When does a church-plant stop being a ‘church-plant’ and is just a ‘church’?
Many thanks to all of you who have prayed for us and our church plant over the past year. Looking back, we’ve come a long way, and this is all to the glory of God.
At the start of the year, Word of Life international Fellowship was still a church plant…I think it is now an established church. During the last Sunday service of December 2008, our numbers were really low – about 25 people (I think everyone had eaten too much at Christmas and decided to stay at home). A little wave of panic acme over me as I wondered whether this was a sign of things to come and that numbers would continue to go down and the whole church plant was doomed to failure. At that time I felt the Lord reassuring me that He was going to establish the church in the coming year (and reminded me never to pay attention to numbers!)
At the end of 2009, we regularly have 50 to 60 people in our church services and significantly the majority of these people are ex-pats. Over the year we have seen a shift in the congregation away from Koreans wanting to learn English to English-speakers who need a home church. I say that this is significant, because this is our ‘people group’ – this is who the church is for.
Just as important is the fact that we now have in place a leadership team of 8 people – good people who are qualified leaders who share the vision of the church: “To serve English speakers in Incheon by providing a home church for Christians and the Gospel for others in word and deed.” This group of leaders are committed to seeing the church fulfill this God-given vision over the coming years. And I think this is one reason we are no longer a church-plant and have become an established church.
Another reason is that we now have a wonderful group of lay ministry leaders. At the start of the church-plant there was just me and Jung Hwa. We managed to gather 10 or so people to help us get started, but we didn’t have any ministries yet, so we couldn’t have ministry leaders. In those days, I had to be prepared to do anything and everything – setting up tables, buying Dunkin Donuts on Sunday mornings for after service snacks (yes, that’s how we got people to come in the early days!), updating the website, sending out welcome emails – we were the prayer ministry! But now all these things are done by others who also share the vision and want to see it fulfilled. I confess to missing the Sunday morning Donut run!
2009 has been a good year. A year our church has been established. It has been established by God. He has brought wonderful people to our ministry. He has given us the vision to work towards. He has given us the grace to work together to see the church built up.
Towards the end of the year, I preached a three week series on “Community”. It was a good experience for me to dig deep into Scripture to uncover God’s vision for community in the Body of Christ. We still have a long way to go to reach that perfection (!), but I was encouraged to find that much of what I was discovering were the very things that has been happening to us throughout the year.
In 2010 we are looking forward to recruiting another pastor to help with the needs caused by the growth of the church and to ensure that the church keeps growing. We held a Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day and over 80 people came. The following Sunday it snowed and numbers were down to about 40. But there was no wave of panic. I felt safe in the knowledge that “the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established” (Isa 2.2).
Once again, thank you for all your prayers for us in 2009.
