Organic Church Planting (2003)

Note: this is taken from a research paper I developed in 2003 for ACTS, and has provided a guiding philosophy of ministry for my work in South Florida over the last 4 years. I have made some significant changes in my views since this was written but I decided to publish it here as I wrote it with some addendums. The major shift is that I would no longer use the phrase "church" planting...I would look for something like "kingdom" planting. I have decided to repost this paper, one section at a time to make it more readable to and to invite discussion.

The great commission given to the followers of Jesus is to go into all the earth, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit, teaching them all that Christ has commanded us. What has Christ commanded us? He has commanded us to love and serve one another, to encourage and care for one another. The activity of making disciples and teaching them to love and serve one another leads to the church, the assembling or gathering together of committed followers of Jesus.

Church planting is the activity of the Holy Spirit through apostolic workers as they persuade men and women to become followers of Jesus and to gather together with other followers of Jesus for mutual service, encouragement and edification.

The Holy Spirit has provided us with a divine example of organic church planting in the relationship between Jesus and his disciples [note: I no longer feel that feel that "church planting" exacty applies to the activity of Jesus with the 12: it was more like forming an apostolic community -- or kingdom network] . We can also find principles of cross-cultural church planting through the example of the Saul of Tarsus and his apostolic team in the later half of the book of Acts. The more closely we follow the biblical pattern given us through Jesus and the twelve, with Paul’s apostolic band, the more likely it is that we will see the same quality of results that we see in the New Testament, as well as the same enduring nature of “fruit which remains” (John 15:16).

Most church planting methods during the last decades of the 20th century were focused on transfer growth rather than new conversion growth. New styles of ministry were developed in order to attract Christian dropouts from dead or dying churches. Sunday morning worship services were updated into the technological age of sound systems, overhead projectors and electric keyboards and then later to multi-media presentations with PowerPoint sermons and gourmet coffee hospitality. Dress became more casual and preaching styles more conversational as churches scrambled to compete to meet the “felt needs” of a dwindling number of Christian consumers.

As we enter into a new millennium, there is a general dissatisfaction with the kind of Christianity produced by contemporary churches in the West. The pastoral failure rate has never been higher. Despite the proliferation (and blessing!) of seeker and purpose-driven mega churches, overall church attendance from January 1997 through June 1998 dropped by 4%. This translates to 8 million Christians who stopped attending Christian services of any kind over an 18 month period.[1] As the Christian Church steadily loses influence not only among secular society, but even among Christians in the U.S. many people are coming to the conviction that the church must change in substance as well as style. The changes that the church will experience in the early decades of the 21st. century will go far beyond methods, style and strategies, to the heart of what defines the church; relationships and structure.

[1] Leonard Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims (Broadman and Holman, Nashville, TN: 2000) p. 39