1000 new Aussie churches. Who wants in?

Wondering what it would take to plant 1000 new churches in the Great South Land. Here’s four things I think we need and four we don’t.

1.Leadership
I have my five characteristics of dynamic movements. Unfortunately I think there are six. Church planting movements are led by people with apostolic vision and passion. They wake up in the morning and they see churches multiplied across neighbourhoods cities, regions and nations.

There are leaders of churches of over a thousand who don’t see it. There are denominational heads who don’t see it. Sat down with a young woman in China. She wasn’t content with winning her friends to Christ and discipling them. She was already thinking about how she was going to multiply leaders and groups that do the same. She saw it.

2.Movements
It’s not about the next new church we plant or the one after that. It’s not about our plans to replace the churches we shut down every year with new ones. It’s not about sinking money into a few innovative missional initiatives. It’s about unleashing a dynamic that we can’t control that results in church multiplication everywhere. Read the book of Acts. Not even the Apostles could keep up with what God was doing. No central planning. No central control. No central funding. Just the chaos of life.

3.Diversity
You had better be committed to whatever model of ministry you’re working under: house church, mega church, contemporary church, emerging church, evangelical, Pentecostal, traditional, multi-site, workplace. Whatever. Just don’t confuse what you’re called to with the totality of what God is doing. The same God who created fruit salad created the church in all its diversity. That’s why Tim Keller, hymn-singing, orthodox Presbyterian is helping Pentecostals, Lutherans, Southern Baptists and whoever, plant ‘gospel centred’ churches in his city of New York.

4.Pioneers
Someone has come up with the computer program to help you plant a church. There are 400 significant milestones on the to do list. Number one on that list should read: “Recruit pioneering leaders who can make it up as they go.” The rest is bonus. If we’re going to plant 1000 churches, we’ll need 1000 pioneering leaders. Task groups don’t plant churches. Experts don’t plant churches. Money and training won’t get the church planted. We need the right sort of leaders. Lots of them.

It’s not complicated. Begin with the end in mind. What sort of leaders make effective church planters? Answer that question then find the people that match the profile and make them an offer they can’t refuse: “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” That’s maybe one tenth of the leaders we need. The rest we’re going to have to grow. How do you grow leaders? Simple, you create environments where they emerge. Just copy what they do to raise up the next generation of footballers, athletes, basketball players, netballers or cricketers.

That’s four things we need in order to plant 1000 churches in Australia, or anywhere else.

Finally, here’s four things you don’t need to worry too much about:

Money
Permission
Education
Careful planning

Who wants in?

Church Planting Church Planting Movements

By: Steve | 06/07/06 | Church planting movements | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]

7 Responses to “1000 new Aussie churches. Who wants in?” »»

John Wall

Comment by John Wall | 06/07/06 at 12:41 pm

Sounds great, count me in…
philjohnson

Comment by philjohnson | 06/07/06 at 5:28 pm

There seems to me to be some critical things absent from your list of things “we need” and all of which are embedded in Scripture but also evidenced in the Acts of the Apostles:

1. Christ-centredness and servanthood on the part of leaders;
2. being people-friendly with an an ability to listen first before then speaking with those who are not-yet followers of Christ;
3. understanding of cross-cultural missions principles and the Missio Dei and being capable of implementing them (Acts 17:16-34);
4. being able to give reasons for the hope you have (1 Pet. 3:15; Acts 8:30ff, Acts 17:16-34; Acts 26)
5. being capable of forming and living in an accountable community.

I could go on but I feel strongly that zeal and sincerity are not sufficient, but must be matched with sober reflections and the cultivation of wisdom. This also includes a savvy dispostion to not fall foul of trying to reduce the Missio Dei to a formula or recipe.

The Australian culture cannot simply be swept into church meetings of whatever stripe or venue. You need to ask soul-searching and reflective questions about the church’s unpaid spiritual bills in this country that have caused a gulf between church and culture; you need to reflect on why spiritual seekers in Australia consider Christianity moribund and bankrupt and with church as the last place to go to ask questions and to explore spiritual matters; why do so many seekers instead opt for other pathways outside Christ (and it is not good enough for us to generalise and say “sin” or “the devil”). Instead of us presuming to think up reasons why people should attend our gatherings (or special speaker evangelistic events), maybe we should ask ourselves “why don’t people want to attend in the first place”?

If we take a good hard look at ourselves collectively in this country we might find that we are the principal obstacle. If we look at why other religious pathways are preferred to Christianity, we might find the mirror image reflected back at us for all the things we have neglected to do (that’s what I mean by the unpaid spiritual bills of the Church).

Grace and peace
Philip

It is wonderful to be excited about outreach and the passing on of good news and an expectation that God will bless our endeavours. I pray he does.
Gordon Gray

Comment by Gordon Gray | 06/07/06 at 5:33 pm

Depends on what you mean by ‘church’. Strikes me we should be praying and working for 10,000 new committed Aussie Jesus-Followers/Kingdom-Extenders rather than 1000 new churches which may or may not make an impact for the Kingdom (and which tend to absorb a lot of time, money and effort to ‘run’).

A Question: is the Mission Dei to build churches or to grow people who will extend the Kingdom? And does the latter necessarily assume the former? [Yes, I know that’s two questions, but please don’t quibble!]

Shalom

Gordon
Gordon

Comment by Gordon | 06/08/06 at 2:49 pm

Well said Phil. You said what I was feeling but unable to express. And also, what about renewing old churches in key locations rather then the constant modernist belief that new is always best?

But maybe this movement is already happening right under our noses. Maybe it is called the emerging church and it is in many places (cafes, lounges, homes, halls, galleries) near us. It isn’t so pastor/planter/professional centered. It is more organic and less moderninst and structured. Last year at the summit held at Wesley College there must have been 200 of these represented. The Baptist Union of Victoria is encouraging 20 new ones themselves to begin. Many spin out of Mike Frost’s teaching at Morling in Sydney. They could well be it!
David Kueker

Comment by David Kueker | 06/09/06 at 11:47 pm

I love the idea of planting churches, which does begin with a leader.

That leader, however, would need to be a disciple maker.
And then a maker of disciple makers.
First 12 disciples, then 70, then 120 of them.
Add the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and they might be ready to be called a church. (And the next day a megachurch.)

I heard an apocryphal story about Korea ages ago, that supposedly when a person applied to be a pastor, they were asked: where are your converts/disciples/followers? If they had any, they were then ordained to pastor that flock. No disciples, no ordination.

As someone ordained in the west and gifted with followers by my appointment to an existing church, this was somewhat of a jarring paradigm.

Thirty years ago I was once a member of Amway and spent all my time recruiting dealers to serve under me and enrich me, and no time at all selling soap; my dealer organization did the same and soon collapsed. It’s great to build an organization, but underneath it all it’s about selling soap to customers. It’s great to talk about planting churches, but underneath it all someone will have to make the disciples or the churches we plant will be empty except for the fool (which is me) standing in the pulpit preaching to the empty pews about the great potential of this church.

It’s my soapbox and my sermon to myself, so I’m a little harsh about it because I need the stern accountability. I spent 24 years in ministry, 11 years in growing churches, and made no disciples; now I have three, and shifting paradigms has been an incredible internal struggle.

Dave
Gordon

Comment by Gordon | 06/10/06 at 10:07 am

Just a reminder Dave that the 12 were selected from within the 70/72 and the 120 were following Jesus and not them, at least initially. It wasn’t totally about mathematical multiplication. Especially when things went from 120 confused and scared followers to 3000 in a day! There is a bogger dynamic needed then our human efforts (needed as that is). As you said… ‘rushing wind’...