Church Planting for the Future: A Conversation with Daniel Yang
We recently talked with Daniel Yang, National Director of Churches of Welcome at World Relief and former Director of the Church Multiplication Institute at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. Below, we talk about what he is excited about in church planting today and why missional imagination and curiosity of the world are necessary for us to plant healthy and vibrant churches.
Check out the course here.
Now, on to the interview:
What are you most excited about when it comes to church planting today, either in North America or beyond?
Three things that I'm most excited about:
The church from around the world is here in North America — with almost full effect! — and that is radically changing the landscape of both church planting and the church makeup.
The conversations about mega versus micro no longer exist as binaries or tensions. All church planting movements that I know of are trying to harmonize what used to be a one-over-the-other paradigm.
We are seeing a more sober generation emerge into church leadership. I think Gen-Z is seeing all that's happening in culture — both inside and outside of the church — and is longing for leaders and institutions that understand their limitations. They are demanding more authentic systems and structures and have come to expect healthy leadership that's both genuine and trauma-informed, but also kingdom-minded and missional.
We've seen this with varying shades and degrees among Gen-Xers and Millennials. But more now than ever, it's expected that church leaders attain health to multiply churches. And that they don't multiply churches if they run the risk of losing health.
What are a couple of the biggest concerns you have as we look to the future of church planting and why do these matter?
I’m concerned that we are not concentrating enough on what makes a healthy church planter. I think most of our systems and processes are focused on what makes an effective church planter or a successful church planter.
Most of our metrics measure success and external fruit. However, I believe there’s probably a whole system change that needs to happen to first understand that a church planter isn’t just a vocational occupation that we need to recruit, assess, train, and coach. Instead of just focusing on "the church planter," we should re-evaluate the whole understanding of church planting, and see the opportunity that there are other paradigms and approaches that we have not fully imagined yet.
We haven’t explored fully what it means to have a team-based approach to planting. Some are starting to account for those models; however, because our systems aren’t built to recruit, assess, and train teams, we still don’t know what it looks like to approach church planting from the perspective of a fully equipped team.
Also, when church planting belongs to the whole church, and not just the calling of one family or a few people, then I believe it unleashes a greater imagination for how to plant healthily without having to put too much on one particular church planter and their family.
In your Seminary Now course, you talk about "letting your missional imagination run wild." What does this look like and how can we develop more of an imagination for changing the way we see church plants?
We are getting to a point in North America when the runway is getting longer for establishing a fully sustainable church with financial integrity and healthy leadership. To say it another way, church planting in North America has become much more of a missionary enterprise, where we need to better understand the assumptions and stumbling blocks of those who we are trying to evangelistically reach through church planting.
This means that rather than training church planters to just start mature, well-established churches within three years, we should develop more missional teams that have a long-term perspective in contextualizing the gospel to a particular community of people and allowing the community to shape what church and leadership looks like.
This does not mean that there can’t be templates for this. However, it does mean that the mold for church planting shouldn’t be so rigid, and the metrics for how we measure fruit should be re-imagined beyond the size of a gathering, building, or budget.
In your course, you also talk about being "curious how God is at work in the nonbelievers around you." What does the listening and learning process look like as we consider church planting into the future?
For those of us who came into church planting because we believed it was an effective way to reach those who aren’t yet Jesus followers, being conversant and listening has been our biggest ministry.
When God is drawing a people to himself, he is constantly at work within them. If it is a newly arriving refugee population from Afghanistan, God is going to be in an internal dialogue with them as to how to reimagine a new life for themselves, and how to process the trauma they experienced.
When the spiritual atmosphere of a public university is changing, and the students and faculty are making space for Christian voices, it is because God is doing a work that even a church planter can’t orchestrate. Learning to see beyond our training strategies, and learning to listen and observe is one of the greatest evangelistic skills in church planting.
This requires the church planting team to build hospitable spaces that, on a regular basis — probably weekly but at least monthly — where they can have transparent conversations with people to which they are intentionally being a witness of the gospel. The more you listen to a group of people, the more likely they will give you space to share with them what gives you hope.
What is the most important lesson you have learned as a church planter in a variety of different contexts?
Hear, trust, obey. Church planting is just another activity for us to grow in our own discipleship. It is different from some other ministry contexts because it is very entrepreneurial and it is a missionary endeavor.
But it is also the same because, at the end of the day, church planting is about following the voice of Jesus and having enough trust in him to do what he’s asking, and believing he’ll do what he’s promising.
When church planting teams understand this, they can adjust their expectations and when appropriate, work less, but also when appropriate, risk more. The process of listening to God so that you can cooperate with him on mission is the greatest skill a church planting team needs to develop. Because it does not matter in the end if you can start a fast-growing organization — if it isn’t God that is behind the endeavor, at some point, what you have planted won’t be kingdom work as much as human work.
And I believe, now more than ever, God is waking up a new generation to be most concerned about what God is doing in the kingdom over what people can do through their processes.
Daniel Yang’s course on Church Planting for the Future can be found here.