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Evangelism
and Church Planting
Avery Willis and David Garrison
God is doing something amazing in the world today. It's called the church-planting movement. One church becomes two, and two churches become four, and they multiply across a people group.
There are five basic principles or foundational beliefs about church plant-ing. First, God loves all people and wants them to be saved. Second, wherever Jesus Christ is lifted up and proclaimed in a bold, positive, culturally relevant witness, people will be saved. Third, where people are being saved, born again by the Holy Spirit, they will be drawn together into a fellowship, a New Testament church. Fourth, God will provide the leaders needed to minister within that body. Fifth, it is the very nature of a church, as any living organism, to grow and multiply If it does not grow and multiply, we've got to ask ourselves, "Is it a living organism?"
We can't fulfill the Great Commission by just starting a church here and there. The world population is exploding. In many countries churches are not multiplying as rapidly as the population. A church-planting movement is a rapid and exponential increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment. Incremental increase says, "We've got five churches; we'll add one church this year." Exponential says, "We've got two churches; they need to multiply and form four churches. Four churches need to become sixteen churches." That's exponential increase, not incremental increase.
What kind of churches? Indigenous churches. These churches are able to reproduce themselves, reaching out to an entire people group or population segment. If a church is depending on foreign resources, it cannot multiply A church may have had help at first, but if it feels that it must have that same help to start another church, it'll never have multiplication. This movement must generate its own pastors and teachers. Training can't wait for leaders to finish years of theological training. Leadership training is on the job. There will be a time when they need seminary-trained leaders to make sure they have their theology correct, but not in this beginning stage.
One obstacle to church planting is imposing extra-biblical requirements for churches, such as needing a building or a seminary-trained pastor or so many members. These are all good things, but not prerequisites to being a church. A second obstacle is a loss of cultural identity If people must change their cultural identity in order to become believers, there won't be a church-planting movement among that people.
Taken from The Mission of an Evangelist, Amsterdam 2000
