*This is the first blog in a three-part series discussing the importance of church planting teams. This first blog is focused on demonstrating that the biblical model for church planting is churches planting churches.
It has been said, on more than one occasion, that when a coach uttered the words, “There is no ‘I’ in team,” Michael Jordan would quickly respond, “Yeah, but there is an ‘I’ in win.” As I examine the recent history of North American church planting, it appears that many church planters have embraced this same philosophy. I remember hearing of one particular experience in the mid-1990s where an aspiring planter completed his seminary degree, resigned from the country church he was pastoring, and moved his family to another state to start a church from scratch. Unfortunately, this decision failed to produce a new church and only produced a disappointed planter and a family that had to move after a few short months. And that philosophy was not the exception, it was the rule!
Thankfully over the past few years, a more biblical model has re-surfaced among North American churches. We call this model “churches planting churches.” Hugh Halter and Matt Smay in their book The Gathered and Scattered Church write, “But the things we all want to see happen will never happen until we first settle this issue of why the church exists. God’s church is a missional church, a community that is sent and given away for God’s purposes.” There is a new wave of churches that are doing a wonderful job of mobilizing their people to live on mission and they do it by starting new churches.
In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus told His followers that their mission was to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The way in which His followers fulfilled this mission was by gathering new Christians into groups and starting churches. Acts 2:41 says, “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” Then in verses 42-47 we see these new believers were gathered into the church and “The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
This pattern continues throughout the book of Acts. We see this explicitly taking place in Acts 13:1-3 when the Church in Antioch sends Paul and Barnabas on a missionary journey to plant churches. Furthermore, because this was the pattern of the early church, there was a church meeting in Rome before Paul was able to go there himself. The church had been scattered from Jerusalem because of persecution and then Christians gathered back together in Rome and planted a church. This is also why Paul wanted to go to Spain because a church had not been started there yet. The mission of the early church was to start churches in places where there were no churches. Alan Hirsh in his book Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church states, “As God sent the Son into the world, so we are at the core a sent or simply missionary people… This ‘sending’ is embodied and lived out in the missional impulse. This is, in essence, an outwardly bound movement from one community or individual to another. It is the outward thrust rooted in God’s mission that compels the church to reach a lost world. Therefore, a genuine missional impulse is a sending rather than attractional one.”
In order for the churches planting churches model to continue growing, it is imperative that pastors shepherd and train their people to be on mission and to do this through the local church. If you want to be a church planter, consider the better model of forming a church planting team within your local church and then letting them send you just like they did in the New Testament. There is no doubt that Jordan was a great basketball player, but his philosophy for winning on the court won’t prove fruitful when it comes to planting churches that plant churches.
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