midwestern town, convinced that their process is sure-fire. The problem, then, is that Portland is a unique context with its own culture (and various subcultures). Attractional models don’t tend to play well in unchurched settings, and that’s what planters usually fall back on. What worked in St. Louis isn’t likely to work here, and if it does, the resulting church’s lack of indigenaity will keep it from being sustainable over the long haul.
• Focusing on the surface level rather than dealing with the underlying theology. Candles and a professionally-designed logo are nothing more than a new coat of paint on the same old thing. Portlanders do tend to notice things like image, music, and graphic design, but those things alone won’t change the fact that there’s no difference between your church and the other one up the road. Portland doesn’t need more of the same types of churches, it needs different ones; churches that are willing to explore the application of Christianity to people with a thoroughly unchristian worldview.
• Resorting to trite slogans and tired clichés. “A different kind of church” tends to over promise and undersell. “Church for people who don’t like church” kind of sets you up for a bent toward negativity. “No perfect people allowed” just sounds cheesy. No matter how you choose to describe your church or present the gospel message, you’ve got to avoid bumper-sticker sound bites. Despite the fact that few Portlanders attend church on a regular basis, many have enough churchspeak savvy to know when they’re being targeted by a program or a brainwashed churchgoer looking for a “friend” to bring to church.
• Bringing money into the equation. Something happens to a church plant when the planter comes to depend on the church for financial support. Even the most prophetic of preachers has to think twice before offending those who give sacrificially to keep the them going. Instead of being content with a small size and low overhead, most churches start accumulating stuff that only weighs them down. Unless you’ve got corporate sponsorship, you might want to consider a day job.
• Going it alone. Most church planting attempts are done in relative isolation. Sure, many planters start with demographic research and guerrilla networking campaigns, but most planters tend to ride into town like the Lone Ranger- no sponsoring churches, no prayer support, and no real partnership networks to speak of. Unity isn’t possible if we don’t even know what else is going on in the community. Ask around (or do a quick Google search) to find out who’s doing what where.

Church planting is same-culture missions at its finest. We need more churches- different churches that are willing to do different things. We need local leadership who will do the work of cultural translation. We need a unity movement among believers across Portland, and we need to foster it all in an environment that celebrates every spiritual conversation and every opportunity to live out the gospel among a people who do not know Jesus. If you’re interested, we’d love to have you.

For more information, visit Portland-based Northwest Church Planting or Kairos Church Planting.