Why We Focus on the Church: Covocation, Community, and the Gravity That Holds a Movement Together

by Dave Miller

The question of why we focus so intensely on the church planting may seem, at first, unnecessary. For many engaged Christians, the real traction appears to be elsewhere: in making disciples informally, in sharing faith at work, in developing influence on platforms, or in performing acts of service in the world. These impulses are not wrong, but they are incomplete, and when detached from covenantal community short-lived.  

They arise from a cultural moment shaped by radical individualism, suspicion of institutions, and the illusion of digital community. To understand why the church, and especially church planting, remains essential, we must unravel several tangled threads: what influence really is, how identity is formed, what we owe to those who came before us, why community must be organic rather than merely organizational, and how calling to the marketplace and calling to spiritual leadership belong together rather than apart.

Influence is always relational before it is organizational. You either have influence or you do not, and influence cannot be manufactured by content alone. It grows from relational trust. The tragedy of our cultural moment is that individualism has trained us to expect exclusive attention as the sign of care, and social media has become masterful at imitating that exclusivity. It feeds the illusion that someone is always with us, always listening, always affirming our presence. Yet this digital nearness cannot bear the weight of identity. It cannot provide the longevity, forgiveness, or restoration that real community makes possible. In tearing down historic social structures under the banner of justice or authenticity, we have replaced them with digital pseudo institutions that fail at the very things those structures existed to do. Identity fractures because no enduring community names us. Anxiety rises because no shared story holds us. People demand attention because they no longer belong.

Institution alone cannot repair this fracture. In fact, mere institutional forms often increase suspicion. But neither can individualism heal itself. The path forward requires rediscovering what Scripture and the healthiest human societies always understood: life is covenantal. It is received before it is chosen. This is what institutional thinking, in the classical sense, means. It begins with humility. Everything I possess—truth, wisdom, faith, Scripture, prayer, worship, leadership—arrived to me as a gift. I am a debtor, not a creditor. When I learn something new, I do so because saints before me labored, preserved doctrine, translated Scripture, built communities, suffered persecution, wrote books, discipled children, instructed congregations, and practiced faithfulness. I am the beneficiary of centuries of invested lives. The only right response is stewardship.

“A person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2)

Stewardship assumes I have inherited something precious. It assumes I must preserve and grow that inheritance for the sake of those who will follow me. If the faith entrusted to me dies with me, I have failed. (2 Timothy 2:2) A good institution, at its roots, is nothing more than the set of shared habits, structures, and expectations that carry a valued purpose from one generation to the next. A bad institution betrays that purpose. The solution to a corrupted institution is not the rejection of institution itself but its purification and reformation back to the foundational framework, covenant community with all its rights, responsibilities, and privileges. To reject institution entirely is to reject inheritance itself, which leaves the next generation poorer than the last.

Yet stewardship is not enough. If it remains abstract—simply structures, safeguards, and roles—it becomes rigid and lifeless. Scripture refuses to allow such rigidity. The church is not first an organization but a body. It is not a destination but a people.

“All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)

“And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ.” (Ephesians 1:22-23)

This means the church is an organism. Organisms live by reproduction, not expansion. So children in the family must mature to become fathers and mothers in that family.

The larger an organization grows, the more energy it must direct inward just to maintain its machinery, if the structures, safeguards, and roles are always delegated to producers for the benefit of the consumers. The church in the West has learned to focus on institutionalization: larger campuses, more programs, professional clergy, and high-quality production. None of these things are inherently wrong, but they easily overshadow the more essential reality that the church is a community gathered around Jesus. In many places, “church” now functions as a place one goes rather than a people one is. As Wolfgang Simson observes, we have created “fellowships without fellowship.” This is not the biblical picture. The New Testament church lived in houses, shared meals, suffered together, forgave one another, and multiplied. As community deepened, mission advanced.

If the church will rediscover its missionary nature, it must rediscover its communal nature first. Identity is formed within community. Purpose is clarified in community. Forgiveness and restoration require time, and time requires belonging. When individuals know they belong, they gain the stability necessary to grow into leadership, to repent sincerely, to take responsibility for others, and to carry the mission forward. A person alone cannot become a Christian in any meaningful biblical sense, because the Christian life is life-in-Christ and therefore life-in-His-body.

Movement thinking rightly emphasizes relationships, obedience, simplicity, and multiplication. It is corrective where institutional forms have grown heavy and self-referential. Yet if movement thinking rejects institutional logic entirely, it cannot offer longevity. It cannot steward inheritance. It cannot form identity across generations. It burns bright for a moment and disappears. Institutional thinking, on the other hand, guards inheritance and forms identity, but it easily drifts into self-preservation and mission drift if it is not continually reinvigorated by principles of movement driven by the priesthood of all believers in covenant community. 

The church must learn to hold the radical middle: movement and institution together. Movement provides missionary impulse. Institution provides generational weight. Movement sends. Institution roots. Movement energizes. Institution stabilizes. Church planting lives precisely in this tension. A plant has to be simple enough to reproduce and yet stable enough to endure. For the leader who wants to run too fast, the church plant slows him by requiring relational patience, covenant commitment, and the slow work of disciple formation. For the leader who has lost energy, the church plant accelerates him by placing people before him who need shepherding, teaching, encouragement, and shared life.

Nothing else provides this gravity. Not a Bible study alone. Not a workplace presence alone. Not a digital platform. Only a local community gathered around Jesus—worshiping, obeying, forgiving, restoring, sending—holds leaders in the healthy tension between zeal and wisdom.

And it is here in this radical middle tension where the focus on church becomes unmistakable. 

When we speak of covocational life, we are not describing a vague synergy between faith and work. We mean something far more concrete: a calling to the marketplace AND a calling to church planting, held together with intentionality. 

We are not focusing our attention on making disciples in the marketplace, though that is good and necessary. We are saying we intentionally encourage people to plant churches AND to work in the marketplace. Both commitments stand side by side, not in competition but in partnership. 

Covocation is a dual commitment, not a casual blending of responsibilities. This matters because it is the church planting movement component that creates the gravity. 

Disciple making alone does not create that gravity. Marketplace presence alone does not create that gravity. Only the formation of real communities—churches with covenant life, shared identity, worship, discipline, restoration, and mission—can hold a leader in the radical middle where institution and movement complement each other. Covocation lives with one foot rooted in the new creation, where the church names our identity and holds our eternal focus, and the other foot planted in the old creation, where the Father continues His redeeming work through our labor in the world. This is not semantics. It is a strategic calling—a deliberate way of life. The church plant gives gravity. The marketplace gives presence. Together they form the soil where mission becomes embodied and sustainable.

As the church rediscovers community, the distinction between clergy and laity must disappear. Scripture affirms spiritual leadership and it also affirms a holy priesthood shared by all believers.

“You are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. You are holy priests.” (1 Peter 2:5)

Leadership incarnates the model of Kingdom living. Through this experience and model leadership equips the saints. It does not replace them. When leadership equips rather than performs ministry on behalf of others, the witness of the church becomes credible again. Every disciple senses the weight of responsibility. Every workplace becomes a field of restoration work. Every home becomes a setting for community.

This return to organic community and priesthood strengthens rather than weakens the missionary impulse because it places the responsibility for witness back where Scripture places it: in the hands of the whole body.

Church planting, then, is not an optional strategy. It is the natural outworking of a community rediscovering its identity. It is the expression of stewardship toward the inheritance we have received. It is the concrete form that binds movement and institution together. We focus on church planting not because we idolize structures but because we believe the gospel must take flesh in particular people, in particular places, with particular commitments. The marketplace cannot create this on its own. Disciple making alone cannot sustain it. Digital communities cannot substitute for it. Only the church can carry identity, longevity, forgiveness, formation, and mission across generations.

The church must be movement enough to multiply and institution enough to endure. It must be organic enough to remain simple and structured enough to remain faithful. It must be communal enough to form identity and missionary enough to send disciples into every corner of society. Covocational leaders, embedded in the marketplace and committed to planting real communities of faith, stand at the center of this recovery. They hold together what modern culture has torn apart: work and worship, life and mission, identity and responsibility.

This is why we focus on the church.

This is why we pursue church planting without apology.

This is why we embrace the covocational calls as a way of life.

We aim to bear the weight of the gospel we have inherited, and to carry that inheritance into the world with credibility, authenticity, and endurance.