I meet with a lot of pastors from around the state. Lately, I’ve met with some pastors from Anderson, and Seneca, and the question that keeps coming up is, “How hard is it to grow a church in the Bible belt?”
When we first started Marathon, everyone kept telling us that it wouldn’t work, and that we wouldn’t make it, and those kinds of things. The reason that everyone gave us was that things were too “traditional” in the Bible belt. That’s the exact word that they kept using, “traditional”. And I had to admit to these pastors that it can be tough sometime to grow a church in this part of the country.
One of the tougher things for us when we started Marathon, 12 years ago, was the fact that we had “Church” at the end of our name. People were so conditioned that you had to dress a certain way, and act a certain way to be welcome in a church, that it made it difficult for us to convince them that they could wear their jeans, and that they were welcome at Marathon Community “Church”. We always told people to “bring your train wreck with you”, because a lot of people were in a mess, but their thinking was that “I’m not good enough to go to Church”. We knew that Jesus said, “I didn’t come for those that are well. I came for those that are sick.” So we had to fight to get people to see things in a different way, than the old “traditional” way that they had always been taught.
We STILL have this problem. People still tell me that they can’t come because they have tattoos, or don’t have certain clothes to wear. There are a lot of excuses that people give for not being able to come to church, and unfortunately, most of these excuses have been supplied by the “traditional” churches here in the Bible Belt.
When I was growing up, the accepted way of growing spiritually, was simply to go to church all of the time. The thinking was that if you went to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and went out on Tuesday night visitation, that would make you godlier. Over the years we’ve found that doesn’t work. It’s all about the relationship with God, not about how many times you show up somewhere, or how many times you do something. Don’t hear what I am NOT saying, those things aren’t important, but I am saying that they are not the keys to spiritual growth.
It is very difficult to turn a religious person into a relationship driven person, and I don’t mean relationships just with people, I mean relationship with God! People who come from other “traditional” churches, and come to Marathon, have a much tougher time with learning that they need to have a relationship with God, than people who have never been to church before, because of all the religious baggage that they are dragging around with them. It is very tough for them to let go of what they’re used to doing.
So conflict comes when people are faced with the choice of having a relationship instead of a religion. Jesus had to deal with this in His day, and He was crucified over it. But Jesus died for us so that we could have a personal relationship with God, not so that we could have a religion.
So if you’re a church planter who has been called to start a church in the Bible belt, just be aware that you’re going to get criticized for what you do. You are going to get the “religious” crowd all stirred up – which, by the way, I don’t think is such a bad thing!
The other thing you have to realize if you’re a church planter who has been called to start a church in the Bible belt, is that you are trying to reach lost people and “church people” don’t talk to them. So what the religious people do is not going to effect what you do. Keep the main thing, the main thing – and that is Reaching People!
