George Patterson talks about the difference between Rabbit and Elephant churches. Pay close attention:
Thanks to Justin Hroch for putting these clips together!
Tag: church planting movements
Great Missiology from George Patterson
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.
PlantR: From Planting to Movement
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.
Soli Deo Gloria Church Plant
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.