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CHURCH DEVELOPMENT Leaders, Leaders, Leaders
By Charles W. Courtoy
Executive Director of Church Development
The Conference Committee on New Church
Development and Church Redevelopment has adopted a Five-Year Strategic Plan whose first
component is launching 10 new faith communities per year for the next five years. It calls
for 50 additional new congregations to be established by the year 2003. This will be an
increase of 19 over the previous five years. Is this a feasible goal?
To answer that question we should begin looking at how many people living in Florida are
currently unrelated to a faith community. The Percept study reports that four out of 10
Floridians have no relationship with any faith community and an additional three out of 10
have minimum relationships. In other words, more than 10 million people living in the
Florida Conference are missing the joy and abundant life in Jesus Christ that we are
commissioned to offer.
Furthermore, the population will have a net increase of 900,000 people by 2003. There are
currently 29 areas 10 miles in diametric circles with more than 5,000 residents in which
there is no United Methodist church. Almost everywhere you travel in Florida you will see
new areas being developed. The people who need the church of Jesus Christ are in
abundance.
The next test of feasibility is financial resources. New churches cost money. Will we have
the money to launch 10 new churches a year? The answer is people have supported and will
support what they know to be the right thing to do. Launching new churches in order to
reach people for Jesus Christ is the right thing to do. We have found the means to support
the beginning of 31 new faith communities during the last five years, and, together, we
will find the resources to launch 50 in the next five years.
The only possible barrier is the lack of leaders. The words of the late Dr. J. H. Daniels,
one of my early mentors in the Florida Conference, ring in my ears: “Not enough good
pastors for all the good churches.”
John C. Maxwell in “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,” lists law #13 as
“The Law of Reproduction: It Takes a Leader to Raise Up a Leader.” Maxwell says
the results of his informal surveys reveal that people become leaders in the following
ways: 10 percent from natural gifting; 5 percent as a result of crisis; and 85 percent as
a result of influence of another leader. The answer to overcoming the shortage of clergy
leadership is for all of us to recognize the importance of mentoring and encouraging
emerging leaders. This is part of the rationale behind the current “Discernment
Program” in which we work to help clergy discern, through training, testing and
encouragement, whether or not God is calling them to be new church start pastors. If we
are to meet the goal of clergy for 50 new church starts, and even more in the years
beyond, lay leaders, senior pastors, district superintendents and the bishop must
encourage and mentor new pastors to become the strong leaders God needs for His church.
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