Tag: Missions

A Healthy Base for Planting Churches

Nurturing Roots to Fruit

If the Church wants to plant more churches in more places, we must launch them from a solid foundation. If your denomination, conference, affiliation or even your local church wants to see the reach of Christ’s church expand the kingdom gospel near and far, our commitment to church planting must balance that with an equally keen resolve to the nurture and maintenance of our existing bodies. We must nurture our legacy congregation at the same time we send out planters of new ones. Without the firm foundation of existing churches, planters without support, material and spiritual.

The Church is organic. We are the body of Christ spread across the globe and yet inseparably interconnected. Health in the body should be measured holistically, believing that all churches matter: fresh growth and existing parts equally. No leaves or fruit survive without the stem and roots. Like our own bodies, pain or weakness in one part is detrimental to the unhindered working of the other parts. It’s distracting at best, debilitating at worst. Sore legs cannot provide the stability and mobility needed by the rest of our body as we try to be of service in the kingdom. It can still happen, but it will require significantly more effort and may not be as effective.

While I support para-church planting efforts, I believe the most natural and effective church planting is done from within the church, done by churches who plant other churches. The men and women sent to plant are then known by the church, loved by the church, and supported by the church. When they are sent, they go with a support system in place and a time-tested culture adaptable to a new gathering of people. In order to realize this culture of planting, the existing churches need the confidence that comes from being healthy themselves.

To realize this mindset requires a cultural awareness on two fronts. The church must maintain as a life goal to reproduce itself. This begins on the more atomic level of being disciples who produce other disciples. Without this attitude, the larger goal of reproducing the church will be impossible in the eyes of the congregation.  Keeping reproduction in the front of the other ministry goals, the church has an easier time of recognizing the need for health in all aspects of the life of the church. A public aim of reproduction heightens the awareness of a need for maintaining the church’s health in all areas to be prepared when the time comes to birth a new congregation.

Decline in churches occurs for a variety of reasons, but one of the most common is the loss of a frontier, a horizon toward which the body is always on the move. This is easily diagnosed by looking at the macro level; does the church have a group of saints who have ceased to grow? Are they not producing new disciples on their own? These truths point to the starting point on the path to health and, hopefully, a new vigorous pursuit of kingdom goals. This is a challenging ministry, but with the end goal of reproducing in mind, fresh motivation can kick-start a return to health.

Healthy roots support an abundance of fruit.

Regaining Our Missionary Footing

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations…

The majority of churches in the American context have lost their sense of mission, settling for the comfort and care of their congregants and attenders. Missions—where supported—has a foreign connotation, referring to those sent to exotic outposts to evangelize the indigenous peoples. Seeing the blocks that surround church building as a mission field is left to the church planter.

…You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

While we should not go so far as to say that all of the Church is to see itself as mission outposts, certainly a fair percentage of churches should seeking the will of the Shepherd as to their calling in this respect. How many churches see their neighbors and neighborhood as a mission field in the same way as those sent to Japan or Mexico? How many congregations have done the kind of sociological research on the people in the immediate vicinity of the church that a denominational missions agency has done on the ends of the earth? Are we still attempting to attract people to programs rather than seeking out ways to deliver living water to them?

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…

The American church has grown to accommodate the culture, adapting the culture’s ways to the service of Christ in an effort to attract more people to the building. Few practice service to others without the agenda of attraction, even if it is unspoken. The Church’s local influence should be such that we are culture makers, not culture takers.

The Church must regain its missionary footing and take the first steps right outside of her door. The Lord did not leave us the option of ignoring (our) Jerusalem in favor of the ends of the earth. It will require an outward focus from the top down, possibly at the expense of internal comfort. The mission re-starts right here, right now.

Grace and peace to you…

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Seeking the Prosperity

Sunday after Sunday in our churches, we laud (and rightfully so) our missionary teams for their travels and service in foreign lands. We are living out the Great Commandment and those who commit themselves to this endeavor find favor with God. While we enjoy the pictures and the stories of transformation, we need to remind ourselves of a parallel concern of Gods; Jeremiah reminds us:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jersusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.