Congregational Church Planting History
Alwyn York, Conference Historian
Church planting is one of the three main priorities of the CCCC. This priority is described in the 4C yearbook this way: “We are working to launch a church multiplication movement to start new, healthy, disciple-making congregations across the nation.” In a sense this is a relatively new priority for our conference. This was noted in Modern Day Pilgrims: A New Generation, the history of the last twenty-five years of the Conference published last year. “A missional shift had started in the CCCC in her fiftieth year (1998). Instead of its largely reactionary stance again liberalism and biblical compromise the CCCC was beginning to proactively reach out, plant churches, and extend the Kingdom of God across the nation.” (p. 23) The earlier focus of the Conference was understandable. With the increasing dominance of liberal theology in Congregational churches, the CCCC was formed as an organization devoted to the preservation of biblical Congregationalism. Its early growth was largely due to the movement of existing conservative churches and of previously ordained ministers into the Conference. It was only after the Conference was well established that serious attention began to be devoted to the effort of starting new churches.
While an organized effort to plant new churches is a relatively new feature of the CCCC, it is not something that is new to Congregationalism as a whole. The nineteenth century in particular was a period when Congregational churches joined together in several initiatives to establish new churches. Nineteenth century church planting by Congregationalists consisted of three distinct phases. The first and largest effort was starting new churches in the new towns on the expanding western frontier. This was the work undertaken by the American Home Missionary Society. A second phase began after the Civil War. Congregationalists had been very involved in the Abolition movement. After the emancipation of the slaves, the newly freed African-Americans had a need for education to equip them to succeed in American society. The American Missionary Association took the lead in starting schools for African-Americans in the former states of the Confederacy. The effort to start schools was followed by the founding of colleges and starting churches. A third phase began in the later part of the 19th century with the influx of immigrants from many countries. The American Home Missionary Society sent missionaries to start churches to serve the new immigrants in their native languages. The AHMS focused its efforts of three main ethnic groups: Germans, Scandinavians and Slavic. The work was especially fruitful among one sub-group among the Germans: those who had come from German-speaking colonies within Russia. In fhe months to come I plan to give a brief overview of these three church planting movements.