(These principles were gleaned from an extensive study of successful and failed church planting movements in multiple countries around the world over several decades. Thank you to church planting expert David Watson for teaching me these principles at the Dallas workshop in June. More of David Watson’s material can be viewed here.)
—
Counter-intuitive things you must do when starting a church planting movement…
Go slow to go fast
Focus on the few (or one) to win many
Share only when and where people are ready to hear
A new/inexperienced insider is more effective than a highly trained, mature outsider
Start with creation not Christ
It’s about discovery, not preaching or teaching
Obedience is more important than knowledge
Let the lost lead the Bible studies
Disciple to conversion, not convert to make disciples
Prepare to spend a long time but anticipate miracle accelerations
The best time for a church to plant a new church is when it is new
Buildings kill church planting
Paid local leaders kill church planting
No personal evangelism so that masses will hear
No mass evangelism so that the masses will hear
Focus on ordinary people not professional or vocational Christians
Expect the hardest places to yield the greatest results
Small for-profit projects often yield much higher long-term access and goodwill than charity or free services
—
Okay, some (all?) of this goes against my traditional church experience. The way some of them are stated as absolutes even rubs me wrong. But this apparently is the difference between planting churches and starting church planting movements. Is the Western world really ready for this view of “church” and this kind of approach to missions? I argue yes, but it’s going to be difficult!
Some of these principles obviously need a bit of explanation precisely because they are counter-intuitive. As I have time, I will unpack the ones that are resonating most deeply with me and our experiences so far in East Hollywood.
But that will have to be in a week or so from now. In the coming days I’ll be sharing photos and descriptions life in East Hollywood.
Categories: the how
Comments Off