Do Church Planting Movements Hinder Disciple Making Movements?

Do Church Planting Movements Hinder Disciple Making Movements? by Miguel Labrador

Posted by Miguel on June 13, 2012 in Christianity, Discipleship, Evangelism, The Church, The Gospel

Do CPM’s (Church Planting Movements) help or hinder DMM’s (Disciple Making Movements)?
Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19,20
I think, for the most part, that those who have a desire to plant churches and those that have a desire to make disciples, have equal convictions to see the message of the Kingdom spread, to see the nations (ethnic groups) transformed, and see many come to know Christ. But, what if one of them were to inadvertently get in the way of the other or even hinder the other?
The Apostles or first disciples of Jesus did not start with what is typically known today as a “church plant.”  They started by becoming mobile, moving, and mission.  They planted themselves and the Gospel into communities until the Lord directed otherwise and made disciples from which gatherings were formed.  The task remained the same throughout the New Testament era, namely to “make disciples.”  In fact, I fail to see anywhere in the New Testament where they had a desire to multiply churches in the sense of location based purveyors of religious goods and services.
If one of these two camps had a propensity to get in the other’s way, I believe it would have to be the church planters.  I am not a church planter, at least not in the way many church planters describe their task.  I like to think of myself as a disciple maker that leaves the method of gathering or fellowship up to the disciples being made.  If that equates to a building, weekly meeting, and bit more structure, then great!  If it means a simpler or more organic approach to fellowship, then again, great.  But when the gathering of disciples takes priority over the making of disciples, then something has gone very wrong.
What I have seen time and again, is that church planters, or at least the idea of church planting, has gotten in the way of disciple makers.  They misdirect resources, time, talent, and energy away from the main mission of disciple making and funnel it into things which are secondary or completely unrelated to that task.  They say that they investment into the facility and structure may draw away from the primary mission for a short time, but afterwards the impact will be greater.  I can’t recall ever having seen that actually happen.  In fact, one of the most successful church plants in history, Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek, confessed that all of their organization, power, influence, programs, teaching and structure, failed to produce disciples.
As a disciple maker, I’d like to proclaim the kingdom of God and teach others about the Lord Jesus Christ–with all boldness and without hindrance! (Acts 28:31)  I want to do that and teach others to do the same.  If you’re a church planter, who’s hindering disciple making, isn’t it time to say “pardon me,” make some room, and let the disciple makers pass?
Eugene H. Peterson (Author of The Message Bible) once said,

“There are monuments & footprints. A monument only says, `At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, `This is where I was when I moved again.’”

My friend Mike Breen, (Author of “Building a Discipling Culture,” said;

“I’ve said it many times: If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.” 

I think Church Planting Movements hinder Disciple Making Movements.
 Am I wrong?  

Great STM advice from Mike Gunn

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Mike Gunn Started about 6 hours ago

I Just returned from my 17th trip to Visakhapatnam, India and working with my good friend Arjuna and his wonderful ministry, Vision Nationals (www.visionnationals.org). I have been speaking at his pastor’s conferences and training his church planters for the better part of 14 years, and have seen wonderful results and growth. The churches I ministered in have accompanied me on many of these trips to work with the kids in his children’s home, and it has definitely been a blessing to the kids and those on the trip, and a great ongoing partnership for my church and the ministry in India.

Unfortunately, many decry these types of “Short Term” missions as “harmful” to the nationals. Everyone seems to be an expert, especially those that have never lived overseas. The potential dangers are, doing for the nationals what they could be doing for themselves, causing unwarranted dependency on the "Sending" agency, forcing western values on the culture you are “Ministering” in, and ignorantly giving information that is unhelpful, or even hurtful to the culture. All of these things of course are harmful and all too often true, but they do not need to be. The eradication of short-term missions would be a huge knee reaction to the problem (Something the church seems to be very good at). We need to jettison our sad stories, and “Wasted” money mind-set, for some thoughtful re-thinking of this type of mission, and think toward the positive impact they can have on the ongoing ministries they are partnering with. I’ve heard one too many “A group went to build a wall for the poor impoverished people only to be torn down 2 months later for something they really needed.” Or, “They all raised money to vacation in Haiti and called it a mission trip.” Or my favorite, “Why are all these people on mission overseas, when they aren’t on mission in their own back yard?” These may all be true, but they are beside the point. Since when has ignorance, arrogance and misappropriation stopped any church programming? If it did, we ought to all pack up and do something else.

I had our group read “When Helping Hurts” on this last trip and it is a wonderful book on poverty and this very subject, and I am thankful that although they cautioned against short term missions, they, unlike others, did not throw the baby out with the bath water. If everyone stopped doing short-term missions, many useful partnerships would be destroyed, and American individualism would reign. We can no longer have a mentality that if you can’t move overseas, you can’t minister overseas. Thankfully, Paul didn’t have this mentality. He had at least 3 missions in the NT, and except for 3 years in Ephesus and 1 year in Antioch, he traveled quite a bit and maintained relationships through visits and letters. In an age of technology, we can do this through emails, Skype and short term visits! 

We are called to “Go” into the whole world with the gospel, but my fear is that we are developing a bunker mentality that works in our back yard, but fails to go to the nations. This is itself a reaction to poor missions during the 19th and 20th centuries. While church planting and training is imperative in the “Reached” world, we need to continue to partner with our brothers and sisters overseas, creating a “Glocal” partnership in all of our churches rather than a “Let them do it themselves mentality.” The authors of “When Helping Hurts” have given us some solid advice to make short-term missions more effective and less hurtful for everyone involved:

1. Make sure the host organization understands the issues behind poverty

2. Make sure the "Mission" is a result of request and need from the host community

3. Design the trip as a “Being” and “Learning” experience more than a “Doing” experience.

4. Ensure that the trip avoids a “Paternalist” mentality

5. Keep the team small

6. Create a solid Assessment for your teams

7. Stay away from the “Go and help save them” mentality, and create a "go an learn" mentality

8. Do not advertise the trip as “Fun” and “Adventurous”

9. Use “Vision Trip” vs. Mission Trip in your presentation of the trip to your people

10. Stay away from presenting trip as “Doing Missions,” when it is not, and denigrates full time mission work

11. Restrict the trip to people who have demonstrated a mission mentality in the US

12. Have the trip be a culmination of a class/learning experience that everyone is required to take (This book is a very good start for a class!)

13. Have a post trip learning experience to capitalize on the trip

14. Require every member to pay a portion of the trip from their own pockets

15. Donate as much of the raised money as you can to the host community

These are some of the suggestions that we have adhered to in the past and are very helpful, and can make an ongoing short term mission a blessing for both those going, and the host community. I would add that creating "Glocal" partnerships in the gospel is the goal, and not doing random, disconnected trips. Paul gave thanks for the Philippians "Partnership" in the gospel, and I believe it is imperative for the health of our churches to be focused on a larger gospel than our own back yards.

I know that expressing these thoughts put me on the chopping block of criticism, but I feel that it needs to be expressed so our own plants do not become ingrown, and self serving. I can take the heat, so what do you think? Blessings!

Mike

It Sure Is Hot Down Here!

The importance of clear communication is imperative. Take for example the following story about a man who simply left off one letter in his wife's email address. Here is what happened:

A couple from Minneapolis decided to go to Florida for a long weekend to thaw out during one particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the very hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years ago. Because both had jobs, they found it difficult coordinating their travel schedules. It was decided that the husband would fly to Florida on a Thursday; and, his wife would follow him the next day.

Upon arriving as planned, the husband checked into the hotel. In his room there was a computer, so he decided to send his wife an e-mail back in Minneapolis. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her address, and sent the e-mail without realizing his error.

In Houston, a widow has just returned from her husband’s funeral. The dearly departed was a minister of many years who had been called home to glory following a heart attack. The widow checked her e-mail, expecting messages from relatives and friends.

Upon reading the first message she fainted. The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My Loving Wife

Subject: I’ve arrived. I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones. I’ve just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you.

Your Loving Husband

P.S. It sure is hot down here.

Bears in our Midst

After you have watched the video and counted the number of passes (remember it is VERY important that you count ALL the passes) made between the people dressed in WHITE in this video, click on comments in order to better understand why we have looked at this clip.
And, lol, NO this is NOT one of the clips where someone in a mask jumps in front of the screen and scares the living daylights out of you! So don't worry! :) Sit back, relax and count. Again it is very important for you to get the right number, otherwise you will not be able to proceed through the exercise, so concentrate!

Please watch the clip before reading the comments. Have fun!!!! :)

Narrative or Doctrine- What Should You Teach? Walter Wangerin on the art of storytelling and why doctrine still matters. by Brandon O'Brien

Last weekend I attended Spark, a children's ministry conference near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The theme of the conference was "The Art of Storytelling." I think you'd be hard pressed to find a keynote speaker better suited to speak on that topic than Walter Wangerin. Pastor for 16 years in inner-city Chicago, father of four, grandfather of eight or so, and author of more than 40 books, Wangerin has lots of experience telling stories. And he's good at it—really good. In his two plenary sessions, he touched on a good many things that concern me—the role of the teacher, the power of stories, and the nature of the relationship between art and truth. What I appreciated most was his sense of balance.

You might expect (as I did) that when speaking to a room full of ministers, a person who makes his living telling stories would emphasize how story telling is superior to other forms of teaching, such as catechism or object lessons or memorizing facts. In fact, I've come to expect that perspective at ministry conferences in general. It's become very popular to claim that narrative is more important that systematic theology; after all (the argument goes) Jesus spoke in parables not doctrines, and the Gospels are narratives not bullet points. Fair enough. But ... Click HERE to finish this article.

Ashley’s Mission Theology

The following was found at Dr. Mike Stroope's blog. It is the theology of missions that one of Dr. Mike Stroope's students has. I was so impressed with it that I thought through it and have added in italics my thoughts and expansions to better describe my own theology of missions.

The collective blessed ones, the people of God, are known as the church. (Amen!)

The mission (which is to display the Light, the glory of God, through both word and deed, to a fallen world which was given to the collection of blessed ones) cannot be separated from the identity of God’s people.

Mission is who the church is (as in what we, the collective blessed ones, are to naturally do), not what the church does (mission is what the church does if the church is being sanctified and made more like God).

It is God’s mission, however, and not the church’s mission (It is God's mission first. And because it is God's mission, then and only then, can it be the church's mission).

The mission of church is to actively and faithfully bear witness (through overflowing actions and proclamations) to who they are and to their God.

God has a church for his mission, and not a mission for the church (Because God has a mission, He has chosen a collection of blessed ones as His instruments, to tell of His greatness, to display His glory through, which is the mission of the church).

Through the participation in God’s redemptive and restorative mission, both the church and the world are changed. (Amen!)

Found HERE

Jesus came...

Who Is Christmas For?

Matt B. Redmond:

Jesus came for those who look in the mirror and see ugliness.

Jesus came for daughters whose fathers never told them they were beautiful.

Christmas is for those who go to “wing night” alone.

Christmas is for those whose lives have been wrecked by cancer, and the thought of another Christmas seems like an impossible dream.

Christmas is for those who would be nothing but lonely if not for social media.

Christmas is for those whose marriages have careened against the retaining wall and are threatening to flip over the edge.

Christmas is for the son whose father keeps giving him hunting gear when he wants art materials.

Christmas is for smokers who cannot quit even in the face of a death sentence.

Christmas is for prostitutes, adulterers, and porn stars who long for love in every wrong place.

Christmas is for college students who are sitting in the midst of the family and already cannot wait to get out for another drink.

Christmas is for those who traffic in failed dreams.

Christmas is for those who have squandered the family name and fortune—they want “home” but cannot imagine a gracious reception.

Christmas is for parents watching their children’s marriage fall into disarray.

You can read the whole thing

here.

Great Commission Resurgence

TOWARD A GREAT COMMISSION RESURGENCE

Then Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20, HCSB).

Preamble

Southern Baptists have always been a Great Commission people. Christ’s command to go, disciple, baptize, and teach is woven into the very DNA of our churches. By God’s grace, over the last thirty years the SBC has undergone a Conservative Resurgence that has brought substantive changes to many of (Click here to view the rest of the letter).

Why I Affirm the “Great Commission Resurgence” Document

By Chuck Lawless

Anyone who knows me well knows that I do not readily sign my name to a document. I read, re-read, and re-read again. I dissect every sentence and analyze every word. Hence, when leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention produced a document entitled, (Click here to read more).

Advancing the Gospel into the 21st Century

by Tim Keller
 
We are entering a globalized, urbanized, and post-secular world. This means that we are going to be more like the Roman Empire than anything seen in centuries.

First, it is a globalized world again. The triumph of Rome's power created the Pax Romana and an unprecedented mobility of people, capital, and ideas. Cities became multi-ethnic and international in unprecedented ways. So today cities link as much, if not more, to the rest of the world than they do to their own geographically connected countries. Saskia Sassen in The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo makes the case that increasingly the residents of these cities are more like one another than they are like other residents of their own country. (Click here to continue reading).

World Mission and the Global City

The two great new realities for world mission are globalization and urbanization. A 2002 article in The Economist said that in 1950, New York was the only world city with a population of over 10 million people. Today there are over 20 such cities, 12 of which have arrived in the last two decades, with many more to come. All of these new megacities are developing in what used to be called the Third World. Why?

In the 18th century, a combination of population growth and technology brought rural Europe to its "carrying capacity," creating a surplus population, and in every family some left countryside and small towns to make a living elsewhere. As a result there were 150 years of urbanization in which the great cities of Europe swelled to be the largest in the world. Many experts now believe this is beginning to happen in Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent inLatin America, where the cities are literally exploding with new immigrants from the villages and rural areas. If urban-rural population in the southern hemisphere stabilizes at 75 percent to 25 percent, as it did in Europe and North America, then over the next few decades we will see over half a billion people move into the cities of Africa and Asia alone—the equivalent of one new Bangkok (8 million people) being created every two months. (Click here to continue reading this article)

Missions Dilemma-Steve Saint

Click here to purchase the Missions Dilemma DVD series from the I-Tec store.