A helpful question to ask ourselves is when exactly is a church planted. Most of us know some things we can begin to set in order [like Titus] after a church has sprung up, but I am afraid a lot of people do not understand what a church is or how it is formed. Jesus is helpful in this regard because he talks much about the kingdom of God. We'll get to that in a moment though. Some helpful questions to ask ourselves as we dive into what a church is are the following: "Are Apostles the only ones who plant churches? Do pastors plant churches? What about evangelists like Philip and their roles they play? Are they sent by God or man or both? Can a man even plant a church or is it God who plants all churches? Is it a team of people that must plant or a single man? What are the requirements, if any, that constitute a church being a church? Can a missionary plant a church? Can his family plant? Can a church be planted from people who are not sent out from another existing body? Can someone move to the "mission field" apart from the sending of a local church? Can we go out seeking to be sent out or should we just be sent out from where we presently are? Do we pick where we get to be sent out or does the church leadership choose? What does the Bible say about these topics? Once again, the ultimate question is what is a church and how is it formed? For this answer we shall turn to our Lord as he spoke of the kingdom of God.
I want to side step real quick here and share a personal testimony about my early days as a Christian and my experience with church. A group of around a dozen or more became friends after God saved us and sovereignly brought us together. We began living life together. We were always together. We ate together, prayed together, sang, studied, counseled, ministered together, lived on mission before the world together, met in homes, had a mid forties married couple overseeing us and much more. This was by far the closest experience I've had in regards to church. It began/sprang up organically when God stepped up and saved a dozen or so souls and thrust us right back into the harvest. Now we all had different “churches” we attended on Sundays, but that was more of a time filler on Sunday mornings than actual church for us. We, as a church, were not perfect, [and in fact, there were several problems] but nothing too great we could not work through. As we get into Jesus' words about his church I have found those few early years the closest thing to the biblical church. In other words, we already had a church that God grew, but because of our lack of understanding of what church is it dissipated and we all attended different services on Sunday mornings in different buildings until the present. I would also say that God started and grew this church because the other churches in the area would never call such a ragtag group of people a church or church planters. Anyways, back to Jesus.
In Matthew 13:1-23 Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God with a parable about a sower, his seed, and the soil he sows in. Jesus says this is the foundational parable, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?" Mark 4:13. The disciples asked, "Why do you relate the kingdom of God to people in parables?" Jesus answered, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given." God wants us to clearly understand how the kingdom of God starts and spreads. Three things we need to plant the kingdom naturally, a good sower, good seed, and good soil. In other words, we need God's child, God's Word, and God to cause the growth in soil, or people's hearts. So the kingdom of God grows very organically. Nothing is said about professionals, methods, or demographics. Paul further explained the kingdom of God when he said, "One sows, another reaps, but God [!] causes the growth. Sounds like God is the planter of the kingdom. God starts the kingdom of God in a heart. This kingdom now rules and reigns in the heart of man, bringing him into subjection under the great King Jesus.
In Mark 4:26-29 Jesus tells another parable about the kingdom of God ruling in the hearts of men. A man sows more seed. The seed grows, but the man has no clue how. It grows without the help of man, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full grain. Should we not marvel that once again God causes the growth and we don't even know how. We go into all the world preaching the Gospel [planting seeds] and God bears fruit. Neil Cole points out two things,
"First, we are all qualified to do the work, and the work is not really so hard. Second, we frequently expend our energy and resources in the wrong phase of ministry life...Innumerable churches in the West spend most of their effort and money on the growing phase of life. Little is spent on breaking up soil, planting seeds, or harvesting crops."This is incredibly insightful. No doubt God wants the kingdom of God to expand and we attempt to professionalize sowing seed or worse yet, professionalize growing. Think of all the training. Think of the years invested. We need laborers in the fields and we keep them in the classroom. If we truly believe God causes the growth, I think we'd start expending our energy and resources in the fields. We feel like there is not a good return on our money because of all the bad soil and "lack of fruit." So we change our methods or our sowers. But God causes the growth. Cole continues,
"I am confident that if churches invested more time, energy, and money in planting seeds, they would not have to work hard at growing, and the harvest would be much more abundant. All of us who are invested in the Kingdom of God long deeply to be a part of a spontaneously growing and multiplying movement where God is at work...How can we ever hope to see a spontaneous church multiplication movement if we don't have any space for spontaneity? There is a risk involved in seeking a spontaneous movement. We must trust God to do His part. We must be willing to place ourselves in a position where, if He does not show up, we will be seen as complete fools. Most have not been willing to take that risk."There is that famous verse that most know, but few believe in practice, when Jesus declared he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. How was Paul able to preach in all the places he did, in the time frame he did, see souls brought into the kingdom from the harvest, see God plant churches, and make disciples of the nations? Spontaneity and trusting the Grower.
By the second and third generation, the church was a wreak [see Revelation 2 and 3.] Paul had been dead less than thirty years. And we act like, though we would never say it, that our methods, assessments, and professionals are going to prevent the great falling away from the faith that occurred in the latter part of the first century. We have “great” church planting methods and methods on how people should be sent out into the harvest and God chuckles in heaven because he knows the truth about the situation, namely that he is the Grower of the kingdom and the Sender into the harvest. We say we know that and our methods prove otherwise because we are all too sure of ourselves and methods. How can such a firm stance be taken on one particular model of sending out all in the hopes of guaranteeing success?
Roland Allen in his great book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul's Or Ours? said,
“We are accustomed by long usage to an elaborate system of church organization, and a peculiar code of morality. We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented. We naturally expect our converts to adopt from us not only essentials but accidentals. We desire to impart not only the Gospel, but the Law and the Customs. With that spirit, St. Paul's methods do not agree, because they were the natural outcome of quite another spirit, the spirit which preferred persuasion to authority. St. Paul distrusted elaborate systems of religious ceremonial, and grasped fundamental principles with an unhesitating faith in the power of the Holy Ghost to apply them to his hearers and to work out their appropriate external expressions in them. It was inevitable that methods which were the natural outcome of the mind of St. Paul should appear as dangerous to us as they appeared to the Jewish Christians of his own day."
I have found second and third generation Christians following in the footsteps of their leaders who created massive structures, systems, leadership development and training centers. As time goes on, we elaborate these systems even more into how to grow Christians and send them out instead of praying to the Lord of the harvest for laborers. We get trained for years to go into the harvest and spend little or no time praying about the laborers or the harvest. The laborers come from the harvest. The one sent out is the one who just got plucked out so in return God may send him back out into the harvest to pluck more. It's funny, God says pray and sow, we say how are we going to train leaders so well so that we can send them out with the slightest chance of falling away or jacking it up as possible. I just heard a testimony of a family who had been trained for years to go overseas until the husband committed adultery and embezzled money. Now they have moved back to the States. Sin will occur. I believe the answer is send more people, but many would promote more training and programs to prevent these types of sin. Our systems cannot save ourselves from ourselves, only God can.
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