The History of Church Planting

[FenderPriest]

I asked this question over here and was kindly advised that it would be better to create a new thread for it.

So, I'm wondering about the history of church planting. Are there any survey's of how the church has approached church planting? I'll admit my ignorance on the subject, but I get the feeling that the "mission to church plant" has a stronger emphasis in the church today than it has in the past - though, as I said, I have little data to base that off of. Is there any research into the mentality about church planting, it's history by continent and people group? Any work on the theology behind church planting efforts? Who and what's been successful? Etc. Any thoughts on the subject are welcomed as well.

Thanks!

 

[jambo]

Some time ago (1990 aprox) I joined the British Church Growth Association. However I only stayed a couple of years as I felt they had reduced mission to a science. They produced all these graphs about church membership and who was joining churches. According to their graphs and fancy pie charts, they discovered that the most responsive group of people were married couples who were employed, home owners and with a young family. They therefore concluded this should be the churches pool to fish in. Although I found it all very interesting, I also found it a lot of nonesense. There was no thought of prayer or preaching but rather the organising of activities and programmes aimed at the so called target people.

However I would not write the church growth association off altogether as they did produce some excellent books including one by Johann Lukasse, a Belgian church planter, on different methods used in Belgium to plant churches. They also produced a series of 10 churches under the titles of '10 growing churches', '10 missionary churches', '10 new churches', '10 city churches' etc

I see two types of church planting situations. In the likes of the west where there are many established churches and in other countries where it is very much pioneer work.

In the first case a local church should look at an area close by and decide that is the place to set some of its members apart to be a core group for a new church on say a housing estate. Indeed the church I currently belong to was formed in this way. A church from the centre of Belfast planted a church in one of the suburbs where a number of its members lived (that was 1970). This church in turn grew and set aside some of its members who lived in the Lambeg area of Lisburn to plant a new church in 1989.

I am sure many on the PB would not agree with this but I believe the optimum size of a church is between 100-120 members. It is a sizable number but still small enough to get to know everyone and to be aware of all the member's familys and situations etc. There is still the sense of fellowship and everyone knows everyone quite well. When a church gets to that size it should set aside part of its membership to form a new church in an area where none exists. A church of that size can cope with setting aside 20-30 members as a new daughter church.

The second situation is not as straight forward. In countries where the church is not established and Christianty is very much a minority faith a different approach is needed. A team of say two couples and a couple of single people is good to work together and this can be enhanced by short termers coming for a few weeks or months or even a year or two. Great patience and endurance is required and a lot of faithful sowing is needed as one must be prepared to wait for years before any significant breakthrough may be seen.

I recall a number of yeasrs ago reading an article by Dob Carson concerning his father who was a missionary in Quebec. He endured much hardhsip, saw little fruit for his labours and died without seeing any real impact. It was only afterwards that things began to take off and illustrated the truth that one sows and another reaps. I notice that Don Carson has now written a book about his fathers work and I look forward to reading it as I anticipate it would give an insight into what is required of a faithful pioneer.

Church planting sounds straight forward in theory but in practice involves years of patient faithful sowing being prepared for discouragement and setback yet being determined to stick at it.

I would find the best way of finding out about church planting is to write to missionary agencies that are involved in church planting and to find out how they are going about their task. However depending on the country the mission agency is working in they may be hesitant to say too much about their methods.