I recently spoke to church planters at an event held in Atlanta by the North American Mission Board, addressing some of the material in my most recent book Discovering Church Planting. I have been told the audio will be made available very soon. When that happens, I’ll link it to the blog and post my Powerpoint presentation for you as well.
While we wait for this material, I’m going to start a new series today based on some of that presentation.
The main point I’m attempting to make in this series is: in any context, the Church must operate from an apostolic missiology when it comes to missionary endeavors. Nowhere is this matter more urgent today than in the U.S. and Canadian contexts in particular, and throughout western nations in general. I plan to describe this particular missiology in a future post. Until then. . .
As Goes Your Theology, As Goes Your Missiology, As Go Your Methods
Church planters must be outstanding theologians and outstanding missionaries. To have one without the other is a liability to the Kingdom. If our theological foundation is wrong, our missiology and methods are on tenuous grounds when it comes to the advancement of the Kingdom among a population segment, people group, etc.
Where is the Pendulum in the West?
What is a church planter? I know just asking this question on this blog may seem like an elementary matter. I assure you such is not the case (and I promise I’m not trying to fill blog space with unnecessary information. 🙂 ) Have you ever searched the Scriptures for a biblical portrait of a church planter? If so, what does that picture look like?
Let me ask another question to get us thinking in this new blog series: Particularily in the U.S., how is the church planter typically defined, as a missionary or as a pastor? In other words, in what direction does the church planting pendulum point (toward pastor or missionary) when it comes to a general understanding the church planter in the 21st century in western contexts? How do most of the books, conferences, blogs, church planters themselves, etc. describe the church planter, as missionary or as pastor? 
I’ll leave you with a more important question: Does the Bible generally describe a church planter as a person functioning primarily in a pastoral role or an apostolic role?
As goes your theology, as goes your missiology, as go your methods.
Stay tuned…
I’m looking forward to seeing where you go with this subject. As of yet, I don’t know how you define the terms you’re using, so I don’t know how I would answer the question you raise. For example, how many “church planters” do you see in the New Testament? By “pastoral role” are you referring to the role described by Paul to Timothy and Titus as compared to an “apostolic role” which would be typified by whom in the New Testament?
Thanks Stan for the comment. Stay tuned. I hope I can offer answers in future posts. Until then, I see church planters as a derivative of missionaries which are a derivative of the apostles in a generic sense. Taken this way, I see several church planters in the NT. Were Timothy and Titus pastors according to our contemporary understanding? No. They planted churches. They functioned in an apostolic role for the most part. The elders were already in place in Ephesus, and Titus was to appoint elders on Crete. Were Timothy and Titus pastoral in some of their activiites? Yes, definitely. Stay tuned.
Dr. Payne, I can’t wait for your answer to the first question regarding apostolic missiology in the West. I think this is a glaring oversight in the current church planting movement at least in the US. I’ve been involved with a church plant in the Baltimore-Washington area for almost five years and attended/watched a LOT of conference (SBC, Resurgence, Redeemer, Frost and Hirsch, Cole).
Sadly, it seems that the paradigm most everyone operates from within the US is the church planting pastor (the one who plants and then stays for years) rather than the apostolic, which seeks to start and equip multiple churches, who then do the same. I guess I’m basically asking, why are we afraid domestically to embrace CPM methodology (undergirded by apostolic missiology) which our international missionaries use?
Thank you, Scott.
Dr. Payne, This is a very useful discussion. First of all many evangelicals are so nervous about the nomenclature of apostle/apostolic that it is a leap for many to work through the required paradigm shift. That being said, I believe the task of church planting or assembly seeding is essentially the sphere of an apostolic man with a team that specializes in the creation of Kingdom incubators i.e. new churches. Plant and water…God increases it, set elders in place then on to the next. Indeed with modern communication and transportation a gifted team could do multi-site nearly from the get-go. Thanks for your seminal thinking.
Thanks, Joseph for your post.
J. D.
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