Jim White
Jim White: About seven years ago.
WS: You came out of nowhere with a mission, this church plant, and now you are – at least in terms of Sunday morning attendance – one of the largest churches in Mecklenburg County, if not in the region. Tell me about that. Was that growth intentional, or was it just a by-product of what you’re doing.
JW: It was intentional in the sense that at Mecklenburg we’ve always had the idea that as long as there was one lost person within driving distance then we were commanded by Christ to grow by one.
So the commitment to growth has been with us from day one. In terms of what God has done, I think we’ve all been just absolutely blown away. Susan and I came here in late 92, early 93 in a rented U-Haul, no people, no money, no nothing. It’s been a long road for us. It may have looked fast. I know that in general terms it is, but it’s been a long seven years. You know from building up a business that it’s hard. There are dark days, and there are good days. You sit back now and say, "Wow, this has been quick." And it has been. But it’s also been a long road.
So there has been intentionality in terms of evangelism and growth, but we’ve been ambushed by God’s providential blessing.
WS: You and your wife came here in a U-Haul, but you weren’t completely alone. You are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church.
JW: We have an affiliation with the SBC, and in fact before I came here I directed worship, preaching, and church growth for them.
WS: So, was your coming here an experiment on the part of the Southern Baptist Church? Did you go to them with the idea? Or did they say to you, "Let’s see if this church growth stuff that we’ve been talking about really works? Let’s learn it in our bones." What was the evolution there.
JW: A combination of all of the above. The SBC, as you may know, is set up in a way that every church is autonomous. It really doesn’t have the hierarchy and the authority lines of a lot of denominations. So the choice to do this was mine. I did receive funding from various sources, but it was a no-strings-attached type of funding. Every Southern Baptist church is completely and totally autonomous, as we are.
WS: Was this Home Mission Board funding?
JW: I didn’t get it from the Home Mission Board. At the time, and it has changed since then, some of that as a result of Meck and other churches, but at the time they had too many strings attached. We would have had to carry "Baptist" in our name, would have had to import traditional Southern Baptist programs, which they – interestingly – have since dropped themselves. There would have been too much of a methodological influence and Mecklenburg was a methodological innovation at the time; it’s not as much now. What we wanted to be methodologically was to be free of some of the denominational, programmatic designs that were essentially created in the 1950s.
WS: You’ve substituted one methodology, one programmatic design for another. You guys have become known by what is sometimes called "seeker-sensitive" or "seeker-targeted." You are members of the Willow Creek Association of Churches. Can you say a little bit about your methodology and talk about your affiliation with Willow Creek?
JW: Sure. "Seeker-targeted" is, at its best, a set of values that when it comes to the growth of the church says we want to grow from the unchurched. Someone who is a spiritual seeker, is interested in spiritual things, but is not involved in a local church, and has never come to Christ as leader and forgiver.
So when we think about church growth and reaching out, we’re not after the already convinced, or the consumer who is church-hopping and shopping and looking for the most bang-for-the-buck. We’re really after the person sitting at home on the weekends. That’s what it means to be seeker-targeted.
Now, we actually are pretty reticent to say that there’s a methodology automatically attracted to that. I honestly don’t know what the methodology at Mecklenburg is going to be five years from now. I know even today it’s different from what it was 24 months ago.
What we’re trying to say is "what is the most effective way to throw open our doors and provide entry points for non-churched persons" without abandoning orthodoxy or watering down any of the tenets of evangelical faith.
So, right now, that means a particular type of weekend service, it means for us several things that are actually becoming very common now: contemporary music, use of drama, the arts, multimedia, casual dress so people might not feel intimidated by a particular atmospheric issue. Topics that we think relate as we try to present Christianity. We think that people today in the 21st century are very much needing an explanation of what Christianity is about and how it’s applied to our lives. They’re looking for a spiritual experience of Christianity – of any faith actually. We’re hoping to show them what the Christian experience is, so they don’t run racing to Buddhism or some feeling of spirituality.
So there’s a lot of things we’re doing right now, and we’re constantly experimenting and looking for ways to connect with people who don’t give a rip about Jesus. That’s hard. The heart and soul, though, of what we’re about is very simple and this is really the essence, if we do have a methodological blueprint, this is it. Very simple. Step one, let’s go out and build a relationship with an unchurched person. Or friend. An irreligious person. And in the context of that relationship, let’s share Christ. Let’s begin sharing Christ. Sharing ourselves spiritually with them. Having those spiritual conversations with them. And the third step is to invite them to some type of event or service or seeker small group. Whatever. Give them a book, a tape. Do something to bring them in. A kind of "come and see" the way Andrew did with Jesus about the Christian faith. With us, that is largely our weekend services.
So it’s build relationships, share Christ, invite. We have found that to be wildly effective not only in growing this church but in seeing people come to Christ.
The affiliation with Willow Creek. The Willow Creek Association is really kind of a network of semi-like minded churches. There is a loose doctrinal statement that’s fairly sound. That’s not what really binds it together. I don’t think it’s bound together by right- or left-leanings within evangelicalism. I don’t think it’s bound together by a certain adherence to social issues. I don’t even think it’s bound together by Willow Creek. I think what it is, is that a lot of folk and churches that were finding they had more in common with churches like them that were trying to reach out to the unchurched than they did their own denominational bodies. They needed somewhere they could start creating resources, finding support, sharing ideas. So it was more of a network, and that’s still all it is. For us, it’s a resource.
WS: I want to come back to that issue of resource in a minute, because you guys have also begun to be a resource for churches in this region, but to back up just a bit. This is no surprise to you for me to say that the seeker-targeted model, the Willow Creek model, to the extent that it is a model, has received some criticism – you might even call it a lover’s quarrel among brothers within the evangelical community – and I’d like to give you an opportunity to respond to some of those criticisms. One of them, for example, would be that the whole notion of "seekers" has, at best, a dubious origin. You almost have to proof-text it to say that man is a seeker. Theologically speaking, some would say, that’s a fundamentally flawed notion. That we don’t seek after God; God seeks after us, and that we are fundamentally disposed to rebel against God rather than to seek after God. So the whole idea of "seeker-targeted" worship is a sociological phenomenon and not activity based on theological truth, on Gospel truth.
JW: Drop the term, then. I’m not wedded to the term "seeker." I think that you’re right. The problem with any type of label is that you can nit-pick it. I could care less about the term "seeker." We’re just trying to be evangelistic. I could care less what term you use. I think that if the term "seeker" breeds those kinds of reactions, then drop it. That’s not what we’re about. The issue is that we are commanded by Christ – and no one would deny this theologically – to seek and to save the lost. So maybe that’s the better way to understand it, to clean it up. We’re just trying to be aggressive in the Great Commission.
We’re not to sit back. We’re to be aggressive. And that is obviously one of the cardinal tenets of evangelicalism. As you well know, even the most recent charter by leading evangelical theologians, says that we are to be aggressive in our outreach. That’s all it is for us.
WS: Well, I don’t think any evangelical….
JW: But do you see what I’m saying. If the term "seeker" is theologically loaded, then just drop it. It’s not important to us. We could just as easily say "unchurched," or "irreligious person" or "lost person." And what does it mean to be "targeted"? We just want to share Christ with them. So, fine, get a different label.
WS: While no evangelical or orthodox person would have any concern about being aggressively evangelistic, another criticism that has sometimes been leveled against this style of doing church is that the Great Commission says not to make converts, but to make disciples. There has been some concern that when you get crowds of 2000 people on a Sunday, many of whom are sampling, church-shopping, seeing what the buzz is all about, that there is very little disciple-making going on in that environment. Is this a sociological phenomenon, an entertainment phenomenon, or disciple-making activity?
JW: I think that is the challenge of every church that is growing and reaching people. It’s been Billy Graham’s challenge for 50 years. It’s everyone’s challenge. I think the question is: Does the church know it’s a challenge? Is the church attempting to address it? I don’t think there’s anything easier about disciplining a church of 50 than 5000. It depends on whether or not you’re intentional and you’re doing what it takes. Whether you have one small group or 50 small groups. Do you have small groups? Are you doing Bible study? Do you have five people at a mid-week Bible study where you’re breaking the Word of God, walking them verse by verse through Romans, or whether you have 500. The question is: are you doing that? That’s the issue. The best and healthiest churches, that are growing fast, understand that there are two halves to the Great Commission, the front half and the back. Make disciples, and teach them to obey everything.
I would like to think that Mecklenburg is as aggressive and intentional about that as we are in our evangelism, and I think that we are. We’ve been well-scrutinized, and we’ve tried to be an open book. I think the misnomer is that a church like Meck is just about evangelism. We just go nuts when we hear that. The only people who say that about us are the ones who never visit. Who never check it out. Who never explore. Who don’t see the enormous classes and programs and studies and efforts that we make. We put just as much if not more effort on discipleship as we do on evangelism.
WS: I appreciate that, but I think that what could be at play there is simply the Law of Big Numbers. If you’ve got a pool of 2000 people, sure you can have 250 people in small groups. You’d better have 250 people in small groups.
JW: Well, those aren’t our numbers, but I see your point. What’s I’m trying to say is that it’s not just now many you’re putting through. For us, the real issue is is there life-change happening?
And we’re pretty tenacious about that, too. In fact, we have actual quantifiable and qualifiable issues that we build into our discipleship program to see if we’re effective. I don’t know of any other church that does that. We have a way to say, "What does it mean if Christ is starting to impact your life?" We have something we call the "Five Gs." Are they in a small group? Have they experienced grace and come to Christ? Are they involved in personal spiritual growth, the disciplines of a quiet time and personal Bible study? Have they found their spiritual gift and are they putting that into play in a particular ministry? Are they being a good steward with their financial resources?
Those are pretty quick benchmarks, and we implement that to determine whether someone is really on a path toward discipleship.
WS: How do you do that? Do you ask them? Do you do a survey?
JW: Yes. We talk about it in small groups. We keep track of how many people are involved. We’re pretty careful about all that. And this is the thing: this is something that I would daresay we are as on or more on than any other church, regardless or their moorings. Whether they’re conservative, liberal, traditional in methodology, or a pacesetter or innovator. It’s not endemic to the methodology. I can show you a 2000 member church – or a 200 member church – that’s dropping the ball when it comes to discipleship.
WS: Say a word or two about the sacramental life of the church. One of the other criticisms often leveled against the more informal churches is that the opportunity for community-building and the means of grace that is represented by baptism, by communion, done in the normal worshipping life of the church, sometimes takes a second seat. How do you implement that here?
JW: Well, I would say that we so highly prize and value baptism and the Lord’s Supper that we give them their own full individual services. We actually feel as if it was devalued all across the board. So it’s not a question of where do you do it. Do you do it on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night or whatever. I’ve seen it done every week by churches and it becomes a meaningless ritual. I think the real issue is how do you elevate it. How do you teach it. How does the community get invited into it. Is it a worshipping part of the life of the church. For us it is.
We are forced to have baptism services sporadically, about four a year, because we don’t have the facilities to baptize here. So what we do is to elevate it, we rent out the entire University City YMCA, have a shindig like you would not believe, and baptize there. It is one of the most moving experiences. People who have gone through it say, "I’ve never seen baptism so valued. I’ve never seen baptism so meaningful. We have people read their testimonies. They have to share their testimonies before their baptized.
WS: Everyone?
JW: Every single person gives their testimony. It has to be written out before we’ll baptize them, to make sure that this really is a Christ conversion. A lot of people want to be baptized and we say no.
WS: That brings up a question. What are the conditions for membership in your church.
JW: Oh, it’s hard. We actually have a six-step process. You attend a reception where you get a notebook, a workbook, and about 12 hours worth of tapes to go through on the Christian life. Very, very involved. Very few churches do anything like that. Then, after you do that, you work through all that material, you attend another class where you give up another night to go through another 90-minute session on the expectations of membership and the Christian life and what that’s all about, and so forth. And then fourth is a one-on-one counseling/interview session that is done by a staff person to ensure that you really understand it, that you have really had a born-again experience. One-on-one. Personal. That’s also to make sure that they’re connected in terms of getting involved in a small group, discipleship, so many other issues.
Then, the fifth step is that we celebrate that. We let people know who has crossed the bar of membership. And the sixth step is that every two years we go back to make sure that this is still true of them. That they’re not ghosts on the rolls. You tell me any church that has that bar of membership.
Now, in terms of the Lord’s Supper, we have the entire worship service devoted to it, and we have it every month. The best way for us to do that and to give it what we think it deserves is to put it in the context of our main worship service, which is Wednesday night. Now when people hear that they instantly think, "You’re brushing aside worship, or you’re brushing aside the Lord’s Supper. But they haven’t been on Wednesday nights here. Hundreds and hundreds come on Wednesday nights. It’s a huge event here. It may not be a huge event at some churches. It’s huge here. And the first Wednesday of every month is the Lord’s Supper. We devote the entire worship time to it. The entire worship time. Every month.
So, I would probably say that we’re doing as much if not more than anyone sacramentally. Now, we are of the free church tradition, out of the Reformation, and we hold to only two of the seven sacraments, so we’re not a catholic church. So if someone wants to critique us for not having the other five, guilty. But those two we raise up high.
WS: You talked a bit earlier about Willow Creek being a resource for you. You and your church have become resources for other church planters, not just in this area but around the country. Your books, for example, are often used as tools in other churches. You have church planting and church growth conferences that are attended by hundreds of people. Was that an intentional part of what you guys were trying to create. Were you trying to create an Antioch or Ephesus church, one that would become a mother church for others? Or was that just what has evolved out of the process of doing what you do?
JW: I think every church planter starts a church saying, "I hope that this is as big as God wants it to be." But I don’t think we handed God a blueprint. We wanted to be an influence and a player for the Kingdom. End of story. And so whenever God opens up a door, we try to walk through it. But we didn’t try to create it. We were just very open to it and very willing to say, "God, do with us as you will."
The way the conferences started was that Mecklenburg – again, not by our design – started to get an awful lot of attention very early on. We were in USA Today. We were on the front page of The Charlotte Observer twice in the first three months of our existence, which is another story.
We were picked up by CBS Evening News for their Easter story in 1994. Dan Rather. We were just blown away. In fact, we thought that one was a joke when they called us, someone just goofing on us.
So we started to get calls. People wanting to know what’s going on, how are you growing so fast, and we couldn’t do what we were doing here and serve them. So we reached a point where we asked, "What do we do with that?" Our heart was church planting. I still believe, and I don’t know of any missiologist who would disagree, that it is the most effective way to do evangelism. I think it is the most solid in terms of theology. The most responsible way of doing it.
And, there was nothing out there. There was no international conference for church planters, especially if you wanted to color outside the lines. Any. Even a little bit. So literally we just looked around and said, "OK, we’ll try to do something." We were shocked when 200 church planters came to the first conference. And it’s just gone on from there. Now we have it twice a year, and it’s gotten international. Teams coming from Japan, Canada, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, all over. We’re just absolutely flabbergasted because to this day we’ve done very little marketing. A little direct mail piece and something on the Internet. Not very much. In fact, we’ve just brought on a guy to help us organize and steer all that.
But it’s a joy for us. You’ve never had more fun than to work with church planters, because they’re taking the bungee jump of faith. You get a whole room full of that sort of people, who’ve cut the umbilical cord of security – they’re a fun group of people. And they’re so hungry. And yet there’s no one mentoring them, no one coaching, nobody helping. And the rules of business apply to churches. Fifty percent will fail in the first five years. And then from five to ten years another 50% will fail. Nobody’s helping. So what’s we’re trying to do.
WS: Since you talked about the rules of business, and made some allusions there, I know you’re an avid reader of management and leadership texts. I will also take you at your word when you say you don’t know what this place will look like five years from now…
JW: Not methodologically.
WS: But I also know that it is the role of the leader to cast the vision. You’re the leader. Looking ahead, what is your vision for Mecklenburg Community Church.
JW: Well, let me give you a version of it that I think would be relevant to the context of this interview. We want Mecklenburg to be the most effective New Testament Church possible. And the most biblical and orthodox New Testament church possible. I’m not saying that we’re going to pull it off, but there needs to be churches out there that show how you can appropriately be an innovator, appropriately color outside of the lines, without abandoning orthodoxy, without disavowing church tradition, and still remaining flamingly evangelical.
That can’t be an either-or. Someone has to show it can be a both-and. You and I both know there are churches out there that have just screwed up on this one. They’ve gone way too far one way or the other. Abandoning orthodoxy for the sake of warm bodies, or they have literally just said, "To hell with the world; we’re going to cling to our tradition and we don’t care whether you get Christianity or not." They’ve never even read the Great Commission.
Somewhere, somehow there’s got to be some group of people who will take the risk of being Paul on Mars Hill. That’s what we want to do. Methodologically, I don’t know what it will be. If we’re doing five years from now what we’re doing right now, we’ll be dead in the water. I think I’ve got a bead on what is happening in the 21st century. But we’re making changes, even over what we did six months ago. And it’s being very effective. We had out biggest growth year ever. We grew by 1000 people in the last 12 months.
Now, that’s not impressive to me. I could care less how many people we have. I want to know what’s happening to them. Are they crossing the line of faith? Are they becoming fully devoted followers of Christ? By God’s grace, the majority are.
So we’re not just into being a big church, even though we’ve become a big church. We’re into being a healthy church, a God honoring church, and I believe that that does not war against size. Otherwise, why would have Pentecost have happened? Why would the Holy Spirit have dropped 3000 converts on 11 pretty scared guys who were pretty disorganized? I don’t think is anti-God.
By the way, that was a discipleship nightmare, wasn’t it?
That’s OK, as long as you’re aware of it and you’re working on it. So we don’t mind the fast growth as long as we don’t lose sight of what we’re trying to accomplish with people.
WS: Are you going to be planting churches yourself?
JW: Now, we’re putting all of our efforts into the New Work Conference. Because that’s just taking all our energy. We’re so swamped. We are in the process of helping a staff person who feels called by God to transition and plant a church, and we’re going to let that be our first effort. But it’s not going to be an official daughter church. We’re going to help. I’m not even sure that his church is going to look like ours.
WS: Final comments?
JW: The mistake of any person – and let me say that I commend you for the time you’ve taken now and in the past to try to understand this place…. But I think the danger is that you get just enough knowledge of something that you form an opinion erroneously without understanding the whole issue, and everything that the church is about. We’re a lot more than our weekend services. We’re a lot more than evangelism. We’re a lot more than fast growth. We are a fully functioning, deeply committed New Testament church that has some hopefully pacesetting things that we’re doing that might serve the Kingdom. Some of the things that we do fail. We’re the first to own that. But we are just committed to be all that we can be to be effective and biblical.
So it’s not a church just for the unchurched. We have people who come here who have been Christians for 20 years who say I’ve never been discipled better or grown more than my six months here. So I would just encourage anyone who looks at any type of new church to ask – not just are these guys orthodox – but there’s got to be some room for freedom to experiment. That’s happening. Look at Hickory Grove North, First Baptist Charlotte. All these churches are trying to innovate because they realize that they’re not penetrating the world. And they need to. I think that’s a good thing, and hopefully the evangelical community will hold us accountable. Good. But at the same time, cheer us on when we’re trying and we’re being orthodox. We need that. We need accountability, and we need encouragement. Every now and then a "Good job" for baptizing hundreds of people this year who would have faced a Christ-less eternity. That ought to be celebrated. They’re growing in their faith, and their families are different, and their marriages were saved, and their children are learning about Christ now. That’s a "Yeah, God!"
