Telling Headline

I was browsing through the Church of God website today when I found this interesting headline. Instead of saying that a conference discussing the church planting mandate was postponed it says that the church planting mandate itself is postponed. While I am sure that is merely a case of bad wording for a headline, but I find it ironic because it seems to represent a long-held mindset in the Church of God, a mindset which states “Sure, the church is called to plant missional churches, but we just won’t do that right now.” While this may not be a spoken mindset (one would be hard-pressed to find a leader who says “let’s put off church planting”), it is a mindset that is clearly communicated by our priorities. At a time when other evangelical denominations are beginning to see that a true commitment to church plant means a serious financial commitment, the Church of God seems stuck with the idea that merely saying that we need to plant churches is more than enough. But until we are able to back up our words with concrete actions (serious funding, training, coaching, and assessment), these words will be little more than lip service to the missional mandate the church has been called to.