The Church Jesus Started is a Generosity Movement

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By Daniel Im: When I was a child, one of my favorite things to do was to go to a local 7-Eleven to buy a Slurpee, nachos with cheese, and some chewy soda bottle candies. Since 7-Eleven’s were everywhere in Vancouver, I could multiply the times of doing this— whether it was after school, before softball practice, or with my friends on the weekend. Obviously, I loved that 7-Elevens saturated Vancouver. But, little did I know that their saturated presence and large market share were the result of an intentional strategy.

The funny thing about 7-Eleven’s, and other convenient stores like them, is that they have a strategy for multiplication. They don’t haphazardly place stores wherever there’s cheap rent, nor do they wait for entrepreneurial leaders to show up at their doorstep. They are intentional— incredibly intentional. They do their research on the best location for future stores and they have an intentional leadership development process because they know that the success of their stores rises and falls on leadership. For companies like 7-Eleven, intentionality is the birthplace of multiplication.

The same is true for church planting. Intentionality—the deliberate, purposeful, and strategic thinking about something—is the oxygen of multiplication. Intentionality allows multiplication to breathe. Therefore, without intentionality, multiplication is stifled. Some may push back and wonder where’s the Spirit in all of this? As Ed Stetzer’s mentor John Mark Terry comments, “Certainly we believe that the Holy Spirit does guide Christians today; however we firmly believe that the Holy Spirit can guide our planning [including our intentionality] as well as our work” (Terry 2013, vii).

*This article is an excerpt fromMultiplication Today, Movements Tomorrow that I wrote with Ed Stetzer. Download the e-book for free or purchase hard copies of this book here.

Tension can be good. Out of tension flows a creative discussion and differences of opinion that force us to re-evaluate our viewpoints and emphases to ensure that we’re thinking biblically and effectively.

For example, right now, the tension in church planting discussion surrounds models.

Should we launch large and fast?

Should we take our time and build a strong core group?

Should we start having church to make disciples?

Should we make disciples and allow a church to form out of the discipleship?

Should we be attractional? Missional? Uni-laterally bi-directionally intentional?

And so we have megachurches, house churches, traditional churches, organic churches, plus a lot of dead and dying churches (unfortunately).

As we’ve planted Grace Hills Church, we keep using three words to reflect our model and approach to making disciples.

We Will Be Attractional

The “Come and See” of the Gospel

The attractional approach gets a bad wrap for a couple of reasons.

First, some churches know how to attract people to a production, but have no depth past Sunday morning. Second, we sometimes think the sound, the lights, and the technology are the attractive part.

We need to be attractional by living distinctively redeemed lives, keeping our integrity and trust with the surrounding world, leading people in genuine God-directed worship, serving in tangible and visible ways, and teaching a life-changing, absolute truth from the Word that acts like a sword, piercing to the depths of the human heart.

The shiny objects may get you attention, but what really attracts people is genuine community, authentic and relevant teaching, heartfelt worship, and genuine love between people.

We Will Be Transformational

The “Come and Die” of the Gospel

Jesus invited four fisherman to follow him one day.

By the end of the gospels, they are ready to die for Him.

In fact, three of them do indeed become martyrs for the faith and John suffered nearly to the point of death for the gospel.

That is transformation. That is life-change.

And that needs to be celebrated from the very birth of a new church.

We Will Be Missional

The “Go and Tell” of the Gospel

God’s intention was never for us to isolate ourselves from the world or to imitate our surrounding culture.

Rather He wants us to infiltrate the culture around us and demonstrate His love to the least, the lost, and the last of humanity so that the nations of the world can be brought into the enjoyment of the glory of God.

If attraction is all about gathering a church, then mission is more about scattering the church into the community, and into every possible mission field on the planet.

Perhaps we should stop arguing over which model is the best or most biblical and see in both the ancient and the modern church the power and effectiveness of being attractive to the culture, transformational for individuals, and missional for believers.

Balance might just be the key.

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by Ed Stetzer: A generation of Christians that has grown up with microwaves is also sold on the idea of movements. But rarely do these things go together.

Movements are not instantaneous—they can explode (that’s what makes them movements) but they don’t just show up.

It takes time to see if a movement is going to gain traction and have long-term impact. This is true in ministry. At times, the spread of the gospel has seemed to happen overnight, but the reality is that many of our greatest missionaries have labored for decades without seeing such explosive fruit.

No matter how many shortcuts we find or tips we learn, the Kingdom of God is still more like a seed and a field than a bag of popcorn and a microwave.

So what does that mean for those leading denominations?

For those looking to increase church planting at their church, or increase a focus within their denomination, there are several factors to consider, and a few keys to success. Each area of ministry has its own nuance. So, it is naïve to think that you can take a cookie-cutter approach to developing the foundations of a movement. Some things are true regardless of the ministry. Others are vastly different.

Here are three things to look at when working toward increasing church planting.

Engage the Planters

Church planting is, in a real sense, a community—it’s more of a club than an organization. Planters can spot each other in a room of pastors. It just is. Normal pastors, and a lot of denominations, feel different to them.

That isn’t a knock on denominations, many of whom do things quite well. But the fact is that many church planters find a level of camaraderie with church planters of other denominations that they do not find with people they have ministered with or learned from for years.

There is a common mindset, common passion, and common vision shared by people who are called to plant churches. Planting a church is different enough from many other ministries that it makes sense that there would be a certain level of fraternity in this movement you may not find as strongly in other ministries. That doesn’t make it better, nor does it make it worse. It just is.

There are certain expectations that come with this ministry subculture. They have their own vernacular, their own way of sizing up communities, and sometimes even their own styles. If I walk into a room of church planters, I can see them sizing each other up. They aren’t just asking, “Has this speaker ever planted a church?” They are asking, “When is the last time this speaker planted a church?” and “Has this speaker planted a church like I am planting?”

They wonder these things because they want to maximize their learning time. I’m not suggesting their approach is healthy. It is often not helpful. I’m just saying it is the reality. I’m not judging their hearts. I’m reading their culture.

If you want to be part of developing a significant and sustainable church planting movement, you need to realize that there is a strong sense of community within that culture. You may be charged with helping to grow this element in your denomination, but realize that you aren’t in this community.

As with any mission field, understanding the cultural context is important. Overseeing pioneers can seem like an impossible task. That’s part of the beauty of the Church. God doesn’t always call the equipped. He equips the called.

So, if you are a church or denominational leader, it isn’t your job to impress church planters with your planting exploits. But you can communicate that you are there to come alongside them and help them learn, pastor them, pray for them, supply biblical principles that aren’t based on trends, and generally provide a nurturing environment in which they can thrive while creating a multiplying movement. They should know that you aren’t going to pretend to be something you aren’t, but you will be what you are…and that is, for them.

Engaging church planters in this way will bring healthy side-effects that you’ll welcome. For one, planters will appreciate their denominational affiliation more and feel a part of a larger vision than just their church plant. Consequently, they are more likely to invest back into the denomination in order to push the movement forward. Nothing breathes life more into a denomination than a crop of new church planters who really believe in the vision and movement potential of their network.

Ultimately, this can win people over in a way that walking in and saying, “I’m kind of an expert,” doesn’t.

Embrace the Pace

When developing a greater church planting focus, not only is there the human community element, but there is also a time reality. Every organism and organization depends upon time to work properly. The smaller the organization, the less time it may take to achieve the goal. The larger the organization, the more time it will need to produce, but the impact is often more significant at the far-reaching level. So we can see change quickly in a small church or zone. But quick change is not part of a district or denomination. What we are talking about is recognizing the pace of a movement.

Again, we live in a world that expects immediate results, especially when it comes to change. This means there will be a lot of pressure on those initiating a culture of change. Trends may spring up overnight, but a movement will not develop in a year or two. In fact, if you want to see a mission become a movement, you will need to commit for over five years. You may be six or seven years in before you start seeing progress. The movement may not be anchored into the culture of the larger organization for at least ten years.

If you aren’t willing to work in the trenches to establish a church planting culture, you may be better off to not start at all.

You can fight time, and see it as your enemy. You can struggle to meet deadlines passed down by people who don’t realize the dynamics of pace, and end up burning out. Or you can be honest about the reality, communicate it well to those around you, and up the line. Keep the idea of pace in front of everyone. This is not a sprint. It is a marathon. And that is by God’s design. Patience through seasons of growth and decline encourages trust in and dependence on God.

Embracing the reality that a movement takes time to develop and communicating that to those involved gives the whole organization a better chance at achieving its goals in a way that is healthy and sustainable.

Establish the Path

If you are going to work with two or three church planters, you can probably do that without creating much of an infrastructure. But if you are working on a district or denominational level to create a national movement, you will need to develop a path to success. This is about systems. It is simply not possible for a person, or even a group of people, to reproduce within a movement apart from systems that carry the weight of development.

We see this in scripture with Moses, the kings, Jesus, and the Early Church leaders. Good systems were in place to move the gospel, doctrines, traditions, etc. from one generation to the next.

Systems aren’t bad. They can become clogged. They need routine maintenance. They can be modified to become more or less productive. But they are essential to the success of a growing movement.

The systems are changing. The ways we learned and worked in the 1980s and 1990s have changed. The rapid change in technology has impacted this. Ultimately, you have to be able to say, “Here is the pathway. This is how we will know you are walking the path. Here is how we will celebrate the completion of the journey.” Systems are required to know the pathway and help people walk through it. And systems can outlast the current team of overseers, allowing for reproduction beyond the current cycle.

But also, this doesn’t mean that systems have to be rigid or one-dimensional. It is entirely possible for a movement to house multiple systems that are rapidly multiplying different kinds of churches. The important thing to remember is that systems are meant to be helpful and simple. When that is no longer the case, then it’s time to innovate new paths to keep the movement going.

Successful church planting movements often require these three things: engaging the people you will be working with by understanding the nature of the culture; embracing the pace that is necessary to see the long-term dream become reality; and establishing the pathway to success and the associated systems so that all involved know what is expected and how to achieve the goals.

We need more church planting…and more leaders making good choices to get there.