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

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.

Check out the new and improved website for PlantR: the Austin Area Church Planter Network. Some of the new features include:

• Video – intro to vision
• Voices – landing pad for all planter social networking in Austin (be sure to subscribe)
• Event Calendar Page
• PlantR Button

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.

George Patterson talks about the difference between Rabbit and Elephant churches. Pay close attention:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZ9pEfN3Fk]

Thanks to Justin Hroch for putting these clips together!

PlantR recently hosted two church planting practitioners who have worked all over the world in contributing to church planting movements–George Patterson and Tony Dale. Both contributors enriched our understanding of church planting and movements. This post will focus on Patterson.

Dr. George Patterson is Adjunct Professor of Intercultural Studies at Western Seminary and possesses 35 years of missions experience. At age 76, he is lively, insightful, and pastoral. It was a remarkable privilege to spend time with him. Making light of academics, his stated goal was to “easify church planting.” Patterson’s interactive discussion revolved around a 6 pointed star diagram that depicts seven non-negotiables in church planting movements.

This diagram helpfully brought together the elements of evangelism, worship. organizational structure, financial support, reproducible growth, leadership training all under the rule of Christ. As we worked our way around these points, Patterson provided refreshing, field-based stories and missiological insights. Instead of commenting on each one, I will offer a few of his insights here. We hope to get a U-tube video up soon.

Rabbit and the Elephant

Patterson pointed out there are three main types of churches—rabbits, elephants, and rabi-phants. Rabbit churches are small churches that reproduce quickly. If rabbits were killed as quickly they would quickly outweigh all the elephants in the world. Elephant churches are big churches that have longer gestation periods and reproduce much more slowly, but they are powerful. All too often the rabits and elephants compete instead of partner. A rabiphant church combines elements of a traditional, larger church with smaller missional units of non-tradtional missional churches. He averred that we need all three. This is often not the message we hear from micro/organic/house church voices, so that was refreshing.

Reproducibility

When asked what impedes reproducibility, Patterson offered a variety of insights:

When the sun rises and sets on the pulpit. Quoting from Jonathan Edwards, he  remarked: “A churches greatest weakness is invariably its greatest weakness taken to excess.” Pulpit can strangle mission and evangelistic reproducibility.

Pastoral training by apprenticeship not seminary. Noting that this practice has been effective throughout church history. He was quick to point out that seminary is not the problem, but the way students respond to formal education conditions them for churches that are not highly reproducible, low in cost, and missional.

A group small enough to do the one-anothering and fast reproduction is typically too small to be the church. Small groups cannot have all the gifts of Ephesians 4, nor can they sustain reproducibility. Therefore, the small groups need to rely on one another. There need to be strong relationships between small groups and lots of interaction in order to promote healthy, missional churches.

It’s easy to get stuck planting your own church. With so much to do in the first couple of years, it’s difficult  to think beyond the boundaries of your own plant. The funny thing is that most church plant visions are bigger than their own church, like ours—“redemptively engaging peoples and cultures“? Or what about “To call every person to the Life Change found in Jesus Christ”? Yet, if our visions are going to translate into reality, planters need to work in partnership with like-minded leaders, churches, planters, and organizations to see their God-sized visions fulfilled.

In Austin, we are discovering planters who want to think beyond planting to city renewal. The remarkable level of kingdom-mindedness has fostered an attitude among planters that suggest moving from planting to movement is possible. With churches and plants partnering together, we envision a Christ-centered, context-sensitive church planting movement for social and spiritual renewal of Austin and beyond. This is the vision of PlantR, a trans-denominational network committed to helping church planters plant and reproduce healthy missional churches.

PlantR is coming into its first full year as a formal network. We have a lot of dreams about seeing this vision fulfilled. But what is most exciting is the people who are willing to partner across theological and denominational lines to bless a city in the name of Christ. Our cool new website, designed by John Chandler at Strange Idea Labs, is up and is filling out. Consider joining us by:

• Check out the site and adding it to your links
• Comment on the blog
• Joining the Network and participate in the Forums (on the way)
• Check out the church plant map
• Come to our first 2009 monthly meeting on Thursday, Jan 22.

We need your help to reach this city! Look for more thoughts to come on moving from planting to movement in the future. I will be co-leading a breakout on this topic at the Missional Community Leader Conference on Feb 6-7.

David Avila is an experienced church planter whose newest plant, Soli Deo Gloria, is in its early stages in Austin, Texas. David brings not only rich experience of planting failure and success, but also a multi-cultural vision for a multi-cultural city. David is a friend and fellow board member for the Austin PlantR Network. Borrowing heavily from David Garrison, his latest blog post lays out some of SDG’s methodology which includes: Evangel, Dunamis, Movement, Ecclesia, Sola Scriptura, & Indigenous.

Ed Stetzer lists at least 10 Elements to Christian Movements:

1. Prayer Prayer must be a conviction that establishes its priority. Before we see movemental Christianity, we will have to be praying, asking God to change us.
2. Intentionality: We will also need to show the intention of being movemental (see the next 8 elements). As of now, I believe our focus is primarily defensive and incremental, not intentional and exponential.
3. Sacrifice: Change will not come without giving something up.
4. Reproducibility: Movements do not occur through large things (big budgets, big plans, big teams). They occur through small units that are readily reproducible.
5. Theological Integrity: Churches wanting to be involved in transformative, movemental Christianity hold firm and passionate positions on biblical views.
6. Incarnation: Movemental Christianity recognizes that the gospel is unchanging, but the expressions and results of the gospel will vary from culture to culture.
7. Empowerment: Movements only occur when the disempowered are given the freedom, and then take up the responsibility, to lead.
8. Charitability: A movement of God cannot be contained in a single movement or theological tradition. Therefore, movemental Christianity requires charity to maintain our firmly held convictions while rejoicing for and speaking well about those with whom we differ but are being greatly blessed by God.
9. Scalability: When God begins to move, and believers allow movement Christianity to begin to grow, structures must be able to rapidly re-size to not stifle such movements.
10. Wholism: Movemental Christianity will practice wholistic ministry much in the way of Jesus.

Read the whole post here.

Michael Stewart on the barriers to a church planting movement in the U.S.