Book Review: Global Church Planting, Biblical Principles and Best Practices
Craig Ott and Gene Wilson, Baker Books, 2011
Review:
This 2011 book on global church planting is likely to become a textbook for cross-cultural church planters for many years to come. Ott and Wilson masterfully combine research, case studies, Biblical principles and practical insights in this treasure-trove of a book. At the same time, they challenge both conventional missionary practices of church planting and church planting techniques in their western context.
The bottom line in the opinion of this reviewer is that this book should serve as a must-have resource and text book for all global church planters. It is a masterful and extremely thorough handling of the subject matter. The literature of global church planting has evolved over the past few years. This book provides both an analysis of what has gone before (in the literature and in practical mission experience) and wise and extensive guidelines for how to thrive as global Spirit-directed church planters in the complex, multicultural world of the 21st century.
Dr. M.L. Codman-Wilson, 5/17/2011
Summary:
The first 100 pages (of this 400+ page book) lay out the scope of the book and summarize the major tenets of their philosophy. There are few if any unnecessary words or paragraphs. Instead, they have a depth of coverage that is globally balanced. While the book is an academic jewel, in the best sense of the word it is also a handbook for the lay practitioner. There is solid Biblical exegesis of church planting models and extended rationale for church planting in its many forms. After their foundation has been detailed and defended, the rest of the book is a thorough examination of each aspect of their approach. Their developmental stages of global church planting are: preparing for the plant (target the focus people, learn their language and culture, commission a team and determine specific strategy and vision), launching the plant (evangelize, form a foundational community and disciple new believers), establishing the new church as a family of God (through discipleship, worship, cell groups), structuring (formally entrust leadership to national leaders, train workers to train others, initiate new ministries and structures to meet needs, organize the church legally and achieve full financial autonomy) and reproducing (prepare the church for reproduction, sustain evangelistic thrust thus avoiding the maintenance mode, send cross-cultural missionaries from the church, launch the new pioneer church plant and leave as the apostolic church planter to plant other churches (158).
Ott and Wilson’s primary model in global church planting is the apostolic model found in Paul’s ministry in the book of Acts. This is contrasted to the current missionary pastoral church plant model (where a missionary births, nurtures and sustains a cross-cultural church for the years it takes until a national formally educated paid pastor is found) and the catalytic church plant model where a large church produces daughter churches (91). The apostolic church model has several distinctives:
1. An apostolic church planter helps found a local congregation but quickly moves to the role of equipping local believers to carry the bulk of the ministry – in teaching, preaching, evangelism, administration and leading, so the work is indigenous from the start. In contrast to pastoral church planting models, (run by paid professionals with financial support from overseas), nationals are given the responsibility to not only lead the initial church plant but to train and equip the next generation of local leaders to expand and plant other churches, often for no salary or supported only by whatever local resources can provide. Then the pioneer church planter moves on to plant new multiplying churches. While acknowledging the differences in various global contexts, the authors recommend that this multiplying process usually takes about 2 years.
2. The missionary, therefore, is the motor (who begins a church plant), the model in evangelism, (by teaching and leading at the beginning), then moves to the roles of mobilizer and mentor (equipping local leaders to take over the existing church plant), a multiplier (empowering those leaders to train and equip others to establish and run new church plants), and finally a memory as s/he moves on to start new churches (105).
3. Evangelism involves both a decision and a process. Methods need to be adapted to people’s learning style and worldview, but story is the dominant form of communication in many cultures (22). Using story and objects (not abstractions) reaches people who are concrete thinkers. Testimonies of transformed lives are important as is the witness of the Christian community in service, unity and love. Evangelism must meet felt and real needs (218-227).
4. Each church plant must be a kingdom community – Christians who embody and live out kingdom values as Jesus taught them. “Kingdom impact means the church’s influence in all its relationships reflects and advances the righteousness, compassion, justice and restoration of all things under Christ’s reign” (395). This means that each community must be “Christ-centered and Biblically based, a transforming, countercultural witness that impacts persons, families, communities, cities and nations” (14). These communities are to be “holistic and outward spreading, thus correcting a production mentality that would put the primary focus on members” (42). Making disciples is their calling, as new believers are gathered into spiritual communities (48), baptized and discipled into “sacrificial obedience to Christ as Lord” (5). Traditional discipleship is passive, leading to dependency on teacher and discipleship materials. Instead, converts are to be discipled to practice the spiritual growth disciplines of Bible study, prayer, worship, fellowship and witness so they take responsibility for their spiritual life (237). Discipling involves empowering the new disciple to disciple others and the new believer to evangelize others (238), thus “velcroing” members to the ministry (240). It also involves helping believers understand what it means to be the church, each developing their spiritual gifts for the edification of the Body of Christ, and growing in commitment to each other as they take responsibility for ministry (244). And it involves teaching believers how to overcome sin and helping them develop a Biblical worldview (240).
5. “Careful attention must be given to the purity of the gospel and sound doctrine, especially when missionaries are reaching people from a different worldview. They also need to guard the purity of the church and establish a plan for church discipline and the courage to implement it before moving on to plant another church. If a region’s first churches cast disrepute on Jesus’ name, it can hurt missionary work for generations to come” (57).
6. Leadership development constitutes the sine qua non of church growth and church-planting movements. Leadership development is based on “integrating equipping with actual ministries and acts of service. Learning to serve is part of the most fundamental discipleship” (352). “Apostolic church planters with multiplication in view will focus on equipping and developing leaders so that local believers can nurture the congregation. They will be looking for those who are faithful disciples and gifted to become the next generation of church planters” (350-351). Equipping and developing is done in workshops, in ministry teams and in individual instruction through modeling, coaching and mentoring (358). “Investing in the lives of promising disciples pays great kingdom dividends and is essential for healthy church growth and development” (58).
7. Rapid multiplication is basic to this model but it is work that is “primarily a spiritual enterprise that requires spiritual means found only in the Holy Spirit” (47). Church planting begins with evangelism through Spirit empowered proclamation. Today’s church planters “should make their strategic plans humbly while always subjecting them to divine confirmation or redirection” (54).
8. Indigeneity and church planting movements are both critical to multiplication…only indigenous churches will truly reproduce and multiply” (65). The authors cite the Jerusalem Council’s ‘emancipation proclamation’ (Acts 15) “which freed the church from its Jewish cultural confines and allowed Gentiles churches to express themselves in culturally appropriate ways that did not violate moral standards…but allowed churches to become acculturated and indigenous wherever they were planted” (68). To safeguard that indigeneity “each church plant should be self-supporting and led by unpaid national lay workers. Only church methods and means for which local believers could take responsibility are to be used (including places of worship built only in native style with local resources). The Bible is to be central to the entire work,” (69) and the church is to be built on the skills and abilities of local believers with skill requirements kept to a minimum. A rule of thumb is “if you can’t teach local leaders to do it, they can’t teach others, so you probably should do it either. Thus training needs to be with methods easily reproduced” (83). (In poor contexts, this means eliminating expensive equipment like projectors, computers, even vehicles).
9. Enforcing an indigenous approach addresses 3 deterrents to church planting multiplication: expensive meeting places, formally educated, paid church planters and overdependence on outside resources”(85).
10. The 10 best practices for church multiplication are: (1) Immerse your community in prayer, (2) Saturate your community with the gospel, (3) Cling to God’s Word, (4) Fight against foreign dependency, (5) Eliminate all non-reproducible elements, (6) Live the vision you wish to fulfill, (7) Build reproduction into every believer, (8) Train all believers to evangelize, disciple and plant churches, (9) Model, assist, watch and leave, (10) Discover what God is doing and join Him (77).
11. The key is reproducibility at every level – in the church, the cell groups, the leaders, the disciples; it is local leaders mobilizing other local leaders to serve and plant churches with reproducible methods (81).
12. Counterintuitive convictions in moving to reproduction are that the churches we plant must be defined by impact on our communities, not on size; growth is measured by the capacity to release, not retain members; giving away members and resources to a new church plant strengthens faith rather than reinforces people’s need for security; the multiplication of disciples provides the source of leaders who are necessary to launch new congregations (whether the sending church plant is a house church or a voluntary gathered congregation or a cell-celebration church) (108-117). The goal is to focus on simple beginnings, not big budgets and keep sustaining evangelistic thrust- the strengthening and sending model rather than the model of member maintenance (288-300).
13. There are weaknesses and strengths in the apostolic church multiplication model as in all the others models. (The authors lay out these weaknesses and strengths for each principle they advocate and ways to discern the best practices and methods in each setting.)
14. Each church plant needs to establish contextually relevant “core values which are consistent, passionate, Biblical, distinctive convictions that determine our priorities, influence our decisions, drive our ministries and are demonstrated by our behavior” (118). “The gospel needs to be expressed in contemporary forms but not at the expense of its transforming power. Even as it moves into new cultural contexts (the indigenous principle), it will always remain foreign as the gospel challenges and transforms culture (the pilgrim principle)” (124-125).
15. Church planting leaders estimate that between 60-80% of the problems encountered in church planting result from faulty strategic thinking in the preparing phase” (167). The preparing phase involves choosing the focus people, commissioning a church planting team, defining core values and vision, and establishing a prayer and financial support system.
16. “In preparing a church plant, study the ministry focus people. A rule of thumb is ‘the time you need to spend as a student of culture is directly proportionate to the cultural distance between your upbringing and that those of the people you are trying to reach’ (188). Studying the culture of a people “should move us, change us and bring us to a deeper level of appreciation of the people, making us insightful and caring bridge people for the gospel” (189).
17. Church planting teams are particularly important in areas resistant to the gospel. “Teams that solidify relationships and agree on goals before becoming immersed in the task of church planting tend to find greater joy in service, trust each other more, and become more productive (345).” The team leader should develop a plan for team building and a sound theology of conflict (343-344). The strength of team ministry is team members “provide multiple perspectives for problem solving, open ministry doors to many more people, provide greater boldness in evangelism, greater power through corporate prayer, greater creativity through team planning, ensure accountability, intensify a sense of vision, diminish loneliness and allow each member to focus on areas of strength (332-334). “A spiritual gift constellation for a church planting team involves one with apostolic gifts and evangelism who lays the foundation of a new church plant, two waterers with gifts of teaching, encouragement and administration, and three assistants with gifts of evangelism, faith, helps and mercy, and national disciples who are empowered to share their faith, make disciples and start to serve” (343). All are to be under the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. (Disadvantages of team ministry, including issues of team conflict and multicultural teams are discussed at length as well.)
18. “Our observation is that planters are just as likely to fall short because of personal inadequacies or an inability to work on a team” (305). “The most important qualities for effective church planting are: (1) God’s call, (2) Godly character, (3) Strong spiritual dynamics (prayer, listening to God’s voice), (4) Spousal support, (5) A mission-specific skill set, (6) Emotional intelligence (personal maturity and emotional resilience and adaptability), (7) and spiritual gifts that fit the task” (307). Also “apostolic ministry among a different people group requires evangelistic and entrepreneurial ability,…flexibility, resourcefulness, self-learning and self-management…and the ability to not only lead from in front but also to come alongside local apprentices and leaders” (308-314). (All these qualities are discussed at length. Issues of women in church planting and bivocational church planters are also discussed.)
19. Multiple other resources exist in the book which deal with other strategic questions in planting churches among unreached people groups, planting churches where other churches exist, dealing with the issues of service ministries and church planting, etc. They are too vast in scope and detail to give an adequate thumbnail of each issue in this review.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
1. What principles in the church planting strategy suggested by Ott and Wilson are different from the strategies you are currently using?
2. What are the strengths of their apostolic model – particularly in terms of the 6 m’s of the missionary church planter: (#2)
Motor
Model in evangelism
Mobilizer and mentor of local leaders
Multiplier
Memory?
3. How can you incorporate indigeneity both initially and throughout your church planting efforts? (#1, #8, #9, #14)
4. Discuss how to help new converts take responsibility for their spiritual life and disciple and evangelize others as part of their discipleship. (#4)
5. How strong is your team approach to ministry? (#17, #18).
What can be done to strengthen a team approach?
6. What are the practical implications in your setting of incorporating all “10 best practices for church multiplication”? (#10)
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