The Hostile Takeover—Sheep Stealing 101

Have people left your church as a result of a church plant that has swept into town? If so, have you wondered why they left or what pulled them away? Does it bother you that the new church didn’t discourage them from leaving? These are fair questions in light of a growing trend of church plants that recruit believers from existing congregations. I call this type of church plant the “hostile takeover” or “sheep stealing”. They miss the mark of why we should plant churches: namely, to advance the kingdom of God in places that haven’t been saturated with the Gospel (Acts 1:8). I can’t help but question the purpose and motivation of stealing people from an established Bible-believing church to build another. What does it accomplish?

Please understand, before we go any further, I’m all for people leaving churches that compromise truth, leaving the flock unequipped and spiritually anemic. For the church planter with worthy intentions, these can be rescue missions. I’ve gone on a few. In fact, we all should lovingly encourage anyone that is in a liberal or unhealthy church to find a place where they can grow in their faith or maybe even get saved! The problem I have is when sheep stealing church planters pursue people that are in healthy, churches where God is honored and glorified. They should be focusing on the lost world or people that haven’t landed in a solid church.

There, however, is one exception to this rule. There are churches that will gladly send some of their people to help launch a new work that meets biblical standards. I don’t think this idea enters many of the minds of the sheep stealing church planters, which causes them to miss out on a tremendous blessing. By way of example, when I planted my first church, we had a number of families join with the encouragement of their pastors so that they could be part of a Bible church in their community. In fact, one church gave a letter of recommendation signed by all the elders. These people became members and provided a strong foundation for the young church. I also wasn’t worried that pastors were getting upset with me. We simply received their blessing as a result of us being upfront with them about our intentions. We didn’t want to steal sheep; we wanted to see people saved, equipped, and focused on God’s glory. God honored our effort, resulting in the salvation of many and a good reputation of being a strong Bible-believing church.

This isn’t the norm today, as the hostile takeover approach has taken root. We should be aware and concerned about this type of church planting effort. The hostile takeover church plants not only can cause good churches to lose church members, but can cause an entire town to be swept up into fellowship with little to no spiritual depth. We need to keep our eyes open, discerning what is or isn’t God honoring.

How can you spot a hostile takeover church planting effort? Here is a list of some of the things I’ve noticed:
· They usually have a very large marketing budget to pull people in like a vacuum
· They promote their senior pastor who often has a charismatic personality
· They seldom introduce themselves to pastors in the town they are planting
· Their worship music can be pretty edgy and entertaining
· Their preaching focuses more on felt needs as opposed to verse by verse teaching
· Their youth ministry is mostly fun and games
· They’ll receive anyone into the fellowship—namely, people from your church
· The gospel they preach is made more palatable for the non-believer to receive

Sound familiar? Have you lost people to this type of church plant? Believe it or not, some sheep stealing church planters arrogantly stand in front of churches, passing out flyers inviting them to their new church. I’ve even heard stories of these men sending out church members to recruit new attendees from existing churches. In one case, a man from a pastoral staff of a hostile takeover church plant was sent to a Bible study of a nearby church to scout it out.

All this can be pretty discouraging, which begs the question of what should we do about it? Certainly we should start by making it a matter of prayer. We may also need to confront the sheep stealing church planter pastor in hopes that he will change his tactics. Who knows, he may just need a little guidance in the right direction. Wouldn’t that be an easy fix?

The Outreach Oregon team, for our part, has a solution and a plan. We want to lead by example by seeing a perpetual surge of aggressively evangelistic and Biblically grounded churches established in Oregon. We hope the results send a clear message of why and how we want to plant churches. This is a huge task, as many undiscerning professing believers are flocking to these new churches that offer lots of entertainment with little substance. We understand that this will take time, lots of effort, and the ability to stay the course.

In closing, we need to remember that Christ will build His Church (Matt 16:18) and that He wants it to be done His way, with His resources, using His people. The hostile takeover approach doesn’t honor God and is far from the way He wants to use us in building His church. If we preach Jesus and Him crucified, if we maintain a commitment to the word, not catering to depraved minds, we’ll plant churches the right way. I hope you agree.

Eric Nyborg