One does not have to look too far into posts on this site, my videos, or books to find thoughts on the importance of an apostolic approach to church planting.
But have you ever wondered why the overwhelming majority of church planting in the North American context is a plant-and-pastor model? Why is a Pauline approach so radical and foreign to our imaginations?
Of course, there is no one cause, but I do want to draw attention to our history. We imitate what we know; we know what has been modeled before us.
European colonists were a product of Christendom and brought their variation to North America. When the new government launched in 1776, religious establishment was rejected for a plurality of religious minorities. Andrew Walls notes “the United States became a semidetached form for Christendom, with a generalized adherence to Christianity but without a state church” (Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement from the West, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming 2023, 32). Now, Protestants lived alongside unbelievers.
Though evangelization, especially toward indigenous tribes, was advocated–even written into charters–land acquisition and Christianization, rather than widespread evangelization and contextualized churches, became common. Walls continues, “These protesters against European Christendom were caught up in the structures of Christendom even as they separated themselves from it. The congregational form of church government, on which they insisted, assumed a congregation of covenanted believers calling a pastor. Such a structure had no obvious place into which to fit mission preaching, an intentional approach to those outside the Christian faith” (33). Even the ministries of John Eliot and David Brainerd were reflections of a Christendom reality. They thought in terms of a pastoral, rather than an apostolic, approach.
We imitate what we know; we know what has been modeled before us.
If my ecclesiastical experiences were formed in Christendom’s epicenter and transported to the “New World,” then I am going to replicate such in the new territory. If this Sunday our church disbands, and on Monday departs for the colonies, then we will constitute our model afresh on new soil when we disembark.
Could it be there has been little-to-no-place for an apostolic approach to church planting in North America because we inherited (and modified) ministry models transported from Europe? Could it be we have had no room for an apostolic imagination because we inherited a pastoral one from a time when only the pastoral existed?
Thanks for this — interesting to ponder. I wonder how this also contributes to the majority of US missionaries being women. In US/West model of church planting, there aren’t many ways for women to contribute. In apostolic church planting, women usually are seen as part of the team and able to contribute meaningfully in myriad ways. So women go to where they can participate more fully.
Your thoughts are very important, Bonnie. If church planter = pastor, then that is a different conversation for some denominations/churches, than if church planter = missionary.