Conversation with Hugh Halter on bi-vocational church planting

Interesting conversation today about bi-vocational church planting of small kingdom communities in the United States as a means of multiplying the church, doing evangelism among friends and forming relational communities that are connected. It costs almost nothing, allows those driven for evangelism and ministry to use their gifts and multiplies the church.

This is not the answer for all church planting but it is a lane that needs to be far more visible and honored in the United States. Interestingly this is exactly what we do internationally. The three largest inhibitors to the multiplication of the church globally - including the United States is the belief that you need to have real estate, a building and a full time pastor. Forming Kingdom communities costs almost nothing, releases God's people and is all about relationships. It is similar to what happened in the early church.

We use this approach in the developed and undeveloped world but it is not an honored model in the United States but I predict it is coming. Many young leaders are not interested in the traditional model but are interested in an evangelistically and discipleship model based on relationships, community, releasing everyone in ministry and keeping expenses low. These Kingdom communities can multiply in relationship together and form a larger community.

What gets in the way of seeing this as a viable model in the US? It is our metrics of success which focus on numbers, buildings, budgets and staffing. But often to the exclusion of relationships with unbelievers, evangelism (rather than church transfer) and releasing everyone in ministry within close community. 

Unfortunately in the large church model we often pay people to do ministry rather than open opportunities for the congregants to do significant ministry. Kingdom communities open doors for far more significant ministry for ministry driven professionals and congregants. 

This is not an either or but a both and. Those denominations that open a lane and honor those who plant Kingdom communities will lead those who only use the traditional model where it is not unusual to invest $250,000 in a church plant - many of which fail.

Check out Hugh's book. We do it internationally. Why not domestically?

All of T.J. Addington's books including his latest, Deep Influence,  are available from the author for the lowest prices and a $2.00 per book discount on orders of ten or more.

Six things every church planter should pay attention to from the beginning

A Church's genetic code is hardwired into it early in life so if you want to establish a healthy transformational church there are values and practices that need to be planted up front. Ensuring health on the front end prevents the need to back up later and fix something that is not going well.  

If you are a church planter, consider these issues before you plant. It is easy to let them slide in the chaos and busyness of church planting but if you do they will be hard to retrofit later.

1. How you do leadership/board work will generally set the tone for a long time. From the start, keep the board focused on the big rocks of mission, values, spiritual temperature, and the six responsibilities of leaders: keeping the spiritual temperature high; ensuring the congregation is taught; developing, empowering and releasing people into ministry; ensuring that the congregation is cared for; led well; and protecting the congregation. 

If you want to keep the board out of management and focused on governance and direction, do that from the beginning. Bad habits die hard once started. My book on boards can help you chart a healthy course.

2. When you write your constitution and bylaws (yes you need them) make them as short as possible in order to give you the most latitude as possible. Remember that there are people who believe bylaws to be more sacred than the sacred text (which they may violate all day but not allow you to violate the bylaws). You can always add later. It is easier to add than to subtract in this case.

3. Be absolutely clear about what your church is about and is not about. Clarity solves a lot of problems especially as people from other churches show up and want you to become what the church they left was (never mind they left unhappy). 

Clarity on your mission, your guiding principles, central ministry focus and culture will allow you to be aligned around the most important things from the start. If you are not clear from the start, others with agendas will fill the gap with their clarity - usually not a healthy thing.

4. Develop the kind of team relationships you want to see long term on the part of your staff and volunteers. Again, what you teach, model and put in place at the beginning is going to last a long time so develop the healthiest ethos as possible from day one - and insist on it. Larry Osborn's Sticky Teams and my Leading From the Sandbox can help develop healthy teams from the start.

5. Keep the congregation focused on the right things like evangelism and life transformation. The minute you cross the line toward programs that start diverting from outreach and life transformation you have started to move from missional to institutional. Keep the main thing the main thing from day one and keep them focused. When people live out the main thing, celebrate and tell the story from day one. It will stick if you stick to it.

6. Set the date for the church plant your new church is going to commit to. If you are planting a church you believe in church planting. The sooner you birth a church the more likely it is that you will birth others and that those you birth will reproduce. Put the goal out there from day one.

Holistic Missions: Cautions and Opportunities

Let me say up front, I don't like the word holistic much when it comes to ministry. As if holistic ministry were an option or a special kind of ministry. No! Holistic ministry is really Jesus ministry that ministers to the whole person: body, mind and soul.  All ministry to Jesus was holistic. He always cared about the whole person. So I simply prefer Jesus ministry.


I am delighted that there is a new emphasis on ministry to the needs of people today and much of the focus from the West to the Majority (poor) world focuses on those needs. This includes medical ministry, micro enterprise, clean water, orphan ministries, poverty alleviation and the list could go on. It is refreshing to see the church minister to the needs of people rather than simply doing evangelism.


However, and this is where the caution lies: If in the past we neglected the needs of the whole person for the needs of the heart, today we run the risk of neglecting the needs of the heart for the physical needs alone. This is not Jesus ministry. He never ministered to physical needs without caring for the needs of the heart. It was always both, never one or the other. If I give people clean water without the living water of Jesus I have solved a physical problem but neglected the greater eternal problem.


In a poor world there are many opportunities to minister to the physical and spiritual needs of people. Let's not relive the mistakes of the past where we neglected the physical needs for the spiritual by neglecting the spiritual needs for the physical. Jesus simply ministered to the whole person and so should we.


If your church is involved in meeting physical needs among the poor, ask the question whether you are also meeting the spiritual needs of the heart. Is the balance right? What will you answer the one who says on the brink of eternity that you gave them clean water but never told them about living water?  


Clean water is the number one way we can directly impact a majority of those living in poverty globally. Living water is the number one way we can impact them for eternity. The greatest need for every man, woman and child on our planet is a spiritual need so as we minister to physical needs, lets be sure that we are also meeting spiritual needs. Lets take our cues from Jesus where ministry was always about the whole person.

Bride over Brand

This week I had a remarkable set of meetings with 20 movement leaders in Africa. All of them represented different denominations and countries and all of them were together for a week to discuss how they could work synergistically together to send missionaries, see church planters trained and to reach those parts of Africa where the gospel has not penetrated.

What is remarkable is that they were placing the Bride (the church of Jesus) over their particular brand (denomination). 

Bride over Brand is a mindset that should pervade all of our efforts to spread the Gospel. This does not mean that we must give up the distinctives of our brand. It does mean that we are willing to actively cooperate with others for a higher goal of seeing the Bride expand, knowing that our brand is one small expression of the Bride that Jesus died for.

This takes a mindset that "we will cooperate rather than compete." It is a humble posture that knows that no one of us can do this by ourselves and that we have a lot to learn from others. It is a kingdom rather than a provincial mindset that places the Bride in its proper perspective. It is a Jesus mindset above all that values what He values - that all men might come to believe. 

I long for the day when this kind of mindset prevails across Christianity. When it does, we will see the Gospel spread in ways that we cannot imagine. Until it does, we will continue to do our own thing, not realizing that we are better together than separate. 

What is your mindset? What are you doing about it?

Unleashing our lay people and overcoming the dysfunction of professional ministry

I believe that one of the five dysfunctions of the church is that of professional ministry where we hire specialists to do the work of ministry rather than to equip others to do ministry. This professionalism is even more interesting in that the movement I am a part of (the EFCA) and sister denominations came out of lay led movements in the eighteen hundreds.


The free church movement came out of an environment in Europe where the state church (non free churches) had become liberal, were not preaching the Gospel and where parishioners were not encouraged to study scripture themselves. Because they were not being fed in church, many started to meet in homes to pray, worship and study scripture resulting in the pietistic movement which brought revival to a number of countries in Europe and with that revival the planting of non-state run churches (free churches) which then spilled over to the United States. It was Europeans out of the free church movement who planted the same kind of churches here in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds.


Fundamental to this movement was the belief that lay people who had not had formal theological education were qualified to teach, preach and lead the church. One did not have to be a "theologian" in the professional sense of the word or have had formal theological education. In fact, many of these lay leaders and pastors had a greater understanding of scripture and the Christian life than their "educated" counterparts. 


Today, however, it is very rare and often difficult for those in the EFCA and fellow free church movements to become ordained without a formal theological degree. The unwritten understanding is that you need to have a Bible school or seminary degree in order to pastor. And the ordination process is designed to enforce this.


As the leader of the EFCA international mission, ReachGlobal, I work in an environment that is much closer to the roots of our movement where it is informally trained leaders who lead and pastor churches internationally. Most of the world cannot afford the luxury of a formal theological education given the poverty of the majority world. That, however, does not keep them from growing churches that are often healthier from a Gospel perspective than many churches in the west with their formally educated clergy. 


I am not anti theological education. I have one of the best and it has informed all my work. What I do object to is the professionalization of ministry that requires a theological degree to be in full or part time ministry or to be ordained in many of our movements. Many large churches in the west are rejecting that paradigm, training their own leaders and releasing them to preach, teach and lead in their settings. 


In basically ruling out ordination for those not professionally trained we perpetuate the clergy/lay distinction and send the message that to really be effective in ministry one must have a theological education (read degree). It is a good thing this was not true in the early church. Or in the majority world. 


Rather than discourage lay people from leading, teaching and preaching we ought to encourage it. It would raise the level of biblical understanding in our churches and release new ministry personnel who are either part time (bi-vocational) or full time. And why would we not encourage these very people who are gifted to plant and pastor churches themselves regardless of whether they have a formal degree or not?


Further, why ordain only people who can give the definition of obscure theological terms rather than ordain those who know the bible, can explain it well and teach it diligently? Knowing what superlapsarianism and infralapsarianism means is far less important than simply knowing good biblical theology that comes from a knowledge of the bible and can be applied to everyday life. We ought to know the biblical terms. Why should one need to know the litany of theological terms dreamed up by two thousand years of theologians in order to be effective in ministry? Or for that matter, Greek and Hebrew in order to preach well? I have a hard time believing that those would be the standards that Jesus would have for those in ministry!


Why cannot we open real ministry up to those who are trained both formally and informally and encourage both to get into ministry either full or part time? The church might actually see significant growth in the United States if we again allowed it to be a movement of lay people, not just those who are professionally trained and can get through an ordination process that is designed to weed out those who are not. I wonder how many lay people were given gifts by Jesus to lead, teach and preach that we do not unleash in meaningful ways because they are lay and not professional clergy?

It's about the Bride not the brand

I am a senior vice president of the EFCA - a brand of the church. Having said that, one of my core convictions is that while brands can be helpful in the spread of the Gospel, at the end of the day my concern should not be about the brand but about the Bride. Jesus died for the Bride, not my brand (hard as that is for some to believe, given our often parochial attitudes toward those of another brand). 

Most of us like the brand we worship in, which is why we are there. I like the broad evangelical parameters of the EFCA and the freedom I have as the leader of ReachGlobal, its international mission. But, my highest allegiance is always to the Bride of Christ, His church, of which mine is but one small expression.

When we value the Bride over the brand we become open to working with other churches to bring the Gospel in a relevant way to our communities, something none of us can do ourselves. Moving from competition to cooperation in the spread of the Gospel is an expression of mature leadership that places what is close to God's heart (that people respond to His good news) above our parochial interests.

There is nothing wrong with brands. But think of the power of the unity of the church when we choose to work with other like minded evangelical churches and denominations to reach our communities and the unreached globally. It is a visible expression of the unity that Jesus prays for in John 17, by which the world knows that we are in Him and He in us. There will be no Presbyterians or Baptists or Free Church folks in heaven (really!). Just worshipers of Jesus Christ. I suspect we will quickly realize that those things that once divided us were insignificant compared to what should have united us - the Gospel and person of Jesus Christ.

It is for this reason that ReachGlobal does not plant EFC churches internationally but works to plant healthy, reproducing, interdependent, indigenous and self supporting churches. As long as Jesus is at the center in a biblical way, we will work with a wide variety of movements to bring the Gospel to places where it has not yet penetrated. We then link the various movements we work with together so that they too are working alongside one another in cooperation rather than competition. There is enough division among denominations for us to further contribute to disunity rather than unity.

I am heartened by expressions of Bride over brand in this country when churches from across denominational lines band together to bring the gospel to their community. They are demonstrating Christ's heart and His interests over their own. 

Think about your ministry. Are you more about the brand or the Bride? For me, the Bride trumps the brand every time.

Don't get caught in the church numbers game

What spells success for a local church? For many pastors the answer is how many attend their church. I drove by a Unitarian church with a full parking lot on Sunday. By our common definition of success they had achieved it - or the Mormon temple two blocks from my house that draws a full crowd. Seen in that light we realize that numbers are not everything and sometimes are nothing when it comes to success.

In fact, numbers may be the worst definition of success for churches and pastors. Churches do not grow indefinitely. Many pastors are not equipped to lead a large church but are wonderfully equipped to lead a small or medium size church. All of us have a leadership ceiling and internal wiring that defines the size of an organization we can effectively lead. Since God gave us that wiring we have to assume He is pretty happy with it and so should we be. One of my ministry buddies is a great preacher and the quintessential shepherd pastor. He pastors a church of around 250 and is wonderfully fulfilled in that role. His lane is not a church of 500 or larger where he would be frankly miserable. He is fulfilling his God given calling in a smaller church.

Further, the focus on numbers can easily cause us to move away from a full presentation of the gospel to embrace an attractional model of church where the goal is to attract as many people as possible and in the process to water down the emphasis on disciple making which actually demands something from those who come. There are plenty of large churches full of untransformed people which is not a New Testament definition of success. And remember that most church growth in the United States is not about new conversions but simply about people transferring from one church to another. How does that spell success?

We should also remember that many people are not enamored by large churches. They prefer a family size church where it is easier to know others, plug in and where relationships are easier to build. There are far more avenues of direct involvement possible in smaller churches than in large churches.

What we ought to really be focused on is not numbers but helping our congregation experience true spiritual transformation: Hearts transformed by grace; thinking transformed by God's word; priorities transformed to align with His word and relationships transformed by His love. Pastors often say to me, "I don't know how to do the vision thing." My answer is that ninety percent of vision in the church is simply helping people live out the Gospel in their lives, their homes, their neighborhoods and their places of work. This is true in a large church or a small church. Size is not an indicator of success - transformed people are. 

Can small churches grow? Often they do so by church planting. They may not desire to grow significantly in numbers as a congregation but all churches can grow by multiplying themselves in church planting. And there will indeed be conversion growth for any body that is focused on spiritual transformation. Get the focus right and true spiritual fruit happens - John 15. 

There are always reasons for church size - a complex set of variables that we cannot address in full here. But I would say to any pastor, the measure of your success is not in your attendance numbers as much as it is in the transformation that is taking place among your people. Even in the New Testament there were huge churches and tiny house churches and all kinds in between. While God's people grew in numbers there were still all sizes of churches and there is no reference as to numbers being the sign of success for any of them. Transformation was a sign as well as ministry engagement - see Ephesians. People coming to Christ was a sign - see the book of Acts. But church size was not.

Rather than getting caught in the numbers game, we all ought to be focused on transformed lives which leads to new people coming to Christ. And, be who you are made to be as a church whether a small neighborhood church or a mega church. The numbers don't tell the story, Gospel engagement does.

Straight Talk about Results in Missions

Missionaries are under increasing pressure to prove that they are getting results in missions today. Impatient sending churches are sometimes quick to criticize and even pull support when their version of results are not realized. This is both a good thing and a bad thing...depending.

At the expense of irritating some local church leaders, I want to suggest that the pressure for quick results in missions is not only unbiblical but hypocritical. In the United States it takes on average 168 people one year to bring one person to Christ. A church that sees ten percent conversion growth in any given year is on the very high end of churches nationally (on average). So a church of 500 would see 50 conversions in the course of a year and that would be considered very healthy. Think about that. Five hundred people and 50 conversions. Now apply that same standard to missionaries (what a team of ten or so) working in hard soil (consider the Muslim context) and we complain that they are not seeing quick results! If we applied the standards to ourselves that we apply to missionaries we would often get a failing grade! Yes we have many large churches and the vast majority of those who make up the congregations have transferred in from other churches while the vast majority of mission conversions are first generation Christians.

The west loves fast results. Missions is rarely about fast results. It was not for Paul and it will not be for us. It took nearly 300 years for Paul's early efforts in missions to see Christianity flourish in the Roman empire - 300 years.

As the leader of a mission organization, ReachGlobal, one of our guiding principles is that "We measure results." We want to know whether or not we are being effective. In addition, we deploy in teams for maximum synergies and insist that all staff have annual ministry plans and Key Result Areas - including me. We are always looking for best practices and as another one of our guiding principles states, "We practice entrepreneurial thinking." In addition, our Central Ministry Focus is to develop, empower and release healthy national leaders. So we are all about multiplication over addition. All well and good - except - we cannot control when "harvest" comes. We can control our intentionality and best practices but we cannot control the harvest. In fact, there is no excuse for lack of intentionality in missions but the fact remains we do not control the harvest - only God does.

Here is what I know from Scripture: God intends to bring an amazing harvest in His time, in His way and through His power. We are asked to simply live in His power, see through His eyes and live in faith filled expectancy. Harvest will come but we do not control the timing.

But I know several other things from the New Testament and Paul's example in particular. First, the harvest is never easy. Read Paul's litany of tough experiences in 2 Corinthians 11. There were places where Paul saw significant harvest and there were places where he did not.

In the first 25 years of Robert Morrison's ministry as the first Protestant to China he baptized only ten people. Twenty five years and ten people baptized. Yet, Morrison is widely known as the reason that Christianity came to China in the 1800's leading to the largest church in the world today. What if Morrison had been told after ten years of almost no results to come home and find a place where the harvest was better? Read the history of missions in India and many other places and the lesson is the same.

This goes to Paul's reminder in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 that some of us sow, some of us water and some of us reap. He asks, which is more important, the sower, the one who waters or the reaper? Remember: wherever there is a significant harvest, there was behind that harvest those who labored for years in obscurity, sowing and watering. Like Morrison, they may never see the harvest in this life and while those who get to harvest get the accolades in missions, it was those who did the harder work of sowing and watering and praying that deserve the bulk of the credit.

ReachGlobal works in over 75 countries. In some countries the spiritual results are easy to see and large but only because someone before us did the hard and tedious and tough work of sowing and watering. In other contexts we are doing the tough work of sowing and watering and perhaps others will see the harvest.

In all cases we need to ensure that the investment we make in missions is being used wisely and that we are ministering with great intentionality. And we need to be people of prayer (in the local church and in missions) that God would break through. But we do not control the timing of that breakthrough.  That is true domestically and internationally.

What do you think Paul would say if we told him that we only went to places where the harvest was significant? That would rule out most of the Muslim world (one billion) much of Europe and many yet to be reached people.

I lived in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1971 where my parents were medical missionaries. When we left there were five or six churches. It was slow going and hard. Today there are 55 Free Churches including the largest EFC in the world (10,000) to say nothing of the many other evangelical churches that saturate the territory. The church in Hong Kong stands on the shoulders of those missionaries who labored there, sowing and watering for many years, seeing only meager results.

We need a better theology of missions today. A theology rather than simple expediency.

God intends to bring an amazing harvest in His time, in His way and through His power. We are asked to simply live in His power, see through His eyes and live in faith filled expectancy. Harvest will come but we do not control the timing. The question is whether we will partner with God not only in harvest but in sowing and watering. Those who focus only on the harvest have settled for expediency. Those who focus on all three focus on a biblical view of global missions.

From Leader to Partner in Global Missions

One of the most profound and healthiest shifts in the mission world today is the shift from western missionaries being the leader to being a partner. This shift comes in part from the changing nature of missions with potential local partners being found almost everywhere in the world. But it also signals a shift toward greater kingdom thinking and maturity away from the model of colonial power and paternalism to fellow colleagues in ministry.

There is a good reason that many traditional mission agencies have changed their names. Ours went from the Evangelical Free Church of America International Mission to ReachGlobal. Now our friends and partners are not joining an American mission but a family of ReachGlobal partners. The name change sent a powerful message to our global friends that it was “us together” and in some cases they formed their own local brand to cooperate with the larger brand. So, ReachAfrica was born as an indigenous sending agency to cooperate with ReachGlobal. Many mission name changes actually reflect more profound philosophical shifts from leader to partner.

As partners, western missionaries no longer unilaterally make ministry decisions but seek to build a local team that together decides strategy. Their team may be made up of themselves and local believers and it also may include missionaries from other parts of the world so that it is “all people” reaching “all people.” The emphasis though is on working with local believers (partners) to determine the needs and the specific role that missionaries from the west can fulfill in helping their partners multiply healthy churches, do evangelism and leadership training. In many places, our role today is equipping, coaching, mentoring and training of partners and true “co laborers” for the harvest.

Another key role is one that we have had significant experience in – the sending of missionaries. This is one of the amazing legacies of the church in the west over the past several hundred years and that passion for reaching the world needs to be passed on to every Christian movement everywhere. It is thrilling to see movements in the majority world taking up the mantle of missions themselves and it is an indication of their growing maturity because no movement is mature without sending their own. Because we have long experience in sending, we can encourage, mentor, train and facilitate the sending missionaries by our global partners. True leverage takes place when those we serve become mission sending movements themselves.

This new role also entails a new skill set for missionaries. They are no longer primarily individual producers “doing” things but are now increasingly coaches of others, developers of others, and focusing on developing, empowering and releasing healthy, missional local leaders who can in the end do what they do better than we can. This is moving from the front to the back in the sense that we are not the leaders but those who raise up local leaders, stand behind them and partner with them. This role is no different than the role spelled out in Ephesians 4:12 where God gave leaders to the church to equip the people for works of ministry. Nor is it different than what we want from staff in the local church – not to do ministry for us but to raise up people who are also passionate about that ministry, build teams and multiply ourselves.

This requires a new posture of humility on the part of those who go today. We go to serve. We go as partners. We go to raise others up. We go to serve in many ways behind the scenes. Our job is truly to develop, empower and release others and to cheer them on. It is to raise up other leaders who will take ownership for missions in their city, region, country and continent. It is in the spirit of Christ who came, poured himself into the disciples and then at His ascension gave his ministry away to those whom he had trained. He multiplied himself through others as a servant leader.

A profound shift is taking place today in missions. Those agencies who understand and embrace this shift will see their influence broaden even as they move from leaders to partners.There have always been western missionaries who modeled this attitude but it has not always been the ethos of missions in the colonial or post colonial era. Agencies that take this ethos seriously will be the leading mission influencers in the future and will make the deepest impact.

What kind of churches should we be planting around the world?

Those of us involved in missions as practitioners’ and those who support the global missions endeavor need to think carefully about what kind of churches we are planting. I believe that the target can be defined in five words: healthy, indigenous, self-supporting, interdependent and reproducing. Where the target is reached, the possibility of significant impact in a whole region is often the result. When just one of the targets is missing, the long term impact of our efforts is compromised.

Healthy

Only healthy churches can produce healthy disciples so our focus must always be on ensuring that the churches we plant are healthy. This means that they are gospel centered, missional in reaching out to those around them, have a culture of grace and love and humble leaders who serve rather than dictate. They are churches who reflect the character of the book of Ephesians. Emphasis on numbers in church planting often leads to a lack of emphasis on health. Better to have fewer healthy churches than many unhealthy churches. The key to church health is the training of healthy leaders both pastoral and lay.

Indigenous

Indigenous churches are churches that reflect the culture of the people among whom the church is planted while being thoroughly biblical in their practices.  Too often, missionaries have inadvertently brought both biblical practices and outside culture as they have planted churches rather than bringing the truth of the gospel and allowing that truth to be expressed within the culture of a local population.

Anyone who has participated in worship services in Africa, for instance, understands how culture affects “how people do church.”  The service may last four hours, has African music, lots of dancing and long (even multiple) messages.  Then, there may be a long meal together before people disperse.  It can last much of the day.

The key to planting indigenous churches is simple: missionaries don’t lead the church but from the beginning, train, equip, empower and coach nationals to lead the congregation – either with them or instead of them. Where pioneer work is being done, new believers are disciple and brought into church leadership as quickly as possible. Missionaries from another culture cannot plant a truly indigenous church – only nationals can so partnering with nationals from the outset – or equipping nationals to do the church planting is the key to indigenous churches.  Thus, wherever possible, our task is to develop, empower and release healthy national leaders who can plant healthy churches in their context, their culture but with the same gospel truth.

Self-Supporting

This is perhaps the most difficult concept for those who live in the developed world to understand.  Self-supporting means that the church is not dependent on outside funds in order to exist, nor is its pastor paid from outside the local congregation.  It is also based on the conviction that Christ designed the church to exist in any culture, any socio-economic climate, any political climate and to do so in a way that it can organically reproduce itself regardless of the political, social and economic structures in which it exists.  When we tamper with that Christ designed structure, we inadvertently destroy or impede the organic growth of the church.

A great example of how the church operates organically can be found in China.  When missionaries were forced to leave in 1949 there were approximately one million believers in China and the prediction was that the church would die.  Interestingly, the many missionaries who were active in China had imported western ways of doing church including all the denominational distinctives present in the western church.

Instead of dying, the church flourished and did so organically as Christ designed the church to do in spite of a terrible economy, a government that tried to eradicate it and the absence of trained pastors.  It flourished much like the early church with lay bi-vocational pastors, house churches neither of which were dependent on funding.  China is proof that the church does not need to reflect a western developed model to flourish but that it can flourish organically in any context – if we do not tamper with it.

There are three barriers to church multiplication world wide.  These three barriers are practices of the western church that we often import to the church in the developing world.  They are the concepts that to be a church on needs a full time pastor, a pastor with a formal theological degree and that the church should have a building and real estate.

Why does this thinking hurt multiplication?  Because we live in a poor world.  Consider this.  Fifty four percent of our world lives on less than three dollars US per day and 91% of our world lives on less than $10,000 per year.  What does that say about the ability of most of our world to do church like we do church with full time pastors, degreed pastors and with buildings and real-estate? 

The early church was not hampered by these three constraints.  The very reason that it could organically reproduce itself – like the church in China was that it did not rely on paid pastors, real-estate or degreed pastors.  Where full time pastors developed it did so organically as the church could afford to do so rather than as a paradigm for how to do church.

Because we view church in American terms, we often seek to reproduce our version of church around the world.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to pay pastors in developing contexts.    So we start to pay pastors so that they can work full time with the thinking that it makes perfect sense and will increase their effectiveness.  However, good intentions often have unintended consequences.

Let’s consider some of the unintended consequences of this practice.  First, it is no longer an organically reproducible model.  Once you start paying pastors, new churches are not started until more money is found to pay that pastor.  Second, it is almost impossible to wean these pastors off of that support once they are on it.  Third, congregations do not give because there is little need for them to do so.  Fourth, these pastors and congregations are not indigenous or independent since they are beholden to those who pay them and finally dependency is created.  They church cannot exist without the outside money.  The bottom line is that what was done for good reasons actually hurts the church and stifles the growth of the church as well as tampering with how God designed the church to organically reproduce itself in any world context.

If a church is to be healthy, indigenous, and reproducible it must be self supporting.  When we force another model on the church it has negative unintended consequences.  This is why we must be committed to self-supporting churches.

A word about real-estate and buildings.  Great wisdom is needed in when to help a church in the developing context purchase or build buildings.  Remember the church does not need real-estate to flourish.  When we define church in terms of buildings and real-estate, other churches start to define it that way.  What happens is everyone in that locale starts to believe that to be a church one needs buildings but they cannot afford the buildings.  Thus in order to reproduce themselves they need help from the outside to purchase and build structures.  Again, the organic nature of the church is compromised.

In one city where our organization works, there are five key churches, each of which has been helped with building a building with multiple outside work teams.  Those five churches have been very slow to plant new churches.  They have said, “we need to be strong first,” which has meant they need to complete their structures and then have enough people to pay for the upkeep of those structures.  One must ask the question, did our help in building buildings get in the way of organic multiplication? 

Many missions have learned hard lessons in this regard.  Those lessons can lead us back to a healthier and more biblical model of self-supporting churches that can organically reproduce themselves in any context, any political climate and any economy.  Where it is necessary to help pastors find a way to support themselves, we can help them be self-sufficient through micro-enterprise rather than through ongoing financial support.

Interdependent

Congregations are healthiest when they are in fellowship and are cooperating with other like minded congregations.  Thus one looks for partners who value interdependence rather than independence.  Interdependent churches work together to bring the gospel to those around them, to train workers and to do missions together.

This does not meant that we should be in the business of starting denominations.  In fact, denominational structures often hinder multiplication as leaders focus on their institutional needs rather than the multiplication of the church.  It is better to allow organized structures to develop organically and at the right time for the right reasons rather than missionaries taking the lead in making it happen.

Reproducing

Healthy churches reproduce themselves.  Movements that are not deeply committed to and actually practicing the reproduction of new churches are simply not healthy.  This often happens when denominational structures take greater precedence than multiplication or where the organic nature of the church has been tampered with as I have described above, resulting in multiplication being stifled and hindered.

God designed the church to reproduce itself organically, intentionally and rapidly – once the gospel takes hold.  Healthy churches can do that. Healthy missionaries work in a way that fosters this multiplication of the church wherever possible.

Disciplemaking or Church Planting

A close friend asked me recently whether I thought that the mandate of Christ was to “make disciples” or to plant churches. His question came out of observing the often poor efforts to plant churches around the world. This is not a new question as many ministries focus on evangelism and discipleship while others focus on church planting. For those of us involved in missions it is a fundamental and crucial question.

Jesus commanded us to make disciples – people who would wholeheartedly follow Him. This is the heart of the Great Commission. What is interesting is how the apostles took that mandate. Their response to the Great Commission was not simply to do evangelism and to disciple new believers (which they did) but it was focused on church planting as their fundamental strategy for fulfilling the Great Commission. Indeed, they came out of a Jewish background where the worship of God was never simply an individual affair but was focused around the synagogue where they gathered for worship, prayer and teaching.

In the New Testament, the church is called “bride of Christ” and Paul writes that Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25-30). One could argue that this was simply the “church universal” but the New Testament is clear that each local church is a manifestation of the global church. Paul not only planted churches but several of his letters were addressed to individual churches (Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians Philippians, and Thessalonians). 

Jesus himself addresses letters to seven individual churches in Revelation two and three. The history of Christianity is a history of church planting wherever and whenever the church has penetrated populations where the Gospel was not present. Christianity has never spread without the spread of local churches.

What is clear is that the local church is God’s chosen method to reach the world for Him. At least that was the understanding of Christ’s disciples and their response to His command to make disciples was to plant churches where believers could gather for teaching, prayer, worship and the celebration of communion – and it was this gathered body of believers that made such an impression on both Jews and Gentiles in the years following Christ’s ascension.

Studies of conversions around the world show that a large percentage (often over 50%) of those who make a profession of faith are not following Christ three years later when they are not connected to a local church. Indeed, many campus ministries in Russia have seen disappointing results because while their efforts at evangelism were fruitful, a high percentage of those who made those professions are no longer following Christ because of the lack of healthy churches around those campuses.

Indeed, it is through the church that disciples are truly made – if the church is healthy. Now to my friends point: often our conception of the church is seriously flawed. We think of church as being defined by real estate, buildings and full time staff who have degrees. In a poor world where half of its population lives on three dollars a day or less, that definition of “church” does not work. 

Nor is it the story of the early church. If we define a church as a group of believers (small or large) who gather together regularly for worship, teaching and prayer and the celebration of communion under some sort of leadership we have a Biblical definition. In our organization we simply call these kingdom communities. It may be five former Muslims gathering in a home in secret, or a hundred believers worshiping under a large tree in Congo or a large congregation in the West in a fancy facility.

Often the reason for lack of success in “church planting” is that we are trying to plant a western version of a church rather than a Kingdom community of believers who gather together regularly for worship, prayer, teaching, the sacraments and to spread the gospel in their community. Multiply Kingdom communities and you multiply the church and one multiplies disciples. 

Flawed as it is, Jesus chose the church as His method of reaching a lost world and each of those kingdom communities, large or small are a part of His bride that shines His light in their community. Disciple making is the job of the local church. Evangelism is the job of every believer and every local church. But everything revolves around healthy churches – kingdom communities – whether a congregation of three or a congregation of 300.  

The mandate of Christ was to make disciples. The Apostles understood that the means of making disciples was to multiply local congregations where in Christian community believers grow together and together carry out the mandates of evangelism and disciple making. Those kingdom communities are His bride – for which He died and by which He intends to reach a lost world.

Missions today is about.....

Equipping others rather than doing it ourselves. With a world population of 6.5 billion it is critical that missionaries are equippers of others rather than simply doing it themselves. This is in line with Ephesians 4:12 where the emphasis is on equipping and giving ministry away. This is a change in how many missionaries see their role.

Partnering with others rather than doing it alone. Historically missions have not been very partnership friendly. They have gone it alone and have perpetuated all of the denominational distinctives from their homeland to the rest of the globe. Yet, Jesus did not die for our particular denominational brand but for the church. Working together both with other missions and with indigenous partners where they exist can help us reach greater numbers of people.

Raising up indigineous leaders rather than being the leader. Paul did just this in his church planting strategy. As quickly as possible he raised up, trained and appointed leaders for the church. If we are about equipping others rather than doing it ourselves we need to also give leadership away to those that we develop. That is the only way to start indigenous church movements and to guard against dependencies.

Involving all of God's people, not just some of God's people. Everyone has a stake on world evangelization. In today's world everyone can also play a vital role whatever our background or training. We can give, we can pray, we can participate long term or short term. Travel is cheap and opportunities are huge. Missions is no longer only the purview of those who have Bible School or Seminary training - and never should have been. God calls all of his people to be involved in the great commission and it has never been easier than today to carry that out in the international arena.

Going ourselves, not just sending others. There is no substitute for hands on experiences in missions. It so changes our hearts and perspectives that one church I know of will not allow new elders to come on their board who has not personally participated in their India ministry because they want to guard the missions DNA of their congregation. The more people who experience the world and missions first hand the more the congregation carries a great commission DNA.

Reclaiming the great commission as the call of the church and not the call of the para church. The responsibility and vision for world missions was given to the church, not the para church. Every congregation should be and can be personally involved. Para church mission agencies exist to serve the church in their global vision and not to work independently of the church on the sending or receiving side.

These six changes in how we see missions are really game changers for the global cause of Christ.

Trends in Missions Today

There are a number of common trends among mission agencies today that are very encouraging in terms of their missional effectiveness.

The introduction of Key Result Areas and Annual Ministry Plans. This is all about a new level of accountability and intentionality in the mission world. Among major agencies it is no longer acceptable to work without a plan and clarity on the results desired. As one of my colleagues observed, the only place to hide today in missions (from intentionality and accountability) is in some of the mom and pop missions. Interestingly, some major agencies have lost significant numbers of people who objected to the introduction of a new level of accountability and intentionality.

A second major trend is that of deploying personnel in teams who work synergistically together. It has been proven over and over that healthy teams are more effective than personnel deployed alone. Teams take into account a variety of gifts, encourage greater creativity and provide a greater level of care for personnel.

The move toward teams and the introduction of KRAs and AMPs has lead to another major development - the elimination of levels of management and supervision that were deemed necessary in the past. Missions are embracing the flat world and the idea of empowering teams on the ground to determine their plans and strategies and are therefore eliminating the management structure that was necessary in the absence of plans and teams. In our own mission, we have only three levels of leadership - the senior team, the international area team and the local team.

These changes have inevitably led to a fourth - the development of a set of metrics by which to measure effectiveness and success. Almost every major mission is grappling with the metrics issue and desiring to ensure that they have a way to measure their effectiveness. In many ways this is driven by donors who want to know that their major investments in missions are paying off. The Mission Exchange just did a major conference on this issue.

All of these changes have come amidst a movement by agencies to deal with unproductive or unhealthy personnel. This is the major issue being faced by new mission leaders today. In the past, many missions have defined their success by how many missionaries they had and paid little attention to the health and effectiveness of those leaders. This has led to many problems because unproductive or unhealthy personnel have a huge impact on those around them. While in the past it was unknown for a mission to let a missionary go, that is not the case today. There is much retooling taking place in missions and the transition of unhealthy personnel out of the organizations.

These trends have forced missions to raise up a generation of better leaders. Intentionality, health, metrics, plans and teams all require leadership and many agencies are scrambling to find those leaders since they did not focus on the leadership issue in the past. In many cases, agencies are looking outside their own mission to leaders from the church and business sector who have a leadership track record.

The new interest in results and healthy personnel has led to the development of greater ongoing learning and skill development. In the past one could have a lifetime of mission service with little ongoing education. Not anymore. The requirements of team, plans, metrics, health and leadership require ongoing skill development. Many agencies actually have a division that focuses on this ongoing learning.

Finally there is a major shift away from missionaries simply doing the hands on work to missionaries as equippers of others in line with Ephesians 4:12. Increasingly there is an emphasis on the development of partnerships with indigenous movements and the equipping of those movements for greatest missional effectiveness. It is a shift from a focus on "my" ministry to a focus on "our" ministry and the developing, empowering and equipping of healthy indigenous leaders.

All of these are encouraging developments toward mission work that can meet the needs of our globalized world where the opportunities and challenges are both significant.

The Church: God's Chosen Instrument to reach the World

On any particular day I can be optimistic, energized, discouraged or pessimistic on the state of the church. It largely depends on churches that I am working with at the time.

The New Testament shares such sentiments with Paul writing to the Corinthians (they had a lot of problems) or the Ephesians (they seemed pretty healthy) or the letters of Jesus to the churches in Revelation three (a mixed bag).

Many today are giving up on the church and simply leaving or choosing to stay home. I sympathize and empathize. There are a lot of unhealthy churches. Healthy and vital churches are vastly outnumbered by unhealthy or problematic churches.

But: regardless of our analysis, the local church is God's chosen instrument to reach the world as the local manifestation of his universal church made up of those who are his children. That is why I will never give up on the church and why I will never stop trying to help the church and why I will devote my life to multiplying healthy churches among all people.

It is frankly amazing to me that the church is as resilient as it is. That is not a testimony to man but to the power of the Holy Spirit who is present in small, large, poor, wealthy, underground and above ground churches. It is His church and the forces of hell will never prevail against it.

The church is flawed because it is led and attended by flawed people. The church is powerful even with flawed people when empowered by the Holy Spirit who powerfully changes lives and empowers people for meaningful ministry and brings life change.

The church is His bride and He loves it and died for it. Given that I will never abandon it or cease to help it be all that it can be. As long as Jesus believes in His church, I will too.

Institutional or organic church?

What is a church? Most people, when they think of 'church' immediately think 'institution.' After all, churches in the developed world context usually have a building, a full time pastor, who has a degree and a bunch of people - house church movements excepted. Because that is our 'model' of church, by in large, we often duplicate that model in the places where we do missions.

Actually, the New Testament does not define the church institutionally but organically. It describes the local church as a group of believers who gather regularly with Christ at the center for worship, fellowship and ordinances under recognized leadership. A local church is really very simple and can exist in any economy, social context or political situation.

Think how easy it is for this organic description of the church to multiply across a city or a region in local cells of groups of believers. It costs no money. It requires no full time pastors. It requires no formal degrees.

When we define "church" institutionally not only do we move away from a simple biblical understanding - but we face a major problem in our church planting efforts. It is much harder to multiply buildings, formally trainged pastors and full time staff.

Think about this. 54% of our world lives on three US dollars a day or less - over three billion people (world population is 6.5 billion). 94% of our world lives on $10,000 or less per year. The reality is that we live in a very poor world.

In this world, the organic definition of church is able to reproduce easily while the institituional is not.When we export, or encourage an institutional model of the church that includes real estate, and a full time pastor who has a degree we immediately have a problem. In a poor world, that is a tough proposition and it kills the organic multiplication of the church. Simple, organic church works, institutional church does not.

Remember that in the first years of the church, having a facility was rare, having a full time pastor was very rare and there were no degrees. Yet, the church grew, spread and flourished regardless. It humors me that even the disciples themselves would not make it through many of the ordination processes that denominations have for their pastors.

It was assumed by many that the church in China would decline in 1949 when Mao Tse Tung came to power. Churches were closed, pastors were imprisoned and seminaries were shut down. There were about one million Christians in the country. But you know the story! Some 59 years later it is estimated that there are almost 70 million believers (some say more) and even in the darkest days, the church flourished.

My conviction is (and history bears it out) that God designed the church to be the most flexible organism on the planet that could and would survive and thrive in any economy, any political regime, and any social context.

This was true of the church in China in recent years and the Macedonian church in the early days, dirt poor as they were - and Paul applauds their generosity as he tries to chide the wealthy church in Corinth to be generous like the Macedonian church was (2 Corinthians 8-9).

Wise people engaged in missions do not impose or encourage models of the church that will not be able to reproduce naturally in the places they minister. That is why ReachGlobal stresses both formal and informal theological training and the use of bi-vocational pastors/leaders as well as full time credentialed pastors. And, the use of homes or inexpensive facilities for meetings until a local congregation has the ability to find a place of their own.

Churches are most able to multiply if they are healthy, self-supporting, indigenous, inter-dependent and reproducing. Our job in missions is not to create barriers to the natural multiplication of the church and to encourage models that fit the context in which we are working.


Keeping the church simple and organic in our church planting efforts allows for the easy multiplication of cells of believers. Some of these cells will grow into larger groups who may at some time be able to support full time staff who are formally trained. They may acquire property. But not starting with those elements allows for organic growth and multiplication without institutional elements which stall what would otherwised be natural multiplication.