IPHC Celebrate the Mission

Readiness Checklist
To successfully complete this chapter, you will need to:

Review the Imperatives for Church Planting
Decide on your Plant3 Project for 2001:
- A local community project?
- A conference field project?
- A national field project?
Decide on the Church Planting Type:
- A Judean-type Church (one like yourself)
- A Samaritan-type Church (cross-cultural)
- A World-type church (trans-national)
Complete the Plant3 Worksheet
Implement your Plant3 project

Introduction
The Mission21 strategy for 2001 and the next decade is Reach3–Plant3. In this section we will see how it is possible for every church to share the vision and help plant churches. This section is adapted from materials written by Dr. Owen Weston, Director of CityQuest, Evangelism, USA.

Three imperatives:
Why should we plant churches? The answer is simple. Our biblical mandate is to bring the lost to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, in other words, evangelism. The most effective and efficient means of evangelism is church planting.

The Biblical imperative
It is evident that the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 mandates a global view of evangelism. “To go into all the world” must include the home church neighborhood, reaching the surrounding neighborhoods and reaching the city, the county, the country, and all the earth. With the Great Commission as our goal, Acts 1:8 provides our strategy.

Acts 1:8 makes it clear that the church needs to have 4 pulpits:

Acts 1:8 says, “After that the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you shall receive power to witness in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.” In his book, Dawn 2000, James Montgomery suggests this verse is not simply a summation of the missionary work recorded in Acts, but it should be the model for a New Testament evangelism strategy today. Jerusalem was the home city or base for the New Testament church begun at Pentecost. Judea is the province in which Jerusalem was located. Samaria is the anti-Jewish, cross-cultural area close to Judea where no good Jew dared to venture. The “ends of the earth” are the regions beyond.
Montgomery says this Scripture should give the model. The local church is Jerusalem—the mother church—and it needs to focus on four evangelistic prongs. It should build up Jerusalem. It should branch out to Judea, the mother church’s surrounding community. Samaria is the mother church’s evangelistic witness into the nearby cross-cultural communities. And fourth, the “ends of the earth” is the witness the mother church propagates into foreign fields. This means each church should have four pulpits and outreach points in its strategy to reach the world for Christ: its Jerusalem, its Judea, its Samaria and its foreign fields.
The question is, “Why would these four evangelistic thrusts keep Christianity alive and well in the host country?” The answer is simple. Studies show a church has a life cycle in which it is birthed, grows and is effective in reaching the community, and then begins to die. Death for the local church begins at the point when the church (regardless of its size), no longer evangelizes or reaches its community and stops growing.
Looking at the example in the book of Acts, it becomes evident that the Jerusalem church was not content to remain localized in Jerusalem. In Acts 13, we have one of the most powerful examples of a mother church starting new churches in the surrounding area. The interesting event of Acts 13 was that the two senior pastors, Barnabas and Paul, were the very ones who were asked to leave the mother church and start the new churches.
Another interesting fact about the church in Acts was that it grew under the leadership of lay people. When Jerusalem heard a church had started in Antioch, they sent a pastor, Barnabas, to go and oversee them (Acts 11:19-24).

Demographic imperative
According to The American Society of Church History,

“In 1900 there were 27 churches for every 10,000 people in America, but today there are less than 11 churches for every 10,000 people.”

Additionally, America is a nation of cultural diversity. Churches must target the various pieces of the cultural mosaic or significant groups will be missed.

We live in a plural, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, diverse, perverse, openly pagan, secular society. Most church leaders are willing to affirm that fact, but few as yet are ready to face its implications for strategy…In every population unit – whether census tract, city, county, or state – there are pockets of unchurched people. In some population units, these pockets are huge. Chaney, 1982:19.

The only hope for America is for us to plant new churches in every neighborhood and every culture.

Practical imperative
According to research by Peter Wagner and documented in his book, Church Planting for a Greater Harvest,

The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches. Wagner, 1990:11.

NewStart, Church of the Nazarene church-planting agency, says,

New churches win more converts, per member and per dollar invested, than older established churches, which means they are not only more evangelistically effective, they are also more efficient.

Advantages of planting new churches?

New churches are more evangelistic
New congregations have a higher level of commitment to evangelism. They realize their survival as a church depends on constantly reaching new people. Generally, the older a church becomes, the less effective it is at evangelism. Bob Logan, in his book, How to Daughter a Growing and Reproducing Church, (Strategy Ministries Inc., pg. 178) wrote:

50 years = 1 convert / 90 members. Research shows us that a church 50 years old or older averages one convert for every 90 members. This is an increase of approximately 1.1% of the church membership per year.
10 years = 1 convert / 7 members. Churches 10 years old average one convert for every seven members per year. This is an increase of 14% of its membership.
3 years = 1 convert / 3 members. Churches that are 3 years old, or less, have one convert for every three members or an increase of 33% of its membership each year.

It is obvious from these statistics that the older the church the more likely it is to be involved in maintaining the congregation by spending all its time on the needs of its present membership. This is also known as the maintenance mode.

If your church has been in existence for some time, it is obvious that the best way to win the lost is to start a new church, which is more likely to be more evangelistic than the mother church. If a church really cares about ministering to its city, country, and the world, it must understand that one church is not enough.

New churches are a blessing to established churches
One fallacy Satan instills in the minds of leaders of established churches is that a new church in their area will hurt their attendance and income. Fear is one of the first tactics the enemy will use against Christians to keep them from doing what God wants them to do. Losing members to a new congregation is a common fear expressed, but one that can quickly be dispelled.

No church will be effective in reaching the entire community. Just as a radio station will not reach all people and must target a particular group to gain an audience, churches will always be more effective reaching one target group. The exciting thing about starting new churches is that they are often able to reach people that have been un-reached by all other existing efforts of established churches.

Lyle Schaller made an observation about planting a new congregation in the midst of existing congregations of the same denomination in his book, 44 Questions for Church Planters:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, congregations usually benefit from intra-denominational competition. While it is impossible to isolate one factor as being decisive, the presence of two or more congregations with the same denominational affiliation usually results in a higher level of congregational health and vitality than if one congregation has a denominational monopoly in that community. (page 29-30)

New churches raise up new leaders
Many established congregations have no room for emerging leaders. Though most pastors struggle with finding adequate leadership to minister to their congregations, many people feel their ministry gifts are not needed in their church.

Planting new churches creates new opportunities for ministry by people who want to be more involved in the Lord’s work. How often do we witness people who are called to preach sitting quietly on the pews of an older, established church? One reason this problem exists is because many pastors have misunderstood God’s call. Instead of being called to preach to an existing congregation, perhaps the call is to plant a new church and preach to those members.

New churches reach other cultures
Frequently, ethnic groups are overlooked by the church. They speak a different language and have their own lifestyle and customs. They are not likely to visit your church. To reach them, a targeted strategy must be developed. If we are going to be effective in reaching the world, we should realize that establishing new church plants is the only way we will reach the wide variety of people whom God has created.