Church Planting Thoughts 5/99
I. What’s the Objective in Starting a Church?
The Command is to make disciples, not churches. The assembly of believers (church) is a great aid to making disciples, and the end product of obeying Mt 28. Where you have disciples, you will eventually have a church.
It is possible to obey Mt 28 by joining a church, but that church needs to be a by-product of people who obey Mt 28, otherwise it isn’t a Biblical church, nor will it help produce true disciples. A church composed of folks who don’t want to deny themselves to obey Mt 28 eventually is counterproductive, for it infects potential disciples with wrong/temporal values.
A group of believers who are committed to living biblically is the seed for starting a church. Of course there’s that nasty bit about a seed having to die in order to become a life giving plant. Seeds have different germination, growth, pollination and fruiting patterns, and all four patterns are dependent upon the environmental factors of soil, water and sun.