Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Thanks for joining us for episode 217 of Missions on Point. This episode is part of a series, From Here to There, and it's Get Cross-Cultural in Church-Planting Exposure. In the last episode, it was a little lengthy and a lot of lists. It talked about getting local church ministry experience. Today we're going to talk about getting cross-cultural and church planting exposure. Many candidates seeking to become missionaries have an alarming lack of local church experience, even less church planting experience, and even less than that, local church leadership exposure. Unfortunately, few have ever worshiped in a truly disciple-making church. Yet these missionary candidates plan to plant churches in the most difficult places around the world. Many missionaries aiming at church planting among unreached people groups, have little firsthand knowledge and experience in a healthy church, much less a healthy cross-cultural church.

Part of the training for every missionary candidate planting to be involved in cross-cultural church planting is to get serious cross-cultural exposure and at least some church planting exposure, especially if it can include some cross-cultural elements. It's true that an overseas church or cross-cultural church in a foreign country is going to look quite different than the one back home. A church's culture, language, dress, musical expression, and liturgy will look quite different in a large, wealthy suburb of an American city, compared to a poor community in a culture that may historically be opposed to Christianity. So, dear candidate friend, take time to study the Bible and make decisions about what minimal elements should be present in a biblically functioning local church. Here's a starting list. A mutually committed body of local believers worshiping together regularly around the teaching of the word of God in prayer, observing the ordinances of baptism and communion under the leadership of biblically qualified shepherds while being active witnesses of the gospel, so these biblical elements don't include certain things that may be assumptions depending on how you grew up and what kind of church you were in.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have paid pastors and staff. It doesn't mean you have to have certain kinds of programs or a Sunday school per se, or a worship band or a youth group. It doesn't mean that you're required to use printed curriculum or have your own buildings. It certainly doesn't mean that you have to conform to a particular style or even age of music like contemporary versus traditional or electronic musical instruments. It doesn't mean that the congregation or the church is defined by its size. It certainly doesn't mean that your church service should be dependent upon electronic amplification and a lot of projection screens and things like that. Getting cross-cultural training and experience is going to take some effort on your part, probably some homework. If your church is not naturally connected to a community that is cross-cultural in your immediate area, you may have to travel across your metroplex to get to a different place that has an ethnic community or communities that is somewhat like the one that you are targeting to go to.

Part of the hard work is opening your mind and your heart to understand their culture and why they think the way they think. What are the values that drive the decisions and the dynamic interaction between each other within the culture of parents to children and family to another family or people who are outsiders? Read books like Sarah Lanier's Foreign to Familiar. Do some serious reading about the history and culture of the place that you intend to go. See if you can find some foreign documentaries about that country or that people or people like them. Search the internet for even academic anthropological studies of your people group or people groups near them. Begin to learn elements of their language through whatever means you can, audio or media or a language study program. It makes a great impression if you're at least able to give some common greetings and salutations and goodbyes in their language.

It's going to take effort, but it's worth it to begin to learn the nearest possible culture to your target culture before you ever leave for the field. Some of that may mean finding good, solid short-term missions opportunities to enable you to do that. Begin to learn the social cues and the right approach, the right way to even ask questions, but try to get into and underneath the facade of smiling, welcoming, and get into what really is important to them in life. Then on top of that or alongside that, you need to get some church planting training before going overseas. Arguably, the best pre-field experience you receive is ministry in and through the context of a healthy biblically-led, disciple-making local church. From strictly a strategic management standpoint, why would you go to plant a church if you've never seen a healthy church or been a part of a healthy church or had any experience whatsoever in church planting?

It's difficult enough to go to a resistant part of the world to plant churches. It's all the more difficult without having some kind of experience like that. If your church is starting a new campus or planting a daughter church, consider helping as part of the startup team for that new church. You'll learn lots about the dynamic of starting a church from scratch. You'll want to be alert to learn how to keep unity in the team. What are the qualifications for a church leader in a new church? Even if your church is not directly involved in church planting, you can find a nearby like-minded church plant in which you can observe or intern or assist. Get a reference from your church leaders for a church plant related to your church fellowship or association. Check out your local Gospel Coalition Regional Fellowship. Seek contacts through your church leaders or other church leaders. At the very least, get involved in and ideally lead a disciple-making small group or missional community in your own church.

Pre-field, cross-cultural church planting experience can be an invaluable asset to field effectiveness. That experience will clarify and temper your expectations for ministry. One of the most common factors in missionaries leaving the field is unrealistic expectations, so even a little experience here in your home place can inject realism into your expectations there on your mission field. Field workers need to understand their target culture and the delicate interpersonal challenges of discipling new believers and developing biblically qualified church leaders. Ideally, you're looking for a church planting experience in a linguistic and cultural setting, similar to your future place of service. Most major cities in the US allow easy access to immigrants from many unreached people groups. US census demographic data can help you identify your nearest opportunity, so ask around to discover any ethnic churches in your area that might have connections or some relationship to your target group or nearby to your target group over there on that target mission field.

Ask a nearby university international student ministry about students that may originate from your target country. You may need to develop courage and initiative to visit an international market and find people from near your target unreached people group. It's kind of like a discovery field trip. If you do, strive to learn all you can by asking questions. Be persistent without becoming threatening. Whatever relationships, language and cultural connections you can make here will give you a running start when you land on the field there. Finally, some of your best mentors can come in the form of books. Many current resources on church planting and cross-cultural church planting methodologies are available in seminary or bible school libraries, Christian bookstores and online. The best ones are rooted in simple biblical basics.

The framework for a missiologically sound cross-cultural church planting process compels the missionary to do these four things. One, learn the language and culture of the recipients or target group as the first priority. And a footnote to this one is, learning the language is as much your ministry as doing the ministry that you think is ministry, so evangelism and discipleship awaits you learning the language and culture well. Number two, model the development of a plurality of local leaders from the earliest stages of spiritual growth. Number three, focus on the Bible as the source of authoritative guidance for the new believers and the newly forming church. It's not a system, it's not a template. It's not a western-contrived church planting methodology. And number four, use only locally acceptable and reproducible methods and means of ministry. Ideally, you want them to be able to do the ministry without using things that are foreign to them or maybe too technologically advanced for them. The church planting process universally involves a continuous cycle of evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, then the formation of smaller gatherings for teaching and worship, then aggregating some of those small groups together in a larger group.

Ultimately, you want to find recognition of biblically qualified local leaders and teachers and recognition of the body itself as a church. Like, recognizing we are a church, we constitute a church. Finally, extending that cycle to plant other churches. Once the cycle begins, each earlier stage continues on as the new steps begin. Evangelism never stops. Discipleship never stops. Leadership development never stops. A natural question that a lot of candidates ask, and you may be thinking this, "What if I'm not going to plant churches? What if that's not my personal role or my personal goal?" An increasing number of missionaries and agencies ministries primarily address issues of social justice and relief and development. These ministries may include evangelism, but they lack a focus of intentional church planting. While caring for orphans or digging wells for clean water or stopping sex trafficking are good, we would argue that the core mandate of the great commission is disciple making.

Where authentic disciples emerge, churches start. If you think your goal is not disciple making, that ultimately leads to the founding of healthy churches, I'd encourage you to study the Bible carefully. Examine Jesus's commands, Paul's missionary strategies, and the early church's legacy of church multiplication. You can engage in social justice and relief for development ministries that are either ends to themselves or that are intentionally aimed at a team's larger church planting goals. We would encourage the latter. To see a rationale for this, you can find many places online to Google why church planting is the priority in missions. Listen to earlier Missions on Point podcasts that explain that biblically. Gaining training and insight from your exposure to personal church planting involvement and learning vicariously from experienced missionaries are absolutely invaluable.

Ask lots of questions. Be prepared to have your assumptions challenged. Church planting is not an exact science. When church planting among the least reached peoples of the world, you are treading in territory that the enemy will not release without a fight. The challenges of cross-cultural church planting perceived correctly will drive you to a desperate dependence upon a sovereign God to move and build His church. I would encourage you to dig out some basic resource materials on church planting. One of the easiest accessible ones is an article by Mark Collins called Your Bad Ecclesiology is Hurting Us. DeYoung and Gilbert have a great basic book called What is the Mission of the Church? If you want to go deeper in academically, David Hesselgrave has Planting Churches Cross-Culturally. And a more recent contribution is J.D. Payne's Discovering Church Planting.

This step, getting cross-cultural exposure and church planting exposure, is one of the biggest study steps of your progress to the field. It's going to take some discipline and some God-given opportunities as you go knocking on the doors to discover how to learn these things before you get very much farther on your pathway. By God's grace, He will use it and you'll appreciate the effort you put into it later when you get on the field.

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.