No other successful churches were planted out of our church, and at our largest, we had about 300 members. When I left, we had about 150 people in regular worship attendance, though our giving was pretty consistent and we never functioned in a financial deficit during my entire tenure in the church. By the basic measure of success in this paradigm, we were moderately successful. The church was larger than the national average, was financially solvent and was redirecting funds back to the parent organization.
Church Planting Model #2:
In February of 2014, nearly four months after we completed our pastoral assignment in the church we planted in 2001, my wife and I heard about another church planting workshop being held in Arizona. We read the description of it online, and it intrigued us. We had read a book by the author who developed the material, and we really liked it—so we decided to take a road trip and spend two days learning more about it.
We paid for our own gas, hotels, meals, registration and materials and jumped in. This was our first 180. In the first scenario, we were sponsored by an overseeing organization. In the second scenario, we sponsored ourselves. When we walked into the first session on Friday night, the seminar facilitator began by saying …
“We are not going to give you a methodology or any ministry techniques in this seminar. The Bible does that already, and it’s the same for every Christian and every church. We simply want to give you the mindset behind this mission, and then you can work out how that will shake out in your own context.
This was our second 180. The first group told us, “No mindset, only method.” The second group told us, “No method, only mindset.”
When we left that event we had …
1. A fresh commitment to center our lives on learning the ways of Jesus and following him as King.
2. A re-ignited passion for one-on-one relational discipleship.
3. More ideas than we could count about what we could do with our money now that it would be 100 percent focused on mission and discipleship.
4. A renewed passion for sharing our faith with friends and family who would never “go to church.”
5. A strong commitment to live in the world as missionaries whether we were working for a church or not.
6. A simple return to the value of making disciples, leaving the building of his church to Jesus himself!
In short, we spent the entire weekend focused on the mission of Jesus to bring the nations under his Kingly reign through teaching them his ways and calling them to live for him (largely by living for him in front of people). We were not assigned any overseer or coach, but were told that all of the DNA—the SEED of the Kingdom of God—was resident within us, and within every other Christian, and we were sent back home with prayer and encouragement to start making disciples as the Great Commission directed all believers to do. In this phase, we have only one goal. Make disciples. Period. That’s it.
Here is the basic flow and diagram of the “church planting” process in the paradigm we learned at this seminar:
1. A christian helps another person to become a follower of Jesus, and …
2. If he/she does this effectively, a “leader” emerges and helps the other Christian grow in faith.
3. Jesus will meet with those two or three (or more) as his own church whenever they gather together in his name, under his Lordship.
4. If they continue to do this, and this process multiplies over and over, the Christian movement will continue to grow on the Earth until every person is reached.
