A couple weeks ago we announced a new expression of Fellowship in South Nashville.  We are excited about beginning to start launching. There are a lot of good reasons to join a new congregation. There are also a few bad ones.

Here are ten reasons you should join a church plant, and ten you shouldn’t, courtesy of Justin Buzzard, a Fellowship pastor in San Jose. I’ve paraphrased a few, and added some of my own comments (the original post is here).

10 Reasons to Join Fellowship’s New Congregation
adapted from the Summit Network and Justin Buzzard

1. You want to see Jesus do something new in our city.
2. You dream of being part of something bigger than yourself.
3. You want to enter a battle for the God’s purposes and see a thick community of grace built.
4. You feel a constant itch to see people who don’t know Jesus come to know Him.
5. You want to give your time, money, energy, and talents to starting something new and make sacrifices to see a mission succeed.
6. You support the vision, mission, doctrine, and leadership of a church.
7. You want your faith to grow and you want God to change your life.
8. You want to love Nashville and the neighborhood you live in.
9. You want to watch God move in ways you could never ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).
10. You’re not afraid to bank your life on God’s promise in Matthew 16:18, “I [Jesus] will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.

10 Reasons NOT to Join:

1. You’re looking for the next cool thing in town. Our goal is to reach the lost, not steal Christians.
2. You don’t like your current church or campus (i.e. Looking for a certain teacher or better parking spot). We will disappoint you.
3. You have a bad track record at churches of being unteachable and causing problems. You’ll repeat the pattern here.
4. You’re looking for a nice show. We’re looking for people who want to give their lives away.
5. You want religion. We preach God’s grace through his Word.
6. You have an agenda. We’re looking for people who want to share our vision, not supersede it.
7. You’re a wolf. You won’t last long.
8. You think this will be a nice church that stays the same size, where everybody knows your name and you have all the pastors’ cell numbers on speed dial.  We want to be a deep community of grace that loves our city. By God’s grace, we want to grow.
9. You think this will be easy and smooth. This will be hard and rough.
10. You want to hold onto your comfortable life. You must lose your life.

If I had to sum these up in one sentence, I would say this: Bad team members see new congregations as an opportunity to get something other than the gospel.

Good team members see church plants as an opportunity to give something for the gospel.

If you are interested in joining and hearing more about Fellowship South Nashville, please RSVP to our December 7^th Vision Dessert (6:00-8:00 pm) by contacting Annelie at .

Brandon Addison can be reached at .