Why I’m Interested in Embracing Sanford’s Gospel Moment through Church Planting
My call to plant a church starts back to being a teenager in church camp and slowly develops to where I am now as I prepare for the journey. Originally, I didn’t really have a strong conviction about church planting outside of wanting to build a church from the ground up. It wasn’t until I understood the condition, not just in America but specifically in Orlando, that I started to see the true need for more churches to be planted.
Orlando is in the top 10 list of most unchurched and Dechurched people in the United States. This shocked me growing up in Orlando because I swear, I see a church on every other street, so why are so many people not part of a church? What I realized was that although the number of churches in the area may be high, that does not mean that they are Gospel-centered or healthy. After reading Why Plant Churches by Tim Keller, I realized the issue isn’t simply about whether we should revitalize the churches already here or plant churches, it is both!
In the last year, my heart has been turned toward specifically the Dechurched of Sanford Fl in Seminole County. The church that my wife and I come from in Sanford did a lot of things well but there were a few things they didn’t do well which I think created a large back door for people to leave and never come back. The teaching there focused on the unbeliever in such a way that once you felt that you needed solid food instead of milk, you were no longer being equipped. The other problem with the doctrine is that it was always somewhat unclear what they believed in a number of things. When people started to have struggles and sin and even commit gross sin, the church would be quick to condemn that sin and it felt as if you were no longer a believer because of it. This from what I can see leads a lot of people I know away from the church and fully into their fleshly desires. These are some of the people my wife and I have a heart to reach in that city and we know there are many others who may fit into the same demographic.
Although there are a lot of churches in the Sanford area, Sanford has grown 54.4% since 2020 and it is not stopping, there are new developments being built in areas that don’t have any churches in their nearby area. Sanford being such a large city makes it the 3rd largest next to Orlando and Kissimmee in the greater Orlando area. Sanford needs church revitalization, and we need people who are willing to step into that reality, but we also need more churches planted to reach this large demographic of people who have left the church and never came back. The reality is, that demographic is unlikely to go back to a church that is over 15 years of age or even close to that. Most of that demographic will be willing to come back but, something new is what is going to entice them to give church another chance and that is where we see the most opportunity in planting a church and planting even more than just our church in the greater Sanford area.