Church Planting Round Table

Sunday Night — Murray Moerman:  “What in the World is God Doing . . . Next?”

• Definition of Church Planting Movements (CPM) from David Watson:  “A strategy and equipping process that establishes a replication process (DNA) in new leaders and local churches within a people group so that they are rapidly and regularly planting multiple new churches within the same people group or mega-city as a normal part of being and doing church.  These churches also begin to look outside their own ethno-linguistic groups or cities in order to establish this process in other people groups or mega-cities.”
• CPMs start and build the church to the place where various streams of the church become strong enough to be able to partner and contribute to ‘whole nation’ strategies.
• SCP ‘whole nation’ strategies bring research and prayer strategies, partnership skills and the vision of completing the Great Commission.
• As CPMs and SCP work together, when there is a church for every 400-1000 people, have we arrived at the discipling of whole nations?
• As John Piper points out – mission exists because worship doesn’t. When God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is so worshipped mission will  cease.  Until then, the church in all these forms engaging in all the means of blessing the nations: Business as Mission, city-reaching, challenging slavery, human trafficking and every form of evil - reforming and transforming - will continue to be needed as long as and wherever worship isn’t.  To that end we plant churches, church planting movements, in the neediest places and seek to accelerate those movements.  But the reforming, transforming activity in the name of Christ yet needed before His return, when God will be fully glorified, can only flow out of worshiping, disciple-making, reproducing, missional communities, millions of which have yet to be planted in people groups largely or entirely untouched by the gospel.  That is our task.

David Watson, Session One:  Barriers of Culture:

• Culture - we pass it on without thinking about it unless we think about it and choose not to pass it on.  Recognize what elements of the Christian message have been embedded in missionaries’ culture.  Our culture is death to the acceptance of the gospel.  Make a decision to be aware of what is Scripture and what is culture, and decide what is the core of the biblical message.  How do we move the gospel without our individual, cultural expressions of church?  If we don’t get this, we will wonder why the gospel does not move forward.
• Purpose of Jesus was to redeem both people and culture.  Once Constantine embraced Christianity, Western European culture was redeemed, and the culture was passed along with the gospel in missions.  God will redeem each culture; will reveal to the believers of that culture what needs to be redeemed, what is the most appropriate way to contextualise the gospel.
• Our job is to deculturalize the gospel.  The insider’s job is to contextualize the gospel.
• The great commission was not given to the whole church.  It was given to eleven people who were then held accountable.  If you do not have someone accountable for a city, a place, even a person’s name, we’re probably not going to see a CPM happen.
• The definition of spirituality is different in every culture.  How can we engage in spiritual conversation if we don’t even know the definition of spirituality in their culture.
•  A church isn’t a church until it plants a church; a church doesn’t stay a church unless it keeps planting churches.

David Watson, Session Two:  CPM process is Counter-intuitive, Paradoxical

• What are things in our culture that are opposite what would need for CPM?  Much of what we have been doing as church/missions has resulted in the gospel hitting barriers because it has created unnecessary separation within families/communities, individual conversions that have not resulted in disciples/ movements to Christ.
• There are elements of our “Christian culture” that condemn  people to hell, because they create barriers to the gospel that we need to set aside – particularly the revival culture/methods of the 19th century (mass evangelism, Evangelism Explosion), seeking converts rather than discipling to conversion, building, paid staff.
• Go slow to go fast. [In leading someone to faith, in training leaders, etc.]
• We need to learn to focus on the right few.  Lord, lead me to the right people who are going to take this into their culture, people who will start a fire that won’t get put out.  Some of the best church planters David knows are illiterate but love the Lord.
• We need to learn to start with creation and then build up a world view that has a creator God.
• Disciple people to conversion, not convert people to make them a disciples.
• Obedience is more important than knowledge.  CPM is based on obedience-based discipleship.  Groups hold each other accountable for doing, not knowing.
• Pray to know the mind of God.  Remember- every time you pray, the potential exists for you to become the answer to someone’s prayer.  A CPM can start when we become the answer to someone else’s prayer.
• There are 21 components of successful CPM movements that are essential to a CPM taking place in any culture (will be included in final conference resource site)..

David Watson, Session 3:

• Ministry should precede evangelism and evangelism must always be the end result of ministry.  Timing is important and necessary.
• Focus on households and families, not individuals.   Jesus did not pre-qualify.  Be careful not to make judgments/decisions about who is worthy or not to receive the gospel.
• Even when you’re using the ‘person of peace’ method, you still have to be careful not to violate culture.  Every culture has a way that families relate to each other.  It’s not about what makes you feel comfortable.  It’s what makes ‘them’ feel comfortable.  Lowering barriers to the gospel.  Have to understand gender issues, age issues, shame and honor issues.  How to identify spiritual leaders.  Church planting is not for the faint of heart.  But church planters have to be people who love to learn.
• Our job is not to teach.  Our job is to ask the right questions so that people can discover the answers from the Bible on their own.
• Small for-profit projects often yield much higher long-term access and goodwill than charity or free services.
• Do we think the disciples felt they were ready to have Jesus leave?  Do we really believe in the Holy Spirit?  If we did, we will walk away from things sooner than we often do.

Philippines Case Study:

• Churches with a strong cell strategy see growth.
• A both/and situation:  people group and geo-political saturation are needed.
• Intentionality is key: we can’t just assume a desired outcome will be a by-product of other activities.
• When together with pastors, two questions are often raised:  1) what kind of resources are available to me to help me with church planting?, 2) what groups around me are unchurched or under-churched?
•  The assumption that there would be community transformation when the church reached a critical mass (size) has not appeared to be confirmed.
• Church planters with a coach are 7 to 8 times more effective than church planters without a coach.

Steve Spaulding:  So, what exactly is our TASK?

• “When the winds of change are blowing, some people build shelters, others build wind-mills.” (Chinese Proverb)
• People tend to accomplish what they set out to accomplish.
• A discipled nation would be an obedient nation.
• Group Discussion Question:  Why has the church been slow to address this task?  Summary of group responses:
  • In Church history there have been eras when the nations were impacted, but they became corrupt.
  • What would a discipled nation look like?  Justice, mercy, end of poverty.
  • We went after that which was more achievable-which was planting churches.  The most receptive people have been reached first, and so the most resistant are those that remain.
  • What about those that are objects of wrath for God’s glory?
  • The world will go from bad to worse.  Our understanding of the Kingdom is only a future thing.
  • When practitioners go into that subject matter they butt up against the cranial types who want to bring up these ethereal notions.
  •  Critique:  The classical interpretation is make disciples (of the individuals) of all nations.  As demonstrated by the fact that one can only baptize (individuals of) the nations.  Also, was the example of Paul to be normative (the Jews first, then the Gentile nations, and then the Gentile Kings)?  If so, why did the honorable speaker only emphasize the last two for the church today?
  • We can better manage tackling part of a task in our attempt to accomplish the whole.
  • The vision of a completely discipled nation seems like an impossible goal.
  • Separating the task into a sacred/secular dichotomy.  We approach the sacred task, but ignore the “salt and light” call.  Frame an appropriate response to the world.