Modern Church Planting

The modern church tends to send out people who are quite immature or inexperienced. They go to Bible College, which is an unreal (but very supportive) experience. Then they are sent, usually alone, to start a new church. Sending an inexperienced couple out alone from a hothouse environment to start a new church is a cruel torture.

Modern church planting puts a lot of effort into starting a public worship service. In fact when people talk about planting a new church, they really mean starting a new worship service. However, public worship is not essential for a Church to function, so it will not be given a high priority by the apostles. They would mainly concentrate on meeting with new Christians for discipleship and developing local leadership. A public worship service would not be started until the local leaders are able to lead it.

A key priority for many church planters is finding a place to meet. In fact one of the first goals of a new church is to buy or build a church building. This is a mistake as it distracts from the more important goal of establishing elders and sending out apostles.

Our lack of understanding of the apostolic process is demonstrated by the fact that we talk about church planting. However the New Testament expression is “sending apostles”. Sending apostles should be a normal part of the life of a Church, not something exceptional.