Checking out the plants

With the phrase "church plant" now firmly ensconced in our religious lexicon, may I be permitted to ask just what the heck it means?

Now, I understand that if one travels where the church of Jesus Christ is a largely-unknown quantity, one may begin to share Jesus, to make disciples, and thus "plant" something that was not there before. To those who do this, may your eternal reward be great!

But, most "church plants" I know of are aimed at cities in the U.S. Cities where there are thousands-- or hundreds of thousands-- of believers. The church of Jesus has already been planted in those places. Now, it may need watering, or pruning, or to have the caterpillars picked off it, but it's there. So what is it exactly that we are "planting"? Are we simply trying to scratch-start another religion club to compete for believers with the existing local religion clubs? Are our "planters" happy to gather disaffected believers out of other clubs, in order to build a new one in OUR image? (Tell me that a "planter" who gathered 500 people a Sunday in this manner would not be considered a success!) In this, it seems to me that we are more like start-up businesses, eager to chisel out a hunk of Christian market share.

It strikes me as not a little arrogant on our part to gather up a team to "church-plant" in, say, Chicago. If we have a heart for sharing Jesus with Chicagoans, why don't we just go do it? It is certainly not necessary for us to start up yet another storefront competitor. Why can we not find joints in the Body in Chicago? Is it because no one else has the gospel like we have it? Or is it that we might not be able to do things our own way if we connected to believers already in place?

I fear that one of the motivations found most commonly among American "planters" is the hope of a full-time paying gig in "the ministry". Our local group has no job openings, so I go out on my own to open a new franchise. And once I have gathered a critical mass of believers, I hope that they will begin to pay me a wage that will allow me to quit my job at Best Buy and "enter the full-time ministry".

Somehow, this motivation seems questionable.

Perhaps a Gideonesque recruitment of church planting teams would be in order:
~Hoping for a future staff job? You guys can go home.
~Hoping to create a new group of which you will be a leader? That group, go home.
~Hoping to build a group that does things (doctrine, worship, activities) the way you like them? Thanks for coming, now go home.

Now, everybody that's left, grab a torch, a trumpet, and a pot and head toward the battle. And be prepared to succeed, only as a participant in what God is already doing in that place where you are headed.