When C. Peter Wagner published his 1990 book, Church Planting for a Greater Harvest, he included these famous words: “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.” The reality is this “truth” was not true in 1990 and it is not true today.
Can church planting be an effective evangelistic methodology? Yes, but that depends on your approach to church planting. Not all church planting methods are the same. Many churches are planted with little or no evangelism. Though throughout the Majority World, many churches are being planted from the harvest of lostness, the overwhelming majority of churches planted in North America are through transfer growth. It is extremely, extremely rare to find a church in the U.S. or Canada that has come into existence with 100% conversion growth (It is not because we lack lostness here, including over 400 unreached people groups.).
As I have shared before, the biblical model of church planting is unusual for us. We have a serious problem. We are not called to plant churches, but think we are. It is out of disciple-making that churches are birthed. Such is a supremely apostolic work.
Today, some of you will hear of the number of new churches that your network started. Next week, Lord willing, some of you are going to hear about the number of new churches that have come into existence through your denomination. Next month, some of you are going to hear about the number of newly planted churches started by your church.
And everyone will be excited because we believe we are called to plant churches.
And someone somewhere is going to say, “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.” And everyone is going to assume that because all of these churches were started, we are making wise contributions to the Great Commission.
When you hear these things, be a wise Kingdom steward and remember the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20) and how churches were planted in the New Testament (Acts 11:20-26; 13-14; 1 Thes 1:2-10). Then ask, “How many people came to faith and how many sheep were shuffled around in the Kingdom to plant all these churches?”
Maybe my stats are out of date, but the last time I looked at them, new churches, on average, have a baptism to membership ratio that is much higher than that of older churches. Something on the order of 1:10 for new churches compared to 1:40 for older churches. This is the math upon which Wagner’s statement is based, and in that context it is true.
The problem you are describing is actually a problem, not with church planting, but with church culture and church planters and their drive to plant the next mega church at the expense of biblical discipleship. When money, attendance, budgets, smoke machines and excellence are the primary concerns, evangelism and discipleship will always suffer. Why? Because evangelizing and discipling people who are far away from God is messy, and leading them to become all that God intends for them to become takes time and almost always entails a bumpy journey.
It’s so much easier to give in to a consumeristic model and transfer members in. But I would argue that kind of activity doesn’t even qualify as church planting. Biblical church planting begins by going to an unreached people group, or an unreached neighborhood and making disciples. Once enough people are evangelized-discipled to make a community of faith, Jesus will call them out and build His Church in that place.
So, J.D., I guess I am agreeing with you but clarifying. . 😉
Tim Ahlen
Good words, Tim. Yes, it has long been shown that generally newer churches have better baptism ratios than older churches. This is also true in my denomination (SBC). Our newly planted churches generally have better ratios than older churches. Last week the new ratio was released for the denomination as a whole: 1:59.
Yes, we need a systemic shift. I love your paragraph related disciple making, upgs, and Jesus building His Church. I think I’m agreeing with you too. 🙂
JD
I would have to respectfully disagree with you. I believe Wagner had it correct by stating that CP was the greatest evangelistic tool if we don’t “cheat” by shifting people and calling it CP.
I do agree with you that new churches could be started without new converts but starting a church is very different from planting a church.
Thank you for sharing, Manny. Yes, “if we don’t ‘cheat’ by shifting people and calling it CP” is the issue at hand. However, few people are asking about disciples being made and churches birthed from the harvest. Most people are simply satisfied with just having another church organized.
Thanks brother for these useful reflections. I agree that disciple making is key.
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I see your point but think we should be careful about over reaction. I am sure we will have some of both types of growth in our church plant. Today, one cannot make a perfect comparison with the church planting in Acts because the fact is there were no “believers” yet where they were planting. The closest thing were the Bible-believing, God fearers found at the synagogues and that’s exactly where Paul typically started, though not always. The real issue is motive and mine is to make disciples, baptize them and teach them to obey. Also, in my first plant many who considered themselves believers actually got saved. Just as important. I agree with your heart on this but am concerned with a current over reaction and attitude from some planters and those who would support planters. This over reaction often leads to failure on the field from what I have seen. It is pretty hard to be a purest (in the way you describe) and see success in this country. One of the big problems is established churches not celebrating those who would leave (be sent out) to help a plant get going. A bit of both/and goes a long ways.
Thank you for sharing, Mark. You make some good points. I appreciate the update from your field. This is helpful. However, seeing that the overwhelming majority of church planting work is not what I’m advocating, we are a long way from over reacting. I doubt if even 2% of such Kingdom labors are apostolic in nature and practice. There is something about a Rom 15 (i.e., not building on another’s foundation, even in a post-Christianized context) theology that needs to be revisited and given priority in our church planting labors.
I don’t disagree. Good point about Romans 15. I guess I’m just not sure I have that kind of plant in me. Not the way I have done it or am doing it. But I’ve seen hundreds saved and baptized and many discipled so I’ll just keep plugging away. I apreciate you and your work. Thanks for your grace.
Keep plugging away, Mark. Be who God has called you to be, and not someone else.
Hi JD. I think the biggest misconception is about what the NT says “disciple-making” actually is. So many think “making disciples” is what we call discipleship. We call discipleship that process by which we teach and equip believers in the context of communities of Jesus (churches) by which they grow in sanctification and conformity to the image of Christ. Now, that is a biblical ministry, this “discipleship”. This minstry can be done by gathering existing believers into a new core group, launch team or house church, which is often the way we do “church planting”. However that is not what the NT is speaking directly to when it speaks of “making disciples”. I understand that the term is only found twice in the NT (Matt 28:19, Acts 14:21). In both contexts it is about making new disciples. In Matthew 28:19, this is clear because of the word “them”, the direct object of the participle “baptizing”. There is no antecedent to this pronoun. The antecedent is implied in the verb, “make disciples”. In other words, Jesus said “baptizing the disciples” that is, “baptizing them”. Now, this means a disciple is simply a convert or a professing believer (a true believer in actuality), because we baptize “them”, people who are already called disciples. To make disciples does not mean do discipleship with disciples. That is covered under, “teaching them to obey”. Acts 14:21 confirms this interpretation because through preaching the gospel the result was disciples were made. They then strengthened the disciples, which is akin to discipleship. We need to make disciples, that is evangelize all nations so that new disciples are made, then we should strengthen them and form churches, or strengthen them in existing churches.
It is also telling that church planting is not a biblical term. The bible refers to planting as a Kingdom analogy, but it is almost always about planting the gospel seed, not about planting a church. Churches are formed in the bible, following the planting of the gospel seed among the lost.
We keep sending out pastors with a core group to equip and teach and strengthen as a new church but it’s not the core task of the Great Commission. Meanwhile very few people in our communities are hearing the gospel outside the walls of the church building, movie theatre launch venue, school gymnasium launch venue, or living room house gathering. We need to change.
Donald McGavran said that disciple making happens on the front end of the Great Commission: evangelizing. And perfecting was the teaching of obedience. I have often spoken of making disciples as evangelism, i.e., a disciple is made when he or she comes to faith. Then, comes the disciple shaping, i.e., the teaching them to obey all that Christ commanded.
C Peter Wagner’s assertion. to me stands at all time. The foundation of CP is Matth28:19-20, This captures Discipleship. Church planting does begin with a building. It states with the proclamation of the Good News and those who believed are baptized and gathered for discipleship.
Thank you, ACHU, for sharing. I agree that church planting is supposed to begin with proclamation of the gospel. However, most of the time, in North America, it does not–hence this post.
Yes, “disciples” are made instantaneously and confirmed/shaped over time. Most evangelicals believe this but we continually do not define or think of disciple-making this way or are content not to change. In this way, we can champion new church planting and church growth and church gathering and think we are being faithful to the Great Commission and yet are bypassing the foundational imperative in the Commission. Our church planting neglects the primary task given us by Jesus in favor of the attendant task, making it the primary. Both tasks are necessary and related but the prior imperative in our mission is evangelism – never divorced from disciple shaping.
The greatest single effective method for evangelism is preaching the gospel to the lost. If we had more people doing this our ratio would become 1:1 instead of 1:40 or 1:59.
Thanks for sharing, Seth.
Dear J.D.,
Sorry dude, but you completely wiffed on this one. Wagner was referring to the biblical model for church planting, not to the many modern methods for church planting, yet even at that, a new church plant where a gospel preaching church did not exist is still the most effective means of evangelism though it begin with mature believers because they then become a light in an otherwise Gospel deprived area. As a very veteran missionary (15 years in West Africa), I can assure you that evangelistic campaigns do not, as a rule, result in legitimate conversions. Most of those “converted” during such campaigns either disappear soon after or make legitimate professions of faith after having received more thorough teaching in a local church. Conversion to biblical Christianity requires a certain amount of information and, therefore, the investment of time in teaching. A biblical church plant is not simply gathering a group to sign a charter, but making disciples, identifying those disciples with Christ and his local church through baptism, and then training them for life and service. That church planting method, the only genuinely biblical model, is , not only, the most effective evangelistic method, but requires evangelism as its first, and primary, step.
I didn’t miss that that’s what you were getting at, but you took Wagner’s statement out of context so that you could then correct it. I understand fully the effectiveness of attacking popular, but inaccurate, statements and opinions as a means of getting people’s attention, but we owe to those we correct to adress what they’ve said consistent with the context in which they said it. I could, for example, if I were so inclined, twist what you’ve said here as an effort to combat establishing new churches by mature Christians in regions of the world their responsabilities have taken them to, but I know that’s not at all what you intend to do.
That said, my friend, if you’d like to be taken seriously by those of us who actually plant new churches the biblical way, you might want to reconsider bashing statements like that made by Wagner because I can assure you that biblical church planting is both exactly what Jesus demanded of His disciples, it’s what His disciples did, and it is the most effective method of evangelism.
John, I think you wiffed on understanding the context of this post. Wagner’s comment in context is not the point. There were many churches planted in the 1990s (and many today) that are not very evangelistic–making the methodology not live up to Wagner’s claim (in its context).
Wagner by defination said effective evangelism as of a new convert becoming a responsible person. He used the Engel scale to explain about it.