The language of the Church exists in two locations: 1) within the established contexts; and 2) within the pioneer fields. One is the language of age-related maturity, structure, great organization, highly educated leadership, and comes with time. The other is the language of new believers who recently self-identified as a local church. While the latter group does not know the difference between Genesis and Jonah, they are regenerate, baptized, and have agreed to live out the Kingdom Ethic locally and globally. They are the local expression of the universal Body of Christ; they just don’t look cool by established Church standards.
Though the language of the Church is to have variation in both of these locations, such does not occur often. The Church in the more mature setting ends up establishing a cultural standard of success. This is often communicated through the writings of church leaders who came to faith and experienced much sanctification in the established Church context. These authors often forget that the language of the Church is to exist in two locations. Such variation is not a postmodern approach to ecclesiology. While the biblical requirements for a local church to exist at any time, place, or among any people is a universal constant, many authors often forget this truth–expecting all churches to manifest characteristics of much older churches (without considering the church in a pioneer context).
Roland Allen observed this problem in the early twentieth century. Anglican theologians were writing books on ecclesiology for the Church in the established contexts. Educators, priests, and missionaries would read such writings and respond with the expectation that such ecclesiological development must be in place before the Church could be a healthy church in the pioneer fields. What people failed to realize was that such writings were only possible after centuries of sanctification in the West. Few were willing to extend such grace to the Majority World Churches. Cultural preferences for what constituted a healthy, local church won out over biblical prescriptions.
This matter was clearly felt in the realm of the Lord’s Supper. Anglican ecclesiology advocated that only the ordained could officiate Communion. Allen, in his unpublished work The Ministry of Expansion (which I plan to publish in the year), noted that not only was such a practice unbiblical and culturally defined, but inappropriate for the Church in the pioneer lands. A day might come when the cultural expectations of Anglican theologians would be applied to the new churches in Asia and Africa, but for now, he noted, the Spirit had graced the new churches with all they needed to observe the Table. Literacy, education, and the traditional route to ordination would likely happen later.
In biblical hermeneutics, we often say context is king. The location of the verse, in the passage, in the book, in the Bible, must be taken into consideration for understanding. In a similar fashion, context is a critical factor when it comes to certain elements of ecclesiology. What is often culturally expected where the Church exists with much age is actually a hindrance to both sanctification and multiplication in pioneer contexts. There are things we do as The Church at Brook Hills (beneficial in our context) that would not be beneficial to a newly planted church among Saudis in Saudi Arabia and among Saudis in Los Angeles.
Biblical ecclesiology always trumps cultural or denominational ecclesiology. Such is a key to healthy Great Commission activity. Whenever we read books on ecclesiology written by biblically sound authors, attend their conferences, or sit in their classes, we must always ask the following questions:
- Is their primary audience the Church in a well-developed context or the Church in a pioneer area?
- How much of the practical implications of this teaching is expected for an established Church as opposed to a local church that was birthed from the harvest last month?
- Where does the teacher’s cultural or denominational expectations shape the ecclesiology, going beyond the biblical prescriptions?
And here is a bonus thought: What happens when we recognize that the established Church context and pioneer context can co-exist within the same geographical setting–such as North America, and the rest of the West? Remember, context has more to do with culture than geography.
Important truths in here. Thanks Dr. Payne.
Dr. Payne,
In recent weeks and months, your work has been instrumental in reorienting my thinking about church planting and missions. I’m grateful for your careful and rigorous insight. I have many many questions, but briefly, your “bonus thought” raises something that I’ve been wrestling with as I’ve begun to be reoriented. I am completely on board with church planting as the means of kingdom expansion, and I am completely on board with the necessity of focusing on unreached people groups. However, particularly in a North American context, I’ve often thought of church planting in terms of reaching people in a given geographic area and not so much as targeting a specific people group within the geographic reach of the church. Can you explain to me why we need apostolic church planting that targets a specific subgroup of people within a given area as opposed to church planting that seeks to reach anyone in the target area with a focus on a particularly needy group of people?
Thank you, Marco, for the kind comments and question. My apologies for taking so long to respond.
Briefly, people need the gospel, not geographies. While people live in geographic locations, there are many, many unreached people groups in North America. They are found in numerous locations–both in heavily reached and heavily unreached areas. If we are working to not build on someone’s foundation (e.g., Rom 15), then we should focus on those who are unreached and have no churches working to disciple them. Of course, we should desire to reach anyone in the area (i.e., unbelievers); however, this begins by reaching the few unbelievers, who will be able to continue to reach their own in the area, as well as cross cultures to reach the others in the area. I hope this helps.
Thanks for your response, J.D. I absolutely agree that peoples and not geographies need churches. The heart of my question is whether we are inadvertently espousing pragmatism, especially the homogeneous unit principle, when we seek to plant a church specifically for an unreached people group when that UPG lives in a diverse geographic location. If we are working to plant a church in an isolated, monoethnic tribe, then that congregation is naturally homogeneous. But in diaspora missions, perhaps in a city like New York wherein UPGs are distributed amongst any number of other people groups, if we “target” a church plant among that particular group, are we falling to pragmatism? It seems that the thrust of the NT is toward plurality, diversity, and multiculturalism, not homogeneity. Don’t get me wrong here. I am all for reaching UPGs, and we absolutely need more emphasis on engaging those who have no access to the gospel. However, I want to better understand our theological rationale for targeting subsets within a larger set, as I am wary of prioritizing efficiency and “what works” over what is most biblically faithful, even if the goal (i.e., reaching UPGs) is good, necessary, and largely underemphasized and even ignored by the Church.
Good thoughts, Marco. They represent a very complex matter, difficult to address in a comment section.
If the groups of an area are interacting on a regular basis, then it may not be a challenge to plant multi-ethnic churches from the harvest. When it comes to diasporic groups, second and tertiary generations are often more comfortable with others than first generation. Of course, there are many groups (pre-conversion) that no matter how much they interact in society, they like staying with their own (e.g., Some Muslims find Hindus offensive, some Cubans do not like interacting with some Guatemalans). All of this is a pre-conversion issue. We do not try to force groups to overcome their prejudices and racism before coming to Jesus. So, while the homogeneous unit principle can be abused, it does not have to be and it does not have to be used as a reflection of pragmatism.
You mention targeting. While I do not like using that word, the reality is that all church planters must focus. There are 20 million people in the metro NY area, where does a team begin? And wherever they begin, the truth is that they are focusing (or targeting) on some group somewhere.
I spend more time addressing these and other matters of strategy in my book, Developing a Strategy for Missions. Hope this helps.
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