A local church can dream big – after all, any church “franchise” (i.e. a denomination) started from a single person bringing together a group of people, and then expanding their ideas of ministry to different parts of the country. So it comes as no surprise that people in a small church would dream that one day their organization’s name would be found all over the world doing the work of God.
That happened to our church. Word for the World Christian Fellowship (WWCF) started out in a pastor’s condo in Makati, Philippines in 1980 – then grew to be over 25,000 people by the time we left it in 1989. It was all over the world, literally and it expanded to Seattle. Later, on, some of the people from that organization separated from the group and became known as Word International Ministries (WIN) around the mid 90’s –they too, are now all over the world.
Our current church, NetWork Christian Ministries (NWCM) is a “daughter” of WIN – its founding members all came from the Seattle ministry of this organization earlier in this decade. So it’s no surprise that the NWCM founders also dreamed the same dreams of its “parent” church – that is, to expand the work of God by planting more and more churches in the area. In spite of its small membership (less than 200), NWCM did plant several churches in Seattle. WIN Seattle, as already mentioned was founded by members of NWCM before they even became NWCM. Another church in West Seattle took root under NWCM’s watch. That group, after functioning as a “daughter” church of NWCM, soon affiliated with the Assemblies of God. A third church was birthed by NWCM in Federal Way. This church has been functioning for approximately 4 years but now stands at a crossroads – whether to continue being a part of the NWCM family or to affiliate once again with WIN.
One of the challenges facing NWCM is the fact that it stands by itself as an organization. It has no denomination or larger organization that it can call its parent – having become independent from its parent organizations (WIN, WWCF) through relational differences. So although it is able to birth new churches, it has no overseeing organization, personnel or structure to make sure that its daughter churches all stay in the family. Child churches are given birth and then left on their own to define their culture, values, and direction – regardless of what those who gave birth to it think.
In a typical denomination, daughter churches are routinely established by up and coming pastors but they are constantly overseen by a central authority. The central power makes sure the leaders are on their toes, that their preachers are preaching towards expanding their denomination, and most of all, that their pastors are taken cared of spiritually and emotionally. In many cases, that central organization also coordinates the support required to keep a church plant stable until such a time as that local church is able to support itself.
This is what’s missing in NWCM. God has indeed gifted it with the ability to give birth to daughter churches. But until its leaders decide that it wants to be an expanding denomination, overseeing church plants and making sure the work of planting churches keeps going, any new daughter church that it plants will eventually find its own way and move forward towards a different direction.
It was only a matter of time before NWCM’s latest daughter churches in West Seattle and Federal Way experienced a desire to move on. Although these churches were planted by NWCM, what held the 3 churches together was not the same vision – it was the relationships between the pastors. But even their friendships were not enough to keep the hand of God from moving the daughter churches forward. West Seattle left the NWCM family in 2007, and now Federal Way is considering the same thing. This is through no fault of NWCM’s leaders – it’s just a reality and a fact of life because of the way things are set up.
It is my hope that anyone who reads this article who still belongs to NWCM will process this truth so that if indeed the goal of this organization is to function like its “parent” organizations (WWCF and WIN and before that, Church of God, TN), then they need to function like a denomination and become purposeful working towards that goal. What happened in the past was nothing negative – the work of God still continued and people still came to the Lord.
The church is a church because of its members and its members’ values and ideas will define its direction. This will be the local leader’s natural inclination in the absence of purposeful oversight by the parent organization. If those values do not line up with the vision of the parent organization, the local leaders will have no choice but to take them to the place where their vision can naturally be fulfilled. On the other, if at the beginning of a church plant, an overseer and a purpose is immediately established, and the organization is purposeful in overseeing the plant and meeting the needs of its leaders, then the local leader can work with NWCM towards that goal.
Regardless of what happened in the past, NWCM continues to be a powerful ministry, making a difference in the lives of its immediate congregation. But again, for as long as its own local church remains the focus of NWCM’s leaders, it will continue to do what it has done in the past – birth congregations that eventually move on. In the grand scheme of things, that’s probably not a bad thing – at least it’s helping the Kingdom of God expand and giving all the credit to God, rather than taking it for itself.
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