The most critical issue in church planting circles today is an ecclesiological issue. How you answer the question, “What is a church?” will affect everything you do on the field. It will shape your methods, strategy, team, leaders, goals, and how you measure effectiveness–to mention a few matters. It was out of this conviction that I wrote Discovering Church Planting and the forthcoming Apostolic Church Planting.
That said, ecclesiology is to be contextualized to a degree. Culture and context will shape the understanding of the church that is birthed from the harvest.
Some church planters want to overlook the contextualization part, believing they can simply plant the biblical non-negotiables removed from a culture.
Other church planters want to write off biblical prescriptions and try to hold to culturally defined manifestations of church. This is more like a post-modern hermeneutic applied to missionary practice–a post-modern contextualization, if you will.
We must begin to speak in terms of:
- ecclesiological foundations (biblical non-negotiables)
- ecclesiological flexibles (biblical allowances)
We must have both on the field.
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Ted Esler, president and CEO of MissioNexus, was my most recent guest on Strike the Match. Listen to our conversation. iTunes | Android | RSS
