Church planting tough in Seattle, where only 4 percent are evangelical Christians

Adam Buchanan/NAMB

Based in Seattle, Wash., Gary and Joyce Irby have served as church planting missionaries for the North American Mission Board and the Puget Sound Baptist Association for nine years.

SEATTLE, WASH. — Seattle can seem like one big paradox.

Seattle – the largest city in the Pacific Northwest with about 4 million in the metro area – has the highest percentage of college graduates of any major U.S. city. Men’s Fitness magazine named Seattle the fittest city in the U.S. It’s home to Microsoft, Boeing, and Starbucks.

With some 190 different languages spoken, Seattle is very multiethnic, with many world religions represented. More than 80 percent of the residents say they believe in something beyond the physical realm.

At the same time, only about four percent are evangelical Christians.

“Seattle has never been a Christian city,” says Gary Irby, churching planting missionary for the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and the Puget Sound Baptist Association. “It’s not post-Christian – it’s never had a predominant Christian influence.”

Irby, 46, is only one of more than 5,300 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® for North American Missions. He’s one of eight Southern Baptist missionaries highlighted as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 4-11, 2007. The 2007 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $57 million, 100 percent of which is used for missionaries like Irby.

“One of the important things we’ve discovered is that you cannot presume that people in Seattle have a basic understanding of the gospel,” Irby said. “You can’t assume they’ve ever been in church, that they’ve ever even seen or read the Bible.

Adam Buchanan/NAMB

NAMB church planting missionary Gary Irby worships during services at Harvest Fellowship in Seattle. During his time in Seattle, Irby has helped plant 170 church in 20 different languages.

A native of Ft. Wayne, Ind., who considers Richland, Wash., as his hometown, Irby earned degrees at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., and Golden Gate Seminary. He pastored churches in Seattle and Oregon. He and his wife, Joyce, have four children. Irby also comes from a long line of church planters.

“My granddaddy was a bi-vocational church planter in North Texas. Then my dad went into the ministry at an early age, moved to Indiana, and planted eight churches there before I turned seven years old.

As a young minister in Washington state, Irby served a church that was growing but very slowly. He said he prayed and did the things he needed to do to grow the church but it just wasn’t happening.

Irby asked God, “Lord, what’s going on here? What gives?

“And God said to me very clearly – the clearest I’ve ever heard Him – ‘Gary, you’ve been adding. It’s time to start multiplying.’ In other words, He meant that it was my turn to get involved in churching planting.”

And during his 20 years as a church planter – nine of them in Seattle – Irby has been answering God’s call to multiply.

“About seven years ago, we had about 100 churches in the area,” Irby said. “We’ve seen that number grow to about 170 different churches, in 20 different languages. More than half of the new churches we’ve started use a language other than English.” These include Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Russian, and Spanish.

Adam Buchanan/NAMB

Gary Irby, a NAMB church planting missionary in Seattle, Wash., preaches during worship services at Harvest Fellowship in the Monuntlake Terrace High School theater. Irby has been a church planter for 20 years, nine of them in the Seattle area.

Irby and the 65 church planters he’s directed over the last nine years have also targeted groups based on age. For instance, some focus on the “Millennials” (teens and 20s), the “Busters” (early 30s to 40), and, of course, the “Baby Boomers” (late 40s to early 60s).

Irby says that while the Scripture is constant and unchanging, church planting methods should be flexible to adapt to the local culture.

“One of the first things I tell church planters is that the only wrong kind of church plant is the one in which its planter thinks that’s the only way to do it – that the church has to be this or that only,” he said.

“A lot of planters come in and say ‘just tell me where to plant a church.’ I tell them I won’t do that. I’ll leave that to God. We’ll show them a half-dozen possible places, and pray with them about where God is leading them.”

Irby said church planting can be lonely, challenging work. He said it’s tough to be away from your family and to leave a place where you’re comfortable to move to a non-Christian location like Seattle.

“Another challenge is having enough resources and partners to help. We find that it takes an average of six churches to help support every new church plant,” Irby said.

For Irby, it’s not just planting churches that excites him the most.

“I love to see people come to faith in Christ. That’s why we plant churches. It’s just such a cool thing to see the new churches celebrate every time they hold baptism services. It’s like a big party. People are so excited about their new life in Christ that they practically jump out of the water.”