Church Planting

The town I live in has a church on every corner - almost. Really. I was surprised, however, to find out a couple of years ago that my county is actually about eighty percent unchurched. That puzzled me. I did some quick and very unscientific math in my head and realized that it was probably true, though. Here in a relatively cultured small southern town in Arkansas right in the middle of the Bible belt, there are lots of unchurched people. Why? Just recently, I began taking a hard look at that question. When challenged with the question of where I would go if I wanted something different than First Baptist offered in the way of style of worship, I was dumbfounded. I realized that WE (churches) are ALL ALIKE. I know that some of us have different theology and denominational differences, but essentially we are all steeped in the same century old tradition. Now, don't go dogging me about tradition. I am really ok with it. And I don't think tradition is necessarily a bad thing. I just know that by the statistic that I am familiar with concerning my county, what we are doing is not reaching the unreached. What we are doing is reaching the already reached and just shuffling them around a little bit on occasion. Could we be be a little creative? Could we find a way to plant some churches that are relevant to the presently unchurched masses of people in our area? I don't know what that would look like, but I know that we must do it. I don't know who will be called to reach the subcultures of our community by stepping out of the box and thinking a new way. It is my prayer that our established "traditional" churches will have their eyes opened and be willing to lead in new endeavours to reach the unreached of our local community, the nation and the world by supporting an alternative church planting movement.