Video Transcript: Why Plant Healthy Churches?

We're going to dig in now into a church planting basics, a section of the church  planting class that sort of digs right in, and gives that 30,000 foot view of what  church planting is. And then throughout the rest of the course, we're going to dig into aspects of church planting. Now in these next several presentations, we are going to utilize the multiplication networks material, a curriculum that they  developed, where it's developing more churches and stronger churches. The  organization is headed up by John Wagenveld , a good friend of mine. We work  together when we were at the Bible League, he is called by God to plant  churches worldwide. So what are we going to do? Well, we're going to talk about planting healthy churches. So today, we're going to ask ourselves what that is.  We're going to throughout this whole church planting basic seminar, go through  John Wagenveld's, book, 22 authors, 11 countries, theory and practice models,  interviews, essays, graphs, study guide, and bibliographies. Trying to go into the topic of church planting for your benefit in this class. So let's talk first about  these sessions, we're going to basically do four sessions. One is going to be  why plant healthy churches. We'll also look at who should plant churches? What does the church we're going to establish look like? What steps should we take to plant a church? And today we're going to start out with why plant healthy  churches. So when you think about why plant healthy churches? What's our  objective? And answering that question, essentially, we're going to look at the  biblical foundation, the theological foundation, the missiological Foundation, and the practical foundation of why plant new churches. Now, here's the thesis that  Dr. Carlos van Inga mentioned when it comes to planting churches. The biblical  motivation for planting healthy, healthy churches resides in the mission of the  loving and merciful Triune God, the missio dei, who desires that men and  women become disciples of Christ, whose congregations are signs of the  coming Kingdom of God for the glory, or the praise of his glory. So we are  planting signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God when we plant churches. So let's talk about the biblical foundation. Now, first of all, in the biblical foundation,  we will see passages of the Bible that are constantly illustrating the planting of  churches in the early church. If you look in the book of Acts, you will see one  passage after another about how churches were planted in every city that Paul  went on somehow or other who stepped foot on, he planted churches, and what  did they proclaim, they proclaim Christ, the gospel, they proclaim that  resurrection of the dead. In all of the message of the New Testament, most of it  is contextualized, in new church plants. Think about that. As scripture is being  revealed to us through the inspired authors, it's in the context of planting new  churches. And in that context, we see the work of the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit would direct Paul and Barnabas and, and others to go here and to plant  churches here. I know as an experienced church planter, after planting three  churches and or four churches, sorry, and replanting, we notice the work of the  Holy Spirit. It's about the idea of congregation and you what is that you see that 

in the book of Acts, you see, they broke bread together and they fellowship with  one another and to the believers held everything in common. You see the  outpouring of God in people's lives and fellowship in the Bible. You also see the  glory of God shared all over the Bible when it comes to the planting of churches. So the biblical foundation is clear. But we don't have to go far in Scripture to see  that there's a theological foundation as well. There's a word called incarnation,  Christ with us. In in church planting, since the body of Christ is the church, you  will notice that for us to share the incarnation is a very powerful. And that brings  us to the second thing, the powerful mission dei. The mission dei is to proclaim  Christ through all of the world. And the way that's done in the most effective way is when we have churches and plant churches and get people together. We also noticed the kingdom of God theological foundation, that as churches are  expanded, people can say, hey, there is the kingdom of God. Now there are  various verses here. And I encourage you to read these verses and sort of take  in these verses as you think about the theological foundation for planting  churches. There's another foundation, it's called the missiological foundation. So what is the church, and this has a lot to do with the incarnation, the Church is  the Body of Christ. Okay, so as we plant churches, we spread throughout the  world, the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. So when you plant a church, you get to be about doing something very special. Now, I know that there are churches, I  don't have believers in that that's not a body of Christ. I'm talking about the true  Church of Jesus Christ. So there's an aspect in the missiological foundation that  deals with is and is, is so important, in is relates next to what do you do? So the  Church is the Body of Christ. And what does it do? Well, as leaders, church  planters, as leaders, within churches, what we do is we proclaim, we serve, we  minister, because of the reality of Christ, we have something to do in this world.  And we will share with others this reality. And then, in church planting, you get  that expression of organizing what it does, there are plans, there are things that  we evaluate. We implement ideas, we bring about changes, all of these things  are part of that missiological foundation of the Body of Christ, doing something  changing, transforming the world. And then church plants are part of organizing  gifts, organizing organizations, things that actually go deep in a local community. So that's the missiological. Now, let's talk about some practical ideas. What and  there are many, one, the population is growing rapidly in the world, and we need more churches. Second, new churches reach more people than established  ones. There's no doubt about it. There's nothing wrong with established  churches, and established churches are needed. But new churches bring the  boundaries of God extends them into even more people groups. established  churches tend to plateau in this happens, where established churches reach  who they are. Many times that's where they're at, and they stop reaching more  people, new church plants take that even further. Finally, new church plants help stimulate established churches. That's so fun to think about. When you have 

new church plants, even the pastors of existing church plants, say to ask  questions, how can we reach more people for Christ? So there are practical  reasons for planting churches? You know, when I think about that, I can even  think about more practical reasons. Churches are needed to close churches I  need close to where the the lost live. We need on every corner churches to  reach the lost. new churches are more flexible. That's a practical reason. You  don't have all of the cliques and all of the organization already there. It is  impossible for one church to reach everyone that's very practical. You know,  somebody recently said to me, I think there's enough churches in our area. And  then I said, you know, I polled my neighbors and still most of them are looking  for a church. So we need more churches, not less churches, more Churches  develop leaders quickly. You know, that's what's so fun about planting a church  as a church planter, myself, I have loved how quickly somebody could come in.  And in 6, 8, 10 months, they're already starting to ministry, in a long time  established Church, there's much more of a politics involved to do things. And  there's nothing like proximity. This is a practical reason, proximity aids  discipleship, when you actually have churches located in more places, the mere  fact that the church is there aids in reaching people for Christ. So there really  are a lot of practical reasons. You know, as I think about planting new churches,  I just want to share, you know, some thoughts with you where people are, in the  last several years, they've come up with objections, as to, you know, we have  enough churches and I want to talk about some of the objections for a little bit  today. One is starting new churches weakens established ones. I've been at this for 30 years. And I will tell you, I have never seen new churches weaken the  established ones, in fact, if there is a time where they're weakened a little bit  where there's little shuffling around, because a church sends out a church  planting team, my experience shows that the Lord brings more people to replace those who left. It's expensive. Is it really at Christian leaders Institute, most of  you are bi-vocational most of you are not getting paid, you just have a calling.  The reality is, it costs us too much not to plant churches. It's not too expensive.  And we don't have to have an entire building or a Crystal Cathedral or  something. To plant a church, a church can just be in someone's home, it can be in a village, a church can be in the outside a church, there are places to plant  churches if we just our little creative. Churches are not expensive. Here's  another one, we may lose many people. Hmm. Some churches feel that way.  You know, maybe you're a pastor, and you wonder about planting a church in  your area, and you're a pastor of an existing church. And you may wonder, oh,  we may lose people. Well, like I mentioned earlier, God will bring more people,  for your faithfulness, God will bring more people. Another objection I've heard is  we already have so many needs, amen. Let's Plant more churches. Or here's an objection we can't force church planting. It just happens. That's right. But God  calls people and when God calls someone to be a church planter, when God 

calls the planting of a church, God does that. Now, can we make someone  who's not called into a church planter? No, we cannot. But here's the truth is,  though we can't force church planting, we can faithfully step into hearing God's  call into planting a church. Number six, we won't be able to preserve our  doctrines. You know, that's a concern many people have because in church  planting, you're dealing with unchurched people you're dealing with, I'm trying to  be very effective. And sometimes people have blamed new churches, on  weakening of doctrine. And I'll go back and say why we don't have to weaken  our doctrine. It's Christ crucified. Now what a church plant does do is it sort of  does take away those things that get in the way unnecessarily. So if you mean  by traditional exact practices, and call them doctrines, while there might be a  little challenge to that, number seven, planting churches create denominational  competition. I've seen that in my life. And all I can say is that as unfortunate and  it should not be because there's a big world out there. And that competition  should go away. And if there's little competition out there, let's pray that God  takes it away from us. Number eight, one church for every city is a New  Testament practice. We don't know there's only one church for every city. The  fact of the matter is, is with every city, especially today, there are unique people  groups, unique villages. We're gonna talk about that in this class, that one  church for every city. Why the Bible doesn't say that there couldn't be More than  one church for every city. In fact, we see that in the New Testament, that God's  Holy Spirit would pour out new works. And we cannot use the Bible to try to say  one church forever city and that's it. It wasn't necessarily the New Testament  practice. In very early church history, we have record that there are more  churches planted in regions, more churches planted in cities as well. Now I  know the Catholic church went the parish route. And that's how they organize  things. But the bottom line today is we're planting churches, we can't get tripped  up with trying to say there's only going to be one church in every city. Number  nine, starting new churches won't help my ministry career. Maybe it won't. Let's  just say maybe it won't. And if it doesn't, so be it. If you're called to plant a  church, plant, a church, period. You know, as we think about a vision for church  planting, I like what Stuart Murray has to say, and the growth of the church nor  the planting of churches is the final goal. Both are subordinate to the theological  principle of the advancement of the kingdom of God. What do you say in here is  planting the church is not the end itself. It's about the message of Christ. It's  about extending the kingdom of God. So, as we reflect upon this, understand  that God is already in this, and he invites us to participate. And here's just a  question, will you participate in this? So it becomes a reality. Those are that  those calling questions that we've been talking about early in this class, are you  called to reflect the reality of a church planter. Are you called to plant a church  and maybe support the planting of churches. You know, as a church planter, I  have enjoyed every moment of it. I enjoyed the starting phase, I enjoy reflected 

upon who I am. And many of you are going to have a journey in this church  planting course just like that. So I encourage you to think and pray about the  planting of healthy churches.