Recovering the heart of church planting

I spend a lot of time thinking about church planting, and I’ve come to the conclusion that church planting has been misunderstood in the West. Often when church-going Christians think of church planting, they think about young people reaching out to their generation and creating a new model of church that will resonate with the current cultural trends. In many ways, that is what church planting has a tendency to be. When I started in ministry in the early 1990s church planters were trying to address an overly traditional feel of church, and so they met in schools and dropped the Sunday and Wednesday evening services, starting home groups in their place. If you go to a church planting conference today and meet the young church planters you will find hip people in skinny jeans, using social media and creative arts to connect with people. 

What happens in this context is that church planting seems to be a young man’s game. Even more, a church planter must therefore be a younger man who has his finger on the pulse of the moment. Thus, from all external appearances, church planting is not for all churches, just those with the capacity to connect in this manner.

I do not bemoan the fact that every generation will connect with their generation through its own forms of communication. That is not wrong. But I believe that what church planting has become in the West is different to what church planting really is in its root form. Church planting is not just the process of the cultural adaptation of the church. Rather, church planting should be, and I believe is, the natural result of discipleship. In fact, if the church would truly recover the heart of discipleship then I believe that church planting would be occurring at an exponential rate in all churches.

The Great Commission, as stated in Matthew 28:18-20 is not a call to evangelism. The Great Commission is a call to make disciples in all the nations of the world. The way we know if we are accomplishing this commission is not by how many conversions we have, but by how many people are actually observing everything that Jesus commanded. When the Great Commission is understood as merely evangelism, then the standard is conversion—marked by ‘decisions’. When the Great Commission is marked by discipleship then the standard is obedience towards Jesus.

What do we need to obey all that Jesus commanded? What is the best context for this level of discipleship? The answer to these questions resides in the local church. In order to be a fully formed disciple you need to be using your gifts to serve others; you need to be under the preaching of the Word of God; you need to be in a place where your marriage is brought under the Lordship of Jesus; you need others to speak into your life with “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”; in short, you need the church.

If every believer understood that they are to go to the lost and not try to just convert them but actually engage them to be followers of Jesus, we would need more and more churches to keep up with demand. We would need places to love one another. We would need places for gifts to be used, and places for people to be united for worship. In short, we would need more and more churches.

The shift I believe we must make in the church is not to make the focus of church planting the founding of an institution that reflects current trends. If this is our goal all we will be doing is pulling people from existing churches who want something more relevant. Instead, the goal must be to view church planting as the means of seeing fully mature disciples formed, who are marked by wholesale obedience to Jesus Christ. 

Practically, if you have a heart to see churches planted, then take the Great Commission seriously. Go to your neighbourhood and start making disciples. As you present the gospel with the goal of obedience to Jesus, you will need more churches.