The Doctrine Of "Being Sent Out" Part 4

The Kingdom Expands In Several Ways

How does the kingdom expand if it is not only through the sending out from the local church? Chester and Timmis say,

“…church is at the heart of the New Testament view of mission and mission is at the heart of the New Testament view of church.”

And they go on,

“…church planting takes place apart from an existing local congregation and those in which one congregation gives birth to another. This categorization broadly equates to the two models found in the New Testament.”

I want to highlight a couple points from the Scriptures and these are vague at best and on purpose:

• The kingdom grows through laborers sent out by God, not man [although God can and does sometimes use man to “confirm” a man being sent. "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest" [Matthew 9:37-38]. Church starts, or is planted, when God saves. We can go out to sow seed and be apart of an existing church, but God has to save new souls. So we can send a group of highly trained individuals as a team to a new area who are of elder quality, but unless God saves, all you have is a group of highly trained individuals as a team sent to a new area who are of elder quality. In fact, nowhere in the NT is a group of trained elders sent to an area to plant a church, but that is the language we use today in the church to describe sending people out to church plant. A grave misnomer indeed. It’s not wrong to go this route, but it surely is not the only way or the best way.

• A plurality of elders, a local church, or single apostles/leaders have been known to send people out on mission in addition to God sending them out of his own accord. All the above NT scriptures contain examples of being sent out.

• People may leave the local church of their own accord as we see in the example of persecution in Jerusalem but should take into consideration their community’s well-being and desires as well. This would not be the route I recommend, but there is surely nothing sinful across the board with this method.

• It is possible to have a church with no elders for a season as in the case of the churches surrounding Crete. Also, in Acts 14, after the two apostles, Paul and Barnabas, preached the Gospel in Derbe, they returned to several cities appointing elders in all the existing churches. Time had elapsed in these churches and there were no elders. Surely this is not the ideal because a church needs to be governed by a plurality of elders. They have gifts that should be used for the edification of the church. Why did Paul not appoint elders immediately as people were harvested? Because he understood church can function without all its ducks in a row for a time. He trusted the Grower. Roland Allen's and Neil Cole's words come to mind here.

• When people are sent out, they normally do not pick where they want to go for the sake of the Gospel. They are told where to go, usually from an apostle or God himself. The very people who stick firmly to particular models of being sent out are usually the same ones who are seeking to go where they want to serve the Lord.

We definitely need to begin defining church biblically. There are a lot of small groups, bible studies, missional communities, home groups, parachurches, college ministries, etc. that function just like a biblical church, but we refuse to call it that for many bad reasons. Then there are "large churches" that are not even close to functioning as a biblical church, but we still call it church. We've muddied the waters and most don't even know what biblical church is.

The main point here is we cannot be dogmatic about a particular model of sending people out. There is nothing prescriptive. In fact, all the above Scriptures were never to be taken as the "only" model and if one supposes they were, they fail to realize that most of them directly contradict the other. For example, Paul's command to Titus to appoint elders at several different churches by himself [and he probably did not know all those churches relationally] is a far different cry from Paul's reference to Timothy being raised up from a plurality of elders in Ephesus from one local church. Also, the new converts in Samaria were ministered too by two apostles sent out of Jerusalem for an unknown period of time and the new converts in Antioch were ministered to by one apostle sent out of Jerusalem for a period of time until he left to find Paul in another city to help him out; no plurality of leadership in the latter. Moreover, in Acts 14:23 apostles appointed elders in multiple churches, in Ephesus the elders of the local church appointed Timothy as another elder [1 Timothy 4:14]; two quite different ways to raise elders up. In Acts 13 God himself spoke to the church to send out two of their own while in other cases church leaders sent two of their own out [see chapter fifteen with Judas and Silas; the point is in one scenario God sent two out, Paul and Barnabas; in another, the local church sent out two, Judas and Silas.] In Antioch and Samaria, the church started apart from any official elders being sent out to start it from another local congregation and this directly contradicts the way most churches are started today. Who’s right and wrong? In a lot of cases, probably no one, but everyone freaks out [i.e. judges and condemns his brother] when it is not done their way.

On the subject of what constitutes a church and what does not, Grudem has a great chapter in Systematic Theology, The Purity and Unity of the Church, where he deals with true churches and false churches. He draws one line and on one side is the true and the other the false. All churches fall on this line somewhere as more pure or less pure. But it is still a church. The churches in Crete had some undone work that Titus needed to place in order and elders needed to be appointed so they might have fallen on the line on the less pure side, but a church nonetheless. In order to become more and more pure, we need to start getting our "ducks in a row." This takes time.

Perhaps, this feels like a lot of words that are not saying much. I feel the same way. I have spent hours and hours of study seeking a biblical prescription/model to follow on what it means to be sent out from a local church. It's speculative at best, dangerous to be dogmatic at worst. All the "models" we have "contradict" one another and go figure, that's why we have so much sharp disagreement today over which church government model is "right." But God left things this way because he would not be put into a box. Many ways of sending, planting, and governing exist within the Body. What is clear is what needs to be clear, what the church is [a body of believers], how it is formed [God grows and gives faith] and what it's supposed to be doing [bringing in the harvest of who God's calling into the kingdom].