What you need to know to plant a church

Sometimes my head spins at how complex we have made church planting. I am overwhelmed with all the books, studies, graphs, surveys, conferences, blogs, methodologies, strategies, experts, and current discussions taking place. The implication seems to be if you don't have a PhD and 4 years apprenticeship with a CP guru in Asia, you simply won't make it to first base in planting a church.

If, like me, you are intimidated by all the jargon and sensational stories about what others experience in more exotic, far away places than the neighborhood where you live, then this post is for you!

A while back Bill Lollar shared what I consider to be pretty much everything you need to know to get started as a church planter--call it Church Planting 101. Of course, there is a bit more to it that than just these six principles, but everything else are just "details." For now, Bill's six basic principles for church planting work for me about as well as all the information in the pile of books and manuals gathering dust in my study.

1. Recognize that every Christian is “called” to communicate the Gospel message wherever they currently live and work. That’s the “Great Commission,” so why look for a lesser one? You don’t need anyone else’s permission, since God trumps everyone, and you certainly don’t need an assessment to share the Gospel.


2. Continue in your present occupation (1 Corinthians 7:17-23), so you can meet your obligations, particularly the one that requires YOU to take care of your family (1 Timothy 5:8) and share with those in need (Romans 12:13; Ephesians 4:28). Ministry is not a career path for those seeking a comfortable salary, benefits, and a retirement plan!


3. Act on principle number one and begin sharing the Gospel with your neighbors, friends, co-workers, and family members. There is usually no need to go anywhere else, because your world is already full of people who don’t know Jesus! Yes, it’s okay to relocate, as long as you remember principle number two OR a group of believers voluntarily agrees to support you as a missionary in another culture where it is unlikely that you would be allowed to take jobs away from the indigenous people group to whom you are being sent.


4. Since God has promised to provide a harvest for those who labor like this in His vineyard, begin to disciple/teach those who express an interest in spiritual things, expecting the power of the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit to bring them to repentance and faith.


5. Meet together with these new believers on a regular basis (Hebrews 10:24-25), thinking of creative ways in which you can stimulate one another to love and minister to others, as well as encouraging each other in the Christian journey.


6. Teach every new believer how to follow the above principles!

Now, go out there and do the above...and happy church planting!

How 29 believers became 110 believers starting 5 new house churches--and all in less than a year

How did they do it?

Short version for skimmers:

--4 months of concentrated prayer
--4 months of abundant Gospel sowing (intentional evangelism)

Details for those who have a couple of minutes:

A few days ago, Geovanny and I were talking "shop" about various aspects of the Lord's work going on here in Guayaquil. In the middle of the conversation, he said, "have I told you yet that we are no longer a single church meeting at "11 and Huancavilca", but are now a network of six house churches?"

Seeing my obvious interest, he proceeded to share what had taken place over the past few months...

"In April 2008 there were 29 of us meeting together in our church. We decided to ask God for 70 new believers by year's end. From April to August we did nothing but pray. Some weeks we would fast and pray, other times we stayed up all night praying...but prayer was our focus, praying the Lord of the Harvest for laborers and praying for the "70". We prayed individually and collectively for four months.

Sometime around mid-August we started praying less, but began implementing an evangelistic emphasis every month. At first we thought a single monthly effort would not be enough. But because of the spiritual preparation make by the previous months of concentrated prayer, we were amazed at the response these evangelistic efforts were bearing in spiritual fruit.

By year's end (2008) we had surpassed our prayed for goal of 70, and were busy discipling 110 new believers --the fruit given to us by the Lord from these monthly evangelistic efforts. In Feb-Mar of this year, these new disciples began meeting in five homes closer to where they lived. Nelson is now leading the "Villa España" church, José the "Sucre y 14" group, Marcos and Tania the "Balerio" church, Juán the "Febres Cordero y 14" group, and William the "35 y El Oro" house church.

For 2009-2010 we plan to continue our PRAYER-EVANGELISM strategy and are now asking the Lord for 300 new disciples and 20 new churches by the end of next year..."

Observations. 110 new believers from an initial 29 is a phenomenal 380% growth rate. How many churches do you know with this kind of growth in less than a year? How many churches have you heard about recently that planted five other churches in less than a year?

As much as I quizzed Geovanny, the only "strategy" was prayer and proclamation of the Gospel. So much for all the fancy stuff we think we have to do to reach the lost! No surveys taken, no $150 conferences (plus $800 airfare/hotel) to learn "how to", no $$$ spent on media campaigns, no stadiums rented out, no free concerts or hot dogs...just prayer and proclamation. Sometimes I think we ought to take a year's fast from all our books, conferences, blogs, internet, and do nothing more than get serious about prayer, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us in what Jesus would have us do to reach our lost family, friends, neighbors and co-workers with the Good News of Christ.

What are your own observations? What can we learn from the above? Is there anything in Geovanny's testimony that speaks to your heart about prayer, evangelism or church planting?

Missions is...

Our training center for church planters is known as CAPCO (Centro de Apoyo para la Cosecha). On the wall is a large poster with these words:

LAS MISIONES SON:
MANOS que dan
RODILLAS que oran
PIES que van

MISSIONS IS:
HANDS that give
KNEES that pray
FEET that go

Which part are you? Hands that give? Knees that pray? Or, feet that go? In other words, how are you actively engaged in the task Christ gave to the church to make disciples of the nations?

In the following interview Ed Stetzer and Jerry Rankin get to the heart of Satan's most effective strategy for keeping missions out of the mainstream of most churches: spiritual warfare. More than any other strategy, the enemy keeps us distracted from being actively engaged in missions. Watch and see if you don't agree.

Guayas for Christ

Guayas, with 3.3 million people, is the largest province in Ecuador. The province is divided into 25 cantones (counties). By far the largest counties are Guayaquil and Durán with 67% of the total provincial population.

Most of the attention over the past 50 years has centered on outreach to the two largest counties of Guayaquil and Durán, accounting for most of the evangelical presence in the province.

In the remaining 23 counties (population 1.09 million) there is an unknown, but considerably lower percentage of evangelical Christians and churches.

The “Guayas Cantones for Christ” project seeks to focus prayer, investigation, training, evangelism, discipleship, and church planting on the remaining unreached/under-reached counties of Guayas province.

The project entails at least two churches partnering together to establish reproducing churches in each of the remaining 23 cantones. One of the two churches will be a local national church. The other will be a Stateside/international partner church or missions outreach team.

Together, the national church and their international partners, will adopt and engage one of the under-reached counties. They will collaborate and work together to come up with a viable strategy for reaching their adopted county for Christ. More than likely this would be a 2-3 year commitment by both partnering churches.

The definition of “reached” is planting a minimum of three networking churches in the canton. Most likely these will be “simple churches” or “house churches.”

Simple/house churches are N.T. churches without all the extras that typify modern churches today (buildings and property, paid staff, etc.) The following documents help describe what we are talking about.

What do we mean by ‘simple church?’
What kind of churches are we planting overseas?
Simple churches need simple plans
Church planting lessons learned along the way
Simple church interviews

Interested? Any churches or missions teams reading this post that would prayerfully consider partnering with us in this project, please contact us through the email address found in our profile (top right-hand side bar.)

Reaching Guayas with the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a bigger task than we can possibly handle by ourselves. WE NEED HELP from those willing to come and take responsibility for reaching an entire county for Christ. Is this something God might be touching you to come do?

Things I wonder about

If there really is only One Body of Christ, why do we persist in separating ourselves from one another and clinging to our denominational distinctives?

Why don't we ever hear any sermons on 1 Corinthians 12:28ff "And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues..."?

Related to the above question, why aren't our churches structured according to Paul's order, rather than the way we are structured today with Senior Pastors leading the list? Are pastors even mentioned in the 1 Cor. 12:28 list?

Who are the Ephesian 4:11 apostles, prophets, and evangelists amongst us? Can you name any apostles, prophets, evangelists in your church today? What happened to these folks? Have their roles been absorbed by the pastor-teachers in our midst? If so, is this what the Holy Spirit intended?

Were Paul's epistles written to individual local house churches in Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, etc. or were they written to ALL of the Church in each of these cities (house churches-plural?)

Why doesn't Paul ever address his letters to the pastor or leadership of the churches like we do today when contacting churches?

Where in the Bible do we get the idea that listening to a prepared sermon is an essential part of believers gatherings?

Why do we delay baptizing new believers when every instance recorded in the Book of Acts indicates immediate baptism upon profession of faith?

How small can a church be and still be a church? Does the Bible say anything about how big is too big for a church to be?

What is a church? When does a group become a church? What is the Scriptural support for your answer?

Where in the Bible does it refer to believers as members of a local church?

Can believers be part of more than one local church at the same time? (eg. a member at FBC-Dallas, Faith Bible Church, and Misión Evangélica Sión all at the same time) Why or why not?

Does a seminary education help or hinder those seeking to multiply new church starts?

What happened to celebrating the Lord's Supper as a meal? When did we begin substituting the Lord's SUPPER (meal) for a tiny cracker and sip of grape juice?

Where do we get the idea of paid/salaried pastors and church staff when 1 Corinthians 9 is clearly referring to itinerant apostolic workers?

Along these same lines where do we get the idea that "double honor" in 1 Timothy 5:17 for elders refers to a monthly salary and benefits package?

Why do we program our gatherings into hour-long meetings rather than allowing the Head of the Church (Jesus) to lead and move among us as He desires?

Just wondering...

Sobering video on world demographics

The following video has captivated my thoughts now for several days. With than more than 4.7 million YouTube views a lot of people like myself are beginning to understand just how powerful immigration can be to a culture after only a few years. What do you think are the implications of this immigration for global missions?

When can we be a church?

When Mónica called saying she and her husband needed an urgent meeting, my heart sank. Usually when someone calls for a private meeting, there is some problem that has arisen and we are the ones they come to for help. Both are new believers who have grown tremendously in the Lord. I dreaded hearing whatever it was that had happened.

Geovanny (our team leader) and I met with Mónica and Medardo. Both of us were expecting the worse. After the initial small talk, they got down to why they had called the meeting.

Mónica voiced their concern, "When can we be a church?"

As hard as it was for me to think this was the real issue at hand, and not something else, I went along and began a series of questions...

"How many believers gather together with you?"

Medardo answered, "Usually between 10 and 15, but only seven have been baptized so far this year (2009). The rest are waiting until we can coordinate a time when we can all get down to the river."

"How often do you gather together. Once, twice a week?"

"We meet every evening Tuesday-Sunday from about 7:00pm till people get tired and go home," answered Mónica. "They are just so excited and eager to learn and share. We tried suggesting getting together only 3-4 times a week, but that didn't go over very well with the group."

"You're telling me that six evenings a week you meet there in your home?"

"Oh no, we rotate between three different houses. Ours and in the homes of two other families who recently gave their hearts to the Lord and are being discipled."

Out of curiosity, I couldn't help but ask, "if you are meeting Tuesday to Sunday, why don't you go ahead and meet on Monday evenings as well?"

"Oh no, brother Guido, that's the day we have our team meeting. We told everyone they were welcome to meet on Mondays, but that we wouldn't be there."

"Oh."

I continued, "How many of those days are spent praying?"

"Tuesday evenings are dedicated entirely to prayer. We pray for all our lost family members, we pray for our country, we pray for each others problems, we pray..."

They went on to tell me all the things they are praying for and fully expecting God to answer.

I then asked the first question that caused them to lower their heads and break eye contact, "have you been able yet to start any other new groups?"

Mónica seemed embarrassed, but answered, "only two. What with my husband's working, and my own family responsibilities, we just haven't had any more time."

"Where are these groups meeting?" I asked.

"On Wednesday afternoons we go to Sergio Toral where we are discipling some new believers, and Sunday afternoons we have a group meeting in Bastion. We know that's not a lot, but we are praying the Lord for a third new group."

"What has been the greatest joy for you?"

"Seeing lives transformed, and people hungry to learn more about God."

"What has been the hardest part for you?" (thinking surely it must be the nightly gatherings and the impact upon their family life)

"The hardest part is our feeling of inadequacy in that all the new believers are coming to us with their questions and problems and we don't know what to do except pray for them. Their lives are so messed up. They look to us for answers since we are the ones who know the most about the Bible. We wish we knew God's Word better than we do so that we could help them more."

At that point we stopped and Geovanny and I talked with them for several minutes about allowing the Holy Spirit to be the One to guide them and that loving their new brothers and sisters in Christ by just being there with them was something the Lord would use for his glory.

After a few minutes, Mónica interrupted and asked again, "so when can we be a church?"

"Medardo and Mónica", we said, "YOU ARE ALREADY A CHURCH! AND HAVE BEEN ONE NOW FOR QUITE SOME TIME!"

At that, they smiled and we talked about putting together a celebration where several of the other house churches would be invited for a time of praise and thanksgiving. They liked that idea, and Mónica began talking about what food might be good to prepare for this special occasion.

As I drove home after the meeting, I couldn't help but reflect on the DNA that had been injected into them from the beginning by another team member, Marlene, who led them to the Lord a little over a year ago. Marlene modeled and lived the message she preached to them, sacrificing herself for them as she discipled them faithfully for nearly a year. She taught and modeled for them the very life in Christ they were now modeling for those they were leading!

No one has ever told them Christians only gather on Sunday mornings for church.

No one ever told them churches less than a year old cannot start 2-3 new churches themselves.

No one ever told them they needed more than the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in order to lead three different house churches--all of which came to the Lord through their personal witness.

No one told them that to be church you have to have all this "stuff."

They are just doing it, trusting the Lord as they go along. And the Lord is blessing!

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Geovanny, who accompanied me during the above meeting with Medardo and Mónica, shares his own similar experience with How 29 believers became 110 believers starting 5 new house churches--and all in less than a year!

Scenes from our time in the USA