Tag: church planting movements

Making the Gospel Viral (via discipleship)

Posted on September 28, 2011

I’m incredibly excited about what is happening in our church right now. We’re really dialing in on discipleship, more than ever, in a variety of ways. As we assessed the health of our church, we evaluated the four “selfs” of a viable church plant.

  • Self-Governing – a church led by a plurality of elders
  • Self-Sustaining – a church financially supported by its own people
  • Self-Reproducing – a church that multiplies disciples, missional communities, and church plants
  • Self-Gospeling – a church that is equipped to apply the gospel to itself and to its own cultural context
Our Steps towards Viral Discipleship
After sharing our progress on each “self” on a Sunday morning, we have focused in on Self-reproducing. In order to avoid becoming a church that has a shelf-life, we need to reproduce on a micro and macro level. We need reproductive gospel DNA. Although our staff and some of our leadership were practicing reproductive discipleship; it was not viral. Therefore, I wrote a paper on “The Missing Ingredient of Reproductive Discipleship” and discussed it with our elders and staff. Then, after refining our thoughts, we then turned our attention to practical steps for cultivating reproductive discipleship. Those steps included:
  1. Casting Vision to our Leaders about Reproductive Disciple-making
  2. A message on The Mission of Making Disciples
  3. Working through a Gospel/Community/Mission Primer in our missional communities.
  4. Our MCs making a missional commitment to disciple-making.
  5. Identifying & training disciples through 12: Making the Gospel Viral
We’re hopeful that this will lead to viral discipleship and missional faithfulness in passing the gospel of Jesus on. Pray for us if you think about it.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Church Planting Movements

Posted on June 11, 2010

Church planters often rightly admire and celebrate the great work of God in church planting movements (CPM) in the Non-Western world. However, all to often they pay attention to CPM statistics (number of conversions, rate of reproducing churches, percentage of people group reached) not CPM missiology. As good Westerners, we gravitate to the quantities in CPMs, decrying the slow resurgence of the gospel in the U.S., instead of learning from the qualitative factors that constitute CPMs.

In short, I’m not sure the comparison between the Majority World and the West is entirely helpful. Although we have MUCH to learn from the Majority Church, the U.S. is not Africa or Asia. Therefore, I propose that a result-based comparison between the Majority Church and the Western Church isn’t helpful for several reasons:

1. Church Planting Movements are not Overnight Phenomenons: Contrary to popular impression, Non-western church planting movements often take decades of silent plowing before they reach a movemental tipping point. Therefore, describing them as “rapid” can be a deceptive and naive comparison.

2. The Western Context is Much Different from the Non-Western Context: The West is diverse in its receptivity to the gospel, ranging from receptive Christianized pockets to resistant post-Christian areas. Gospel receptivity in Africa is much higher; however, not all receptivity results in true conversions. The numbers are inflated. Discipleship is critical.

3. Definitions of Church Vary Considerably: The definitions of what constitutes a “church” in Africa & Asia varies significantly, in number and expression, from what constitutes a traditional church plant in the U.S. A church in the Global South may be 15-20 people, a range that barely constitutes a missional community by U.S. standards.

4. Church Planting Movements are Movements of the Spirit: The regenerating work of the Spirit is a mystery, moving like a wind throughout history, sometimes breezing through nations and other times rushing through people groups. CPMs are not the product of great strategies but of the sovereign work of the Spirit to build Christ’s Church.

5. Three Missing Non-strategic Ingredients for Movements: Ultimately, church planting movements are born out of great persecution, outpouring of the Spirit, and prayer. All three ingredients are largely absent from church planting in the U.S.

Therefore, I suggest we stop banging the drum of non-Western CPM results and, instead, focus on faithful, prayerful, gospel labors that don’t overestimate comparisons or underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit.

Coaching Church Planters

Posted on May 1, 2009

I’m in a coaching training with Corporate Coach U right now. About a year ago I went through Coachnet/Coaching 101 with Bob Logan and Scott Thomas. Coaching is definitely in vogue with forward thinking, missional initiatives/networks/denominations, and with good reason.

My first exposure to coaching definitely forced me to rethink my presuppositions. I learned that:

  • Good coaches don’t actually give advice; they ask good questions.
  • Good coaches can coach any kind of church planter or church planting model.
  • Good coaching requires good listening and insightful questioning.
  • Good coaches move the coachee along in their thinking, understanding, and approach to ministry.
  • Good coaching guides, not informs, the coachee to concrete action.

All these principles are good; however, as Nate recently pointed out, the best coach actually prays for his coachee, loves his coachee, approaches him or her as a fellow disciple under Christ. Good coaching changes the coach and coachee, moving them beyond skills and methods into deeper dependence upon the Holy Spirit.