Jesus-followers who function in this paradigm can spend 100 percent of their tithes and offerings on whatever Jesus is doing through them and their families. That might involve getting training (like the seminar we went to), helping friends with their bills, feeding, clothing and visiting people in need, buying Bibles for friends who don’t have one, buying meals or food to share with other friends with whom they gather to be the church of Jesus, and even taking missionary excursions to places far and near to share the good news about Jesus.
If there is a need among this group, they can simply decide how to help one another. If the group really grows and disciples multiply, they can—if they wish—rent a spot to have a large gathering every once in a while for teaching and worship, or whatever. But if they never do this, their movement will not suffer either the threat or the reality of catastrophic failure or death because it is only dependent on their willingness to continue to live in relationship with each other, with Jesus and with the lost people they’re sharing with.
No one in the group is dependent for their livelihood on the rest of the group, and the group is not bound to purchase or maintain real estate or properties. They are not required to file papers with the government, nor are they required to pay an organization an annual fee to license their leader(s) to officially perpetuate the Jesus-movement (e.g., ministerial ordination). That’s it. Their ministry rhythm fits with the rhythm of their everyday lives and relationships.
There is no going to church, there is primarily being the church. Churches are “planted” organically and naturally when there are two or three Christians who agree to follow Jesus together and continue to disciple others as a group. If a disciple decides to venture out and begin the process elsewhere, the movement continues and grows, and new churches (of two, three or more Jesus-followers) can keep growing, and the mission of God continues.
This paradigm is 100 percent sustainable and reproducible by any Jesus-follower regardless of their income, their age, their gender or their social status. It takes absolutely no organizational infrastructure to begin it or to maintain it. It only takes commitment and consistent intentionality, making the mission of Jesus to reach people a life-priority.
Back to the quiz …
At the beginning of this post, I proposed a quiz to identify the verse or verses that charge Christians to plant churches. In my reading of the New Testament, there is no such imperative because the church of Jesus is built by Jesus through the relational and organic work of discipling people. Any time two or three disciples gather together around the Lordship of Jesus Christ to worship, serve and grow in their knowledge of and obedience to him, and to join him in his mission, there is the church.
It rises out of discipleship rather than out of organizational strategy or the vision of a “church planter.” People who live in the second example don’t think of themselves as church planters. They think of themselves as disciple-making Jesus-followers, and if they’re doing that, then church emerges out of what they do naturally and organically. It is also absolutely free (though it will cost a person their whole life) to think of church in this way.
That doesn’t mean that there is no financial cost, but the movement will not die if no one tithes to the organization planting the church. This group of disciples can tithe too. But they individually or collectively use their resources to carry out their missionary and discipling priorities.
By the numbers …
When we planted our church under paradigm #1, we raised over $200,000.00 the first year, and we spent most of that money on the things I described in section one above. If it costs two hundred thousand dollars to plant a church, and if it must be done by a gifted leader with a special calling and a core group consisting of department and ministry functionaries who can do all of the ministries in the church’s program, and if that leader group will need to collect the money to buy all the stuff needed to facilitate “church” the way it’s described there, then I propose that the Christian movement cannot grow and cannot expand fast enough to reach the whole world for Jesus Christ.
The town we live in now has 60,000 people in it, and the average church has less than 100 people. There are a couple of medium, large and very large churches, but the total number of people in these churches totals around 15,000 people. Fifteen thousand people “go to church” (one of 70) in a town of 60,000. If my supervisor was right, and our church was way beyond the norm in the first year, then imagine replicating what we did enough times to reach all of the other 45,000 people in our city.
At the end of the first year, our church was around 200 people and had about 225k in income. Divided by 45,000 people, our town would need 225 more churches of 200 people (like our “way beyond the norm” church), and if they all did ministry the exact same way we did the first year, they’d all need about 200k to do ministry the first year (and more every year after that). So, we’d need 225 churches and 40 million dollars to reach every person in our town. Yep. That’s right. 40 million dollars.
But we would also need enough buildings to accommodate the 225 churches of 200. Some of them would want to buy land and build their own buildings. That would add millions of dollars to the equation. Anyway, you get it. We can do the numbers all day. It’s incredibly expensive!
By the way, all of this assumes lots of evangelism, which is not the primary way our church grew the first year. We grew by affinity and transfer. That means people already knew us and joined us, and others came from other churches. In the 225 new churches, 100 percent of the members would need to come from evangelism.
In the second paradigm, every single Jesus-follower can start a church for free. He/she needs to lead at least one or two other people to Jesus, then meet with them regularly around the Lordship of Jesus in order to disciple them and walk with them. If each of the 15,000 already-Christians (?) in our town thought to themselves, “Hey, I’m a missionary,” then each of them would only need to lead three other people to Jesus in one year in order see the entire city we live in come to Jesus. Yep. 15,000 x 3 = 45,000. On the other hand (using the 225 new churches idea), if there were 225 Christians in our town who thought of themselves as missionaries, then the math would look like this.
225+225 = 450
x2 = 900
x2 = 1800
x2 = 3600
x2 = 7200
x2 = 14,400
x2 = 28,800
x2 = 57,600
In less than eight multiplication cycles, the entire city I live in would be reached for Jesus Christ with just 225 people who said, “I am a missionary to my city, my friends, my family and my neighborhood.” This would have to be done relationally, but there would be no need for any specially gifted leaders with the vision to plant churches, nor would there be any need for millions and millions of dollars for equipment, buildings, offices, land, payroll and benefits, or anything like that.
Every penny that anyone spent could go 100 percent to their own sense of mission. The only catch here is that each person would need to be faithful to Jesus personally instead of turning over the task of mission to the men and women with the official licenses and the “vision.” The Jesus-movement would either live or die based on the faithfulness of each Christian to keep the mission going.
Some Conclusions
About a month ago, I had lunch in Fresno with a friend who is getting ready to plant a church under paradigm #1. He is not ignorant at all about the two paradigms I shared here. He can articulate both fluidly. He said, “Kenny, I feel called by God to live in the first paradigm and to do it that way.”
I said, “Then do what God calls you to do!” So this is not an indictment of or a rant against the first paradigm, though it is a critique (which has to be a self-critique at the end of the day, because it’s how we “planted” and functioned). Whether we choose paradigm #1 or #2, every Christian is called to be on mission with Jesus and his Church.
The first paradigm begins with an organization and a key leader who plant a church (of already-Christians), which they hope will make disciples. The leader dreams, organizes, leads and raises the funds needed to make it all work. Again, there are 70 of these in our town, and 15,000 people are connected to them. Hundreds (if not thousands) of people among the 15,000 have been part of the other 70 churches at one time or another.
The second paradigm begins with one disciple who decides to lead another person to Jesus. If they do it, they instantly become a leader, and if they meet together regularly with that disciple, around Jesus as Lord, and if they both follow him together and keep repeating this over and over, they are organically and automatically a church. If they keep doing this, the movement grows and grows.
1+1+Jesus = Church. If this addition (which becomes multiplication in just one generation) continues, it’s not long at all before there are thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions and millions of Jesus-followers. There was a time in the Jesus-movement when this was how the message of Jesus took over the world without a building, a website, a program, a slogan or logo, a fog machine, or anything else that has become the stock-in-trade of contemporary church planting.
Whatever paradigm we embrace (there may be others or hybrids of these two), we need to be on mission with Jesus and his Church.
All authority in heaven and earth has been handed over to Jesus.
So, get going—to every kind of person, discipling them by baptizing them into the name of the father, the son,and the Holy Spirit.
Teaching them all the things that Jesus taught—and calling them to obey Jesus.
He’s with you to the end of the project. (My translation of Mat. 28:18-20).