Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions. Come on in and join us for episode 207 of Missions on Point. We're in a series on church planting, and this particular episode we're going to deal with church planting modern schemes. I'm sure to step into some controversy today, so I hope you're listening carefully. I can't resist saying right at the front end that a lot of modern schemes, a lot of interesting and wild kind of ideas about church planting would be nipped in the bud if the sending church of church planting missionaries took a deeper interest in them and watched over, shepherded and guarded how they do things and what their ideas are that are feeding their methodologies on the field. The founding principles for that relationship between the sent missionary and the sending church is found in the new book, Missions on Point, so look that up on Amazon.

There is no lack of books and materials available for church planting and church planting movements. That's one of the terms that is used widely these days. I've been a student and collector of church planting materials for decades, and I assure you almost every decade through the last a hundred years, there have been things written and proposed about church planting that create new trends about every decade or so. The more contemporary part of my collection starts in 1953 with a book called Indigenous Church by Melvin Hodges. This book was a study and a correction to the foreign missionary church planting methods of his day, basically saying that the local church should be indigenous in every way, including being self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. These principles were articulated by Henry Venn in the late 1800s. There was an article published in 1992 by what was then the Evangelical Missions Quarterly called Seven Keys to Effective Church Planting.

It was an academic study by survey to church planting missionaries around the world, and they came up with these seven keys. One, more effective church planters spend more time in prayer. Two, more effective church planters use more broadly based evangelistic efforts. Three, more effective church planters are flexible in their use of methodologies. Four, more effective church planters are more committed to a doctrinal position. Five, more effective church planters worked at building credibility for their presence in the community. Six, more effective church planters have a greater ability to identify and then work with people who have a loosely structured religion. Seven, more effective church planters teach and mobilize new converts for evangelism. As time moves toward our more contemporary era, some of those principles are applied in different ways. In the year 2000, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Church published a book called Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming A Lost World, written by David Garrison, a researcher and leader of research for the IMB.

He particularly was studying what is called breakthrough church planting movements in which a lot of churches were planted in a relatively short amount of time. In the book, he suggests 10 universal elements present in each movement along with seven deadly sins or harmful practices that stifle or impede church planting movements. So this term, church planting movements, comes into wider use. One of the common problems of this kind of research and publication is that then younger and a little bit more impressionable church planters out in the field use those things as hard rules and they get a wide range of results. From amazing good stuff to very disappointing bad things. Many of the ideas that I'm citing are related to cross-cultural missions, not domestic missions, but ultimately even those cross-cultural missions trends impact locally. So we're seeing attempts in the Western church in the United States and Europe for using some methodologies and means and strategies that are used for cross-cultural church planting methods back here in the States.

They're asking the question, "Hey, if it works so well out on the field and we're seeing tens and hundreds and thousands and yes, millions of new converts and tens of thousands of churches being planted in previously non-Christian cultures, why wouldn't that work here in our cities in the United States?" In 1993, there was a book published called Church Multiplication Guide: Helping Churches to Multiply Locally and Abroad, written by Patterson and Scoggins. It basically documented the use of theological education by extension for church planting in Central America. According to their statistics and their denomination, it was highly successful and used in many places and then adopted for use in other cultures on other continents. A major problem with this kind of thinking is American pragmatism. What I mean by that is Americans really like to get rapid results and large numbers, and they will do almost anything to accomplish that.

They reevaluate historical methods and create brand new ones, at least in their book, that are able to produce much higher numbers of results in a much faster context than traditional missions methods. Of course, then you start drawing some battle lines between the traditional and the modern methods. The modern methods are saying, "Look, we're biblical. We use the Bible and we've discovered this new thing. It's a silver bullet. It is a golden key that is going to open the pathway for fantastic results far beyond anything in history." There are lots of them out there, but I'm going to mention three strains or three currents of modern schemes of church planting that might help you understand a bit of what's going on. The first one is DMM or Disciple Making Movements. DMM arose on the heels of a previously popularized trend of church planting among more resistant people groups was debunked. DMM claims to use New Testament methods and uses a few terms pulled out of the Gospels and Jesus ministry to give it some credibility.

Its methodologies over time, over the last 15, 20 years or so since it began have grown a little more fixed in their practice and people are doing these things and trying to replicate the same kinds of statistics of results that they have heard about in the books and in the testimonies of people who have done this in other cultures. Very typical of these kinds of trends is it sweeps around the world. Mission agencies adopt these things without digging deep and asking hard questions and expecting the same kinds of results. They have a good heart and they do want to see people come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, but their fallacy consistently is watering down the definitions, leaving the Bible to use human definitions for things that don't jive with what the Bible really says. Then in the long run, as time goes on and the next decade passes, people look back and go, "Where are those converts? Where are those churches?"

In fact, there have been people caught in lies about what was printed and published and distributed around the world about the kinds of results that they have presented. Some of the factors used in DMM are good. They want people to read the Bible. They want people to ask questions and understand who is Jesus. The problem comes in defining some of the most basic things. What is the gospel? What does it mean for a person to become a believer? What constitutes a church? What is the definition and qualification for biblically a church leader? How does a group of people come together and assume the identity of being a church body together? And how do they know how to teach the scriptures if they're just reading it and asking questions primarily from the gospels? Narrative stories are easier to comprehend and repeat without any doctrinal depth or biblical application to it.

So these disciple-making movements or church planting movements, another very common term, are repeated over and over again through many of the different types of modern schemes or methodologies. They will all talk about church planting generations. Meaning after you plant a church, how many other generations of churches has that church planted? So the daughter church to the original church is generation number one and the daughter church to that first generation church is generation number two, and they like to see at least four generations in order for it to be called a spontaneously reproducing church planting movement. There is another popular strategy or methodology called training for trainers, which originated in China. These all use a similar style of meeting with a small group of people, teaching them something about the scripture and then getting them to reteach it to someone who's not in that class. Then you call that class a church and the people that they're using the lessons with is called a church as well, and every subsequent group is called another church.

So you have the same kinds of problems of discerning, is it just because they're doing what they're told in the class, they're meeting the basic qualifications of obedience, or if they actually have heartfelt repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation? Just like in the West, people can acknowledge a lot of things about the Bible and about Jesus and not be a true believer. Another major scheme out there is called Four Fields. It's based on a scripture passage from Mark chapter four that talks about seed in the field growing to maturity and coming to harvest, and they use these four stages of plant growth to be an analogy for four stages for church planting. There are Western-based organizations that promote and facilitate this kind of training like No Place left or E3 partners. E3 stands for equip, evangelize and establish.

So here's the bottom line. There are elements of each of these thoughts of modern schemes that actually have some virtue to them. But every church planting team needs to be thoughtful about adapting rather than adopting a rigid structure for their church plant. Because they are in a unique place. They're seeking to plant a church in a unique culture in geography and language. Church planters need to think about how they can be thoroughly biblical in their approach. There was a great article published by 9Marks in fall of 2015 in their journal called Missions: Adding Wisdom to Zeal. It was later republished by the Gospel Coalition entitled, Your Bad Ecclesiology is Hurting Us. Basically, the author, Mark Collins, says, "There are so many church planters out on the field that don't even know a good definition of the church. They have little or no church experience, much less experience in being a leader in a church or raising up and training leaders for a church. They've been sent to the field way premature of their capacity, qualifications, and ability to minister the gospel and raise up an indigenous church."

Then you come to this 2022 book by Matt Rhodes called No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions. In it, Matt thoroughly debunks a lot of the modern schemes out there and their use and abuse on the field. He does it graciously with good, solid facts, but most importantly, he does it biblically and carefully, wanting to be that careful church planter that's planting the right kind of church. When I've taught church planting, I like to stick with four basic principles of missiology.

1. The first one is the missionary's first priority is enculturation and language fluency or proficiency. What that means is the missionary has to communicate intangible truths of the gospel and doctrine to those listeners, and his language must be adequate to handle that. This is not just marketplace language proficiency.
2. Number two, the missionary should never be the pastor of a foreign culture church. It doesn't mean ever be a pastor, but it means that the missionary is from the very beginning, raising up growing Christians to become leaders in the church and ultimately leave the church in the hands of indigenous leaders and go and plant another church.
3. The third principle is biblical principles guide ministry and decisions, not human traditions or forms, and today I would add schemes or frameworks of modern church planting. Biblical principles guide how you define a believer, how you define what is a church, what are church leaders, what does it mean to be a Christian, and most basically, what is the gospel.
4. The fourth principle is cultural appropriateness and transferability, intentionally limit means and methodologies. We don't use things that the local people can't use.  We don't bring in high technology if they're a low technology culture.

So let's start way back at the beginning and talk about the proclimational model or the traditional model and some of those elements that guide and direct what church planting should look like.

1. First is affirmation of the sending church. The sending church affirms that the missionary they're sending is qualified and deep enough in Bible and doctrine to be a good church planter.
2. Secondly, the church prepares the missionary in every way and experience and in character to be a good church planter.
3. Thirdly, there is commissioning for leaving to go to the foreign mission field.
4. Fourth is solid orientation to the field, including acquisition of the trade language.
5. And then fifth, identify and move into the unreached language group area and learn that language as well.
6. Six is complete proficiency and begin pre-evangelism with the target people group.
7. Seven is direct evangelism, bold evangelism, and the first gospel communication efforts.
8. As believers are formed by God's grace, you go to step eight and that is gathering and discipling the church, the believers.
9. Number nine is maturing the church and giving them proper biblical expectations about their responsibilities and their ministry.
10. And number 10 is the mature church. Indigenous leaders are recognized as the leaders of the church. The missionary is stepping aside to let them handle it completely on their own. That is not rushed, not bound by a scheme or a structure or a framework to do certain things a certain way in a certain limited amount of time, but taking your time to see that church established. And by God's grace it will be because God wants there to be a church in every people group of the earth.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.