Report of the
Director of Church Extension
Daniel G. Ziegler
Shoulder to Shoulder
Then will I purify the lips of the people, that all of them may
call on the name of the Lord and serve him shoulder to shoulder.
Zephaniah 3:9
In 1996, Bible Fellowship Churches substantially increased their support for the Church Extension Department. The churches’ offerings were up over $30,000 beyond 1995 offerings—an 18.6 percent increase. This surge in giving pushed the total income for the Department to more than $20,000 over the 1996 budget. We are profoundly grateful to the Lord and His churches for this outpouring of support for MISSION AMERICA. It is a beautiful example of serving the Lord “shoulder to shoulder.”
Zephaniah
Zephaniah is considered one of the minor prophets of the Old Testament Scriptures. He is called “minor” because the book of his prophecy is small, not because he lacked anything when it came to courage, boldness or the call of God to declare His revealed truth. In the seventh century B.C., Zephaniah was directed to proclaim the Lord’s judgment on various nations of the world and then on Judah and Jerusalem because of apostasy, idolatry and corruption.
In contrast to the wicked officials, false prophets and priests in Jerusalem, Zechariah sees that, “The Lord within her [the city] is righteous; he does no wrong. Morning by morning he dispenses his justice, and every new day he does not fail, yet the unrighteous have no shame” (3:5).
After the wrath of the Lord will have been poured out, Zephaniah declares good news of God’s love and grace for a righteous remnant who will inhabit the chastened city, “the meek and humble, who trust in the name of the LORD” (3.12). The prophet may look into the era of the new covenant, as he sees “the peoples” of the earth in the City of God. “Then will I purify the lips of the peoples,” the Lord says, “that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him shoulder to shoulder” (3:9).
Philip and Alexander
About three centuries after Zephaniah’s time, a young man around age thirty reportedly sat down and wept because there were not more worlds left to conquer. He is called Alexander the Great. His empire, stretching from the Danube River in Europe south to Africa and east through the fertile crescent, Assyria, Persia and to India, was the greatest known domain of that time. Alexander, and his father, Philip of Macedonia, before him perfected and used an ancient military formation, the phalanx to capture the world.
The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the phalanx as “an unbroken linear array of heavily armed infantry standing shoulder to shoulder in files that were normally 8 men deep but sometimes deeper” (they could go up to 16). Each soldier carried a round shield, an eight-foot long pike for thrusting and a two-foot sword for hand-to-hand conflict. Four phalanxes (256 men each) comprised a chiliarchin or division of one thousand. Philip added light infantry and cavalry to the phalanx and Alexander originated the supply system that enabled universal victory.
The Church at Philippi
About three centuries after Alexander the Great, the Apostle Paul writing to a young Macedonian church in the city Philippi—named by and for Philip of Macedonia—said “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then… I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you” (Phil. 1:27,28). The church in Philip’s city was “A Phalanx of God.”
A Contemporary Phalanx
The church planting program of the Bible Fellowship Church is also an example of the Lord’s people serving Him “shoulder to shoulder.” The work is led by a Board of men from ten of the churches, who are chosen by representatives of all of the congregations. All of the pastors and organizing pastors who serve in the Department hold credentials in the BFC, and have been called according to our rules of pulpit supply. Each man is part of a ministry team.
Each mission congregation is governed by a board of surrogate elders who come from other Bible Fellowship Churches. The development of each congregation, in moving from unorganized mission to organized mission and from that category to particular church, is monitored and measured by an assessment committee comprised of elders from several of the churches.
Most of the young congregations are blessed by the service of work and ministry teams that come to them from their “older sister” churches. In their early lives, some of these young congregations are also fortunate to have the ministry of Priscilla and Aquila couples. Often well-established churches will take a special interest in a new mission and there will be frequent contact through letters, phone calls, informal visits, and pulpit exchanges.
Almost all of the churches, and many individuals, provide financial support for new church formation. They receive information through prayer letters, “It Happened Like This,” and articles in Fellowship News. They are helped in praying for the department congregations through prayer letters, “The Extension Call” and the Board of Missions Prayer Bulletin
When a mission is recognized as a particular church there is a stirring ceremony at Annual Conference, and the new church takes its place “shoulder to shoulder” with the rest of the churches.
Scranton and Bayshore
Two of the missions, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Aberdeen, New Jersey, come for recognition as particular churches by this 114th Annual Conference. After a “near death” experience, the eighty-year-old Calvary Church of Scranton has truly had a revival or resuscitation, under the pastoral leadership of Roger L. Reitz. Every area of the congregation’s life has grown and solidified. John Moran and Larry Kellerman have been elected elders and the church is ready to be re-chartered by this Conference.
Bayshore Church, on the south shore of Raritan Bay, has been meeting for public worship for less than two-and-one-half years. David DeRonde and Gene Russell were recently elected elders. Worship attendance averages around seventy, many of whom have been brought to faith in Christ through the mission. John C. Vandegriff, Jr. is the founding/organizing pastor.
Two New Missions
The church at Wappingers Falls, New York, has been relocated and reborn as the Beacon Mission in that small city on the east bank of the Hudson River in Dutchess County, immediately south of the Town of Wappinger. David R. Way accepted the call to serve as organizing pastor. The congregation began meeting at the Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main Street in Beacon on September 1, 1996. Four committed families from Wappinger comprise the present congregation; worship attendance has averaged about twenty. An office on Main Street has been rented, and aggressive outreach efforts are being planned for spring, summer and fall, 1997.
Our newest mission is located in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. Meeting since November 1994, the congregation is known as New Community Church. It is a warmly-spirited group of twenty-five to thirty persons, with a very active outreach program. We are diligently seeking a pastor to serve this young congregation.
Thompson, Connecticut
The mission in Thompson, Connecticut, our eastern-most congregation, experienced testing during 1996. Several families became very critical of the pastor and made unreasonable and unfounded charges against some of their fellow believers. When the surrogate elders, after investigation, would not allow unsubstantiated allegations to stand, the dissenters withdrew, leaving a void. Those who remained rallied to the work, and growth has slowly returned. Eight persons were baptized during the year, offerings were down less than $1,200 from the previous year. Good growth has been occurring through an early worship service. Christopher Morrison and the Executive Director serve with Pastor Dennis Spinney as a Board of Surrogate Elders.
Two New Pastors
Two department churches received new pastors during the year. In August, Jonathan P. Tait became pastor of Calvary Church in Walnutport, Pennsylvania. Average attendance at morning worship has increased 30 percent and the church has recently added two new elders, Daniel Graver and Timothy Weaber, to serve along with Stanley Stahler, Jonathan Weaber and the pastor as overseers of the church.
David N. Heineman has succeeded David R. Way as pastor of the church at Pleasant Valley, New York. Brother Heineman has been a member of Grace Church, Wallingford, and Berean Church, Terre Hill, before studying at Dallas Theological Seminary. He came to Pleasant Valley from a pastorate in Emlenton, Pennsylvania, after being approved as a probationer in the BFC. He was installed January 26.
Newark, New Jersey, and Staten Island, New York
We have two well-established missions in the metropolitan New York-New Jersey area. The congregation in Newark continues to mature and progress towards full organization as a particular church. Its social fabric and koinonia are exceptionally strong. There continues to be a strong flow of new believers, converted through our Newark ministry. As the congregation has matured, it has taken on greater diversity in a variety of ethnic backgrounds. We solicit earnest prayer that the Lord will provide an access property so that the lot acquired over a year ago may soon be developed to provide room for the growing congregation.
Pastor Ralph E. Ritter continues to serve as a shepherd to the flock in West Brighton, Staten Island, New York. The AWANA program remains very fruitful, as evidenced by a recent attendance of eighty-six at a parents’ night. Some significant outreach efforts the past year included a seminar on the Jehovah’s Witness Cult, with distribution of thousands of fliers through-out the neighborhood, a video series and an outreach Bible study. An ad-hoc committee comprised of Pastor Ritter and the other surrogate elders: Delbert R. Baker, II, Ralph E. Cole, David R. Way and the Executive Director, and Clyde W. Snyder, formulated specific goals for the coming years.
Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey
This mission in southern New Jersey is refocusing. Pastor Richard A. Moyer serves full-time as chaplain of the Atlantic County Correctional Facility in Mays Landing. He has seen a number of inmates profess faith in Christ. The surrogate elders are considering plans to relocate the mission with the goal of providing a congregation in which inmates who confess Christ and their families can be taught and nurtured. Pray with us for the Lord’s direction and provision.
Four More Churches
The churches in Edison, New Jersey; Holmes, New York; Ocean County, New Jersey; and Red Hill, continue to grow and mature.
Faith Church of Holmes has supported itself without budgeted appropriations for two years. God willing, it will graduate from the Department in April 1998. Robert S. Commerford serves as pastor.
Community Church, Red Hill, is pastored by Ronald W. Denlinger and D. Thomas Phillips. The church has supported itself fully through the first of its three-year emergence from the Department.
Christ Community Church in Edison, New Jersey, begins its three year phase-out at this time. Dennis M. Cahill and Richard P. Ravis constitute the pastoral staff. Five Christmas week presentations of “Meet Me at the Manger” in a heated barn on the campus of Cook College, Rutgers University, reached nearly eight hundred persons.
Finally the church in Toms River, Ocean County, New Jersey, continues to serve and develop. Dean A. Stortz is the pastor.
Opportunities
We ask for the prayers of the BFC family that we be able to start two or three new churches in 1997. The demise of Salem Church, Allentown, after nearly ninety years in its south side neighborhood prompts us to make an assessment of the prospect of planting a new congregation in that area. We shall work with the City Concerns pastors in a survey that will be completed by June 1.
We have identified a city of seventeen thousand near Albany, New York, that is much in need of an evangelical church. We shall be working with our Mid-Hudson team in a study of the feasibility of a new church plant in that location.
There are several reasonable target communities for a new church start in the tri-state (Connecticut-Massachusetts-Rhode Island) area. It would be beneficial to our Thompson, Connecticut, mission and to the future of the BFC in New England to have one or more new missions in that vicinity.
There is a community in Southern New Jersey that is growing rapidly and could use a new church. We have a core group in the area interested in starting a church and a possible organizing pastor.
There is a key family and a needy area in the Coatesville-Downingtown vicinity of Pennsylvania that would be a good, strategic place for a new BFC.
We have a ministerial candidate who would like to plant a BFC in Virginia. I have advised him to pray for and seek a teammate as a first step in that direction.
We are working with the Board of Missions and the Intercultural Ministries Study Committee through the Joint Committee for Ethnic Church Planting to seek to start the first Hispanic BFC. We also hope to see Beraca Church (Haitian) in Philadelphia and New Life Church (Chinese) in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, become Bible Fellowship Churches.
Several of the churches indicate definite interest in planting daughter churches. One church has formed a committee to study this option and one region is organizing to plant new churches cooperatively.
We need prayers for wisdom and the direction of the Holy Spirit through opening and closing doors so that we may know when and where to plan new church plantings. Let’s work together, shoulder to shoulder, to put forth our very best efforts, for Jesus’ sake, to reach out with His Gospel to evangelize and church our needy nation.
Why Should We Plant More Bible Fellowship Churches?
By God’s grace, we are stewards of the Bible Fellowship Church for this time. What does our Lord desire of us during our stewardship? What kind of church starting program will really please Him?
I call on three men whom I respect to help answer this question. Peter Wagner, in a Church Growth class, set forth a focused goal: Ten churches should be able to start one new church each year. Wagner is talking about average sized churches. Some do much more. Under Rick Warren’s leadership, Saddleback Community Church in California set a goal at its beginning to plant a daughter church each year, and this sixteen year old congregation has done just that. Others plant more than one a year. We have forty-five self-supporting churches. According to Wagner’s formula, we should plan to start 4.5 churches per year, and thus boldly commit ourselves to “the most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven”—planting new churches.
Lyle Schaller is arguably the most knowledgeable person about the churches of North America. Years ago, Schaller published his observation that invariably and only it is by planting new congregations that any denominations grow (see Schaller: “What Are the Alternatives”, pp. 344-357 in Understanding Church Growth and Decline, ed. by Hoge and Roozen, 1979). In a recent book, I am told, Schaller has quantified this: Unless a denomination is planting a number of new churches equal to 3 percent of its existing congregations, it is in decline.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the only old (pre-Civil War) mainline denomination in the US that has grown over the last three decades. The SBC church planting program is aggressive and exemplary. Charles Chaney is vice president for new church development of the Home Missions Board of the SBC. Citing Schaller’s 3 percent rule, Chaney says he crunched the numbers for the past fifteen years and found that the Southern Baptists have, indeed, been starting 3 percent (three new congregations per one hundred churches). He also stated that two-thirds of their church plants die before becoming fully established churches. With fifty-eight congregations, the 3 percent rule for the BFC would be two new starts each year.
The Mission America five-year strategic plan sets forth new church planting goals for the BFC that fall between the Schaller and Wagner targets—a minimum of 2.2 per year and a maximum of 4.4 (see Mission America plan, pp. 15-16). The Board of Church Extension believes that this is the Lord’s desire for us. What do you think?
A goal of two to five new church starts a year would be a dramatic increase over our pace in the past seven years—doubling, tripling, quadrupling that rate of 1.2 per year.
If it’s the Lord’s desire to give us many more new churches, what will be our response? Will we say a fervent “YES, Lord?” Or will we say, “No thanks, Lord. You’ll have to use someone else to win, disciple and enfold Your chosen ones. We’re just not into it. We’re doing about all we care to do.”
The Scriptures give many poignant examples of people who professed faith in the Lord who missed great blessing because they turned it down. It was written of Nazareth—a town inhabited by Jews, not pagans or infidels— “[Jesus] did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith” (Matt. 13:58). The biblical principle is, “According to your faith will it be done to you” (Matt. 9:29). It was to the City of God, Jerusalem, that Jesus said, as He wept, “… how often I have longed to… but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34). In a church planting passage, the Holy Spirit reveals that our labors in building the church will be assessed on God’s great Day, and some of the Lord’s own will fail the test, suffer loss and be saved “only as one escaping the flames” (1 Cor. 3:15). There will be others whose stewardship will be commended, “Well done good and faithful servant!… Come and share your Master’s happiness” (Matt. 25:21).
If you say, “our church just doesn’t have the heart to do more for starting new Bible Fellowship Churches,” there is a biblical answer—give more of your money and your heart will follow it. Our Lord’s principle is not where your heart is, there will be your treasure. No! It is “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt.6:21). The order is not
heart → will → treasure
but rather
will → treasure → heart
So, the love of Christ compels us, His death for sinners drives us, His desire that His lost sheep be found and brought into His fold focuses our purpose, His love for His Church draws forth our love for the church and His desire that many new churches be established sparks our desire to do just that in America. That is the over arching answer to the question, “Why should we plant more Bible Fellowship Churches?”
There are many other good reasons why we should plant new churches:
● New churches make and baptize many more disciples of Jesus than do older ones. A recent study of the BFC showed that our small young churches baptized five times as many disciples per one hundred members as did our older churches. This is confirmed in the experience of other denominations. Why is this so? I’m not sure I know the answer. Part of it may be due to the larger number of close unsaved friends that young disciples in new churches have, some of whom come to Christ. Maybe it’s just that the Lord chooses graciously to bring larger numbers of His own into those new churches through conversion in order to get them off to a successful start.
● Young churches grow faster. In the last two years, our twenty youngest churches—all less than thirty-four years of age, with just 19 percent of our total membership produced 82 percent of our membership growth.
● The spiritual need and decline in our land is desperate and cries out for the establishment of many new churches.
● The people groups from all over the earth who migrate to America need to be reached with the Gospel. They will be most effectively evangelized and discipled by new churches that allow them to hear the Gospel, worship and learn in their own languages and culture. We need to do our part in forming such churches. This, too, is part of our Mission America Plan (pp. 16-26). The inclusion of ethnically and culturally diverse congregations into our Bible Fellowship Church will broaden, bless and strengthen our whole fellowship of churches.
• Increased support for the Church Extension Department from the churches will be seed money, like “matching gifts,” to stimulate gift income from other sources for starting new Bible Fellowship Churches. In 1996, $75,186 was given by individuals and other (non-BFC) churches to support the formation of new BFC missions and churches—nearly one-third of the total gift income of the Department. If our churches will continue to raise their support so that more church planting missionaries may be deployed, more “other source” giving will flow to their personal support and to help fund projects on their fields. If the ratio holds, every two dollars in new support from a church will garner about one dollar in gift income from individuals and other churches.
● If we want our thriving world mission program to continue to be vigorous and growing, we must build our base by forming more new churches. Those twenty youngest congregations, with 19 percent of our membership, including our newest, tiniest and poorest, last year gave 19 percent of the support from the churches to the Board of Missions (and 21 percent of the churches’ support for the Church Extension Department). As they grow, they will do more.
Dana E. Weller, Director of the Board of Missions, wrote, “A strong missions program among us is impossible without a strong emphasis on church growth. Without the success of Mission America, we will never be able to sustain the growth God has granted to us in the Board of Missions” (letter, 4/2/96). Those new churches also create new and larger constituencies for all the ministries of the BFC.
● There are tens of thousands of cities, towns, neighborhoods and villages in the US that are without a credible evangelical church or far short of enough of them. We should be planting new churches in as many of them as we can. The North Jersey metro area has scores of such communities. The large cities of America desperately need new churches. In many of the western states only 3-5 percent of the population attends church on any regular basis.
● When a church is well established, it should perpetually be “holding forth the word of life” in its community for generations—till Jesus comes again. Some of our churches have been doing just that for as much as 130 years and more—and continue faithfully to do so. A community with such a church is blessed by its presence there.
● We cherish our Articles of Faith, form of government and the distinctives of the Bible Fellowship Church as true and biblical. What a shame if we should consign neighborhoods and communities to being served by less faithful and biblical “churches” because of our indifference, indolence or irresponsibility to our Lord’s Commission!
● Only churches offer complete obedience to the Great Commission. They alone baptize disciples. Only churches “teach them to obey everything” that Jesus has commanded—the whole counsel of God. Parachurch organizations always “water down” their statements of faith to accommodate varied constituencies. How irresponsible to leave evangelism and disciple-making in any community to such entities when it is in our power to plant a church there.
• Only when a disciple is involved in the life and koinonia of a particular church can he or she become fully mature and developed. Only in a church can one become all that God wants her or him to be (Eph. 4:11-16; 1 Cor. 12:24-26; Heb. 10:23-25). Before the Lord, a sound, healthy, church purposes to “present everyone perfect (mature) in Christ” (Col. 2:26). Every disciple of Jesus in America should have opportunity to be a part of that kind of church; we should make every effort and every sacrifice to present that opportunity everywhere we can by starting churches.
● Your Church Extension Department, by the Holy Spirit’s enabling, has demonstrated that it has the know-how and ability effectively to establish churches. In the last twelve years, our Annual Conference has recognized and received into membership twelve new particular churches. If two more particular churches are recognized and received by this conference, that total will become fourteen in thirteen years. We could establish more churches if we had greater resources. We should provide the means.
● When we pray the Lord of the harvest, “send out workers into the harvest field,” and the Lord answers our prayer, will we employ and support them in the harvest? Presently, our Ministerial Candidate Committee has thirty-six probationers, candidates and applicants under its care (see 1996 Yearbook, pp. 65, 66). Fourteen of these are not now serving in the BFC. Of the ordained ministers, not including retired men and men serving under the Board of Missions or in the military chaplaincy, there are 21 that are not serving in pastoral ministry in the BFC.
Now, having prayed for reapers, are we going to answer the Lord of the harvest, “No thanks, Lord; we have no intention of using these men in the work to which You have called them!” Will we say to these thirty-five and others who will follow them, “Sorry fellows, but we have nowhere for you to serve!” and send them off to minister in other churches?
We have a delightful new trend underway in the BFC. Churches are calling as pastoral staffers, men in the later stages of their lives, tapping their mature gifts and skills and, thus extending their years in the ministry. The continuation of the trend will constitute good stewardship of the lives and work of our seasoned pastors; it should be encouraged. But the positions they fill would likely otherwise be available for young men in the ministry. Will we have places for those young men to serve with us?
It is within our grasp to use the harvesters the Lord sends us to plant many new congregations and thus to create new pastorates for other of our ministers and candidates to fill. Will we do it?
● The only organization on earth that Jesus Christ founded is the church. It is the only one that He said He would build (Matt. 16:18). The church is the only entity in the world of which Jesus said, “the gates of Hades will not be able to overcome it.”
The USA may or may not need more Christian radio stations and TV programs, more Christian books and magazines, book stores, publishing houses, counseling centers, record producers, musical artists and agents, rescue missions and other social service agencies. It may or may not need more Christian political action groups, Christian dating services, Christian yellow pages, Christian elementary and high schools and Christian colleges, campus ministries, camps, conferences, retreat centers, ocean cruises, retirement centers, and various other Christian enterprises and organizations. We do know that our Lord did not say He would build any of these. We know their existence is not necessarily proof that He founded them; He did not guarantee that the gates of Hades would not be able to overcome any or all of them.
The United States, no doubt desperately needs many more sound, vital, wholesome Gospel-proclaiming churches. We should give top priority to building what He promised to build and participating in His victory through His Church. We must do all we can to plant our share of those churches in America which will please and glorify Him.
On January 31, 1997, as I traveled toward Thompson, Connecticut, for a New England Church Planting Team meeting, I had the pleasure of listening, on National Public Radio Stations, to the beautiful music of Franz Schubert on his two-hundredth birthday. At a break in the music, I heard Garrison Keillor make a pitch for continuing and increased charitable giving by his listeners. Keillor noted that without coercion by United States laws, persons in our country gave more than thirty billion dollars in the past year for charitable causes. I borrow his closing sentence to end this my 29th annual report to the Bible Fellowship Churches:
“Thanks for all you’re doing; imagine what more could do!”