What we’re discovering about church planting in the CRC—and why we can’t stop trying
The Conversation That Keeps Happening
It usually starts over coffee. Or after a service. Or in a text message that reads: “Can we talk about your church planting vision?”
I’ve had this conversation dozens of times now. Sometimes it’s with a young seminary graduate feeling the call but terrified by the statistics. Sometimes it’s with a veteran pastor wondering if there’s still a place for courageous faithfulness. Sometimes it’s with a potential donor trying to discern where to invest in kingdom work.
And every time, I find myself fumbling for words. Because the truth is, we’re not presenting a finished product. We’re not offering a proven model with a money-back guarantee. What we’re offering is more like a field report from the front lines of an experiment—one we’re still figuring out as we go.
This is where we are. This is what we’re learning. This is why we can’t stop planting, even when the data says we should.
The Crisis We Can’t Ignore
Let me tell you something Scott and I have talked about at length on The Disciple Standard Podcast: the Christian Reformed Church is in freefall.
In Episode 12, Scott laid out the numbers that keep him awake at night. We’ve lost over 40% of our membership since the 1990s. That’s not a gentle decline—that’s a collapse. Seminaries are graduating students who can’t find calls. Churches are closing their doors. And those that remain are, on average, getting older, smaller, and more isolated from the communities around them.
But here’s what Scott said that stuck with me: “The decline isn’t primarily a cultural problem. It’s a discipleship problem.”
We’ve had the tools for faithfulness all along. We just stopped using them.
What We Forgot: The Psalm and the Word
If you listen to our early episodes—Episode 3 in particular—Scott unpacks something that should be obvious but isn’t: the psalms are the only portion of Scripture explicitly given to us for worship.
Think about that. For three millennia, God’s people have prayed using these inspired words. David didn’t write theological treatises—he wrote prayers. “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” isn’t abstract doctrine; it’s raw, honest, embodied prayer. The psalms teach us the grammar of addressing God. They give us permission to bring our full selves—our doubt, our rage, our joy, our confusion—to the One who can actually handle it.
And somewhere along the way, we stopped singing them.
In Episode 7, Scott describes visiting a church in the Netherlands where the entire service was psalm singing. No sermon. No announcements. Just three hours of God’s people singing their prayers. He came back changed. “We have no idea what we’ve lost,” he told me.
The psalms in their natural habitat are song. They were written to be sung, to be prayed, to be inhabited. When we reduce them to occasional special music or replace them entirely with contemporary worship songs about God, we lose something essential. We lose the church’s prayer book.
And then there’s the Word.
In Episode 15, we spent an entire episode on the public reading of Scripture—what Scott calls “the most neglected discipline in evangelical worship.” For the Reformers, this was central. Calvin insisted on extended Scripture reading. The Puritans built their services around it. For generations, Christians encountered the Bible not primarily through explanation but through hearing it read aloud, letting it wash over them, allowing the Spirit to speak through the text itself.
We’ve replaced 25 minutes of Scripture with 25 minutes of application. We’ve given people principles without presence. Information without encounter. We’ve trained Christians to depend on their pastor’s commentary rather than their own ability to hear God speak.
Scott tells the story of a man in his former congregation—a successful businessman, outwardly put-together—who broke down in tears after hearing Romans 8 read in its entirety during a service. “I’ve been in church my whole life,” he said. “I had no idea the Bible sounded like this.”
That’s what we’re trying to recover.
The Fort Pierce Experiment
In April, Lord willing, Sunlight Community Church will launch a new work in Fort Pierce, Florida. I need to be careful here, because I don’t want to oversell what this is. We don’t have a pastor selected yet. We don’t have a detailed five-year strategic plan. What we have is a conviction, an opportunity, and a willingness to try something that might fail.
Here’s how it started. About eighteen months ago, we began offering an evening service at Sunlight. Not a “contemporary” service with a rock band. Not a scaled-down version of Sunday morning. Something different. Something ancient.
We committed to singing substantial portions of the psalter—using Genevan and contemporary settings, but prioritizing the text itself. We committed to extended Scripture reading—twenty to thirty minutes of uninterrupted Bible, read aloud, without commentary. We committed to simple, Word-centered liturgy that forms rather than merely informs.
And something unexpected happened. People came. Not just our Sunday morning crowd looking for a second option. New people. Unchurched people. Dechurched people. People who had given up on church but were still hungry for God.
In Episode 22, Scott described meeting a young man after one of these services—tattoos, rough past, hadn’t been in a church since childhood. He said: “I don’t understand half of what you guys are doing. But I feel like I’m actually meeting God here.”
That’s when we knew we had to do more than just a service. We had to plant a church.
From Service to Church: The Plan
Let me be clear about what we’re attempting in Fort Pierce, because language matters here. This isn’t a “multisite campus” where the pastor beams in via video. This isn’t a church plant that will remain financially dependent on Sunlight indefinitely. This is a new church—a distinct congregation with its own leadership, its own deacons, its own identity—launched from a tested model.
The evening service becomes the foundation. The community becomes the core. The liturgy becomes the DNA.
We’re not looking for a charismatic leader with a big personality who can attract a crowd. We’re looking for a faithful shepherd who loves the psalms, trusts the Word, and is committed to multiplication over accumulation.
Scott talks about this in Episode 18 using the language of obedience to opportunity. We didn’t set out to plant a church in Fort Pierce. We set out to be faithful with what God put in front of us—a service, a community, a conviction that ancient practices still work. The church plant emerged from that faithfulness. It was gift, not strategy.
The Multiplication Question: Why This Actually Works
Here’s where it gets exciting—and a bit terrifying. Fort Pierce isn’t the goal. Fort Pierce is the prototype.
Scott and I have spent countless hours on the podcast wrestling with what he calls “the sustainability trap” (Episode 24). Most church plants fail financially because they’re built on models that require massive ongoing investment: expensive facilities, full worship teams, professional children’s ministries, sophisticated media setups. They launch dependent on outside funding, and when the money runs out, the church dies.
We’re trying something radically different.
This model is lightweight. It doesn’t require a worship band. It doesn’t need a fog machine and LED walls. It doesn’t need a $50,000 sound system or a leased facility with theater seating. It needs a room, a Bible, a psalter, and a faithful pastor who loves God’s Word.
The economics are startling. A traditional church plant might need $150,000-$300,000 in startup costs and $80,000-$120,000 in annual outside funding for the first three years. Our model? A fraction of that. Because we’re not trying to attract consumers with production value. We’re forming disciples through ancient practices that cost nothing but time and conviction.
Think about what this means for multiplication:
If Fort Pierce works—if a church can be planted for relatively low cost, reach the unchurched through psalm and Word, become self-sustaining in three years, and train its next pastor to plant again—then we can do this everywhere.
Vero Beach. Stuart. Port St. Lucie. Okeechobee. Up the coast. Across Florida. In declining CRC communities throughout the Midwest. In post-Christian cities on the coasts. Anywhere there’s a faithful leader and a community hungry for something real.
We’re not building a franchise. We’re building a movement.
“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others also.”
Learning from the Broken Models
Let me tell you what Scott and I have observed about church planting in America—and why most models aren’t working.
The “Launch Large” model requires massive upfront capital, a charismatic leader, and sophisticated marketing. It works for a few high-profile planters. It fails for many others. And even when it succeeds, it often produces churches that are indistinguishable from the consumer Christianity they’re supposed to counter.
The “House Church” model is theologically sound but often lacks accountability, theological depth, and the resources to make broad community impact.
The “Parachute Drop” model sends a planter into a community with two years of funding and hopes for the best. When the money runs out, the church often dies.
We’re trying what Scott calls “incubated multiplication.” Test the model first. Refine the liturgy in real community. Identify leaders organically. Then launch—not from zero, but from eighteen months of proven ministry.
Why We Can’t Stop: The State of the Church
I want to be honest with you about why this matters so urgently. In Episode 19, Scott walked through the data on American Christianity, and it’s devastating. Mainline decline isn’t news anymore. But evangelical plateauing should terrify us. The Southern Baptist Convention—America’s largest Protestant denomination—has lost two million members in fifteen years.
But here’s what gives me hope—and it’s not optimism. It’s theology.
Jesus said he would build his church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. That promise doesn’t depend on our strategies. It doesn’t depend on our denominations. It doesn’t depend on whether we figure this out.
In Episode 27, Scott said something that I keep coming back to: “The fields are still white for harvest. We’ve just been using the wrong tools.”
Gen Z is spiritually hungry in ways we haven’t seen in decades. Dechurched millennials are looking for something real. The unchurched in places like Fort Pierce aren’t hostile to Christianity—they’ve just never seen it.
That’s what we’re trying to show them.
To the Potential Planter
If you’re reading this and you feel that stirring—that holy discontent, that sense that there has to be more than the status quo, that call to go where the church isn’t—I want to talk to you.
But I need to be honest about what we’re offering. We can’t promise you a salary that matches your seminary debt. We can’t promise you a fast track to influence. We can’t promise you success by any conventional metric. We can’t even promise you that this model will work—we’re still figuring it out ourselves.
What we can promise you is this:
- A theology that works. The Reformers weren’t wrong. The psalms, the Word, the sacraments, prayer, community, mission—these aren’t nostalgic relics. They’re the tools the Spirit has always used to build his church.
- A liturgy that forms. You’ll lead services that actually shape people into the image of Christ. Not through clever programming or emotional manipulation, but through the slow, steady, ancient work of Word and Spirit.
- A community that multiplies. You won’t be building your kingdom. You’ll be preparing people to be sent. The goal isn’t to get big; it’s to get fruitful.
- A Spirit who is still building his church. Even in the age of decline. Even when the data says we should quit.
What We Need: Fellow Laborers for a Movement
Fort Pierce is just the beginning.
I need you to understand this. We’re not trying to plant one church. We’re trying to prove that a model works—a lightweight, economically viable, theologically faithful model that can be duplicated anywhere. If this works in Fort Pierce, it can work in Vero Beach. If it works on the Treasure Coast, it can work across Florida. If it works in Florida, it can work anywhere.
Imagine: a network of churches—small, faithful, psalm-singing, Word-centered—planted for a fraction of traditional costs, each one incubating the next, each one sending out leaders, each one multiplying rather than accumulating.
Imagine: declining CRC communities across the Midwest where a faithful pastor recovers the psalter, reads the Word, and sees a handful of people become a church that becomes a movement.
Imagine: post-Christian cities on the coasts where the unchurched encounter ancient Christianity for the first time—not through a slick marketing campaign, but through the simple, counter-cultural witness of people who sing their prayers and listen to their God.
This is possible. Not because we’re so clever. But because the old paths still work. Because the Spirit still builds his church through Word and sacrament. Because there are still people hungry for something real.
We need planters who will go. We need pastors who will train. We need churches that will send.
This Isn’t a Finished Product
This isn’t a finished product. It’s not a proven model. It’s a field report from an experiment we’re still running—one that might fail, one that will certainly cost more than we expect, one that we can’t guarantee will work.
But it’s the experiment God has given us. And we can’t stop planting.
The question is: will you plant with us?
Listen to The Disciple Standard Podcast on YouTube @thedisciplestandard, visit disciplestandard.com, or find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Aaron Mamuyac and Scott Vander Ploeg explore what it means to multiply disciples in a consumer-driven world.