Why do I use the words church planting?
That question led me to start using different words to describe what I do. The term “church planting” was a hot topic in American church culture during the 1990s. It’s not a common part of the vernacular of early Jesus followers or in much of Christian history. Jesus’ early followers simply were on a mission to make disciples. They would have said their mission was disciple-making, while Jesus was building the church. This is the Jesus pattern that we should follow today.
The mission to start the church
The Father put us on a mission with fellow travelers who will form the church Jesus must build. So we can say that the mission of disciple-making leads to forming a church. This is superior to the other way around to say that the church has a mission to make disciples.
If our understanding of Jesus’ mission is not in line with our missionary calling to make disciples, the results will almost always have a tone of dissonance. Those of us who are leaders must make sure we start where a missionary would start — from scratch.
Disciple-making out of nothing EX NI HI LO
There is a term in Scripture unique to the Bible. It is the phrase, EX NI HI LO, which means “out of nothing.” Our disciple-making cultures are often ex ni hi lo. Because so little actual disciple-making occurs in our country we often find we must start our multiplication cultures from scratch, nada, zippo—nothing. The missionary flow we’re talking about often begins from nothing.
The common approach to church planting is to think we can create a church that is so cool people must come. Many planters start churches by hiving off a subset of existing Christians from another church or gathering disconnected believers from around a city. This is all well-intentioned and probably better than nothing, but in most cases these planters are still starting a church from a prevailing American church mindset. After a few months of effort, they’ve started a core group, and before long they are having gatherings. In most cases, a church service is the desired outcome.
The Jesus pattern is unfortunately unknown in most churches
Leaders who follow this approach aren’t really following the missionary flow that Jesus initiated. His flow starts when you identify who you are as a disciple first and then identify who you are called to reach. This requires you to learn how to engage the culture with effective spiritual conversations. As the graphic illustrates, you must do research and listen prayerfully to the Spirit’s leading. There must also be a season of investment and listening to the voices in the culture you are called to reach.
Inevitably, there will be a season of trial and error and patient investing to best know how to reach those you have been called to reach. When you’ve put into place Jesus’ disciple-making culture, a transformed community will often emerge. Only the Holy Spirit can create a transformed community that becomes an effective congregation of Christ-followers.
Spiritual conversations and cultural context
Here’s a reality check. Engaging in spiritual conversations and learning the cultural context takes time. That’s why you must become a friend to effectively engage the culture. One of the most profound things about Jesus (which is often overlooked) is that he invested 30 years without formalizing anything. He didn’t plant a church or start a small group. He just engaged the culture and took the pressure off the process. His badge of honor was that he did life and meals with those who were far from the religious in-crowd. He embraced being called a “friend of sinners,” although his critics considered that an insult.
To Jesus, spiritual conversations were names and faces, real people. He spent his entire life befriending the very people the religious crowd was hell-bent on condemning. One of my friends says, “If we are to make disciples as Jesus did, we have to sit in the smoking section.” Jesus sat with those the church crowd would never tolerate.
A KINGDOM focused community
Without a friendship-level understanding of people, we tend to make coarse generalizations, false assumptions, and judgmental analyses, and we initiate awkward moves toward engaging them. Engaging culture isn’t as much about “doing evangelism” as it is incarnating the presence of Christ in every relationship we form. If we fail to engage well and live as Christ would live among our neighbors and friends, we fail as missionaries and the culture doesn’t see the visible beauty of the formation of a Kingdom-focused community.
The next step can only be made when the “power of the Spirit” moves on an Oikos (people group) community. In the New Testament that took the form of miracles and healings. In our context, the “power of the Spirit” often can result in evidence of the supernatural but it can also manifest in high levels of favor and spiritual traction. This almost always results in the creation of a Spirit-led “transformed community.”
The most visible step in the missionary flow is what we call “transformed community.” This is the natural second phase of life as a missionary, not because it’s a “step” but because it’s all you can do when you start everything from scratch.
Imagine that those in your mission do a great job with spiritual conversations. Let’s say they incarnate well into Jesus-centered communities in retail stores, in kids’ sports, coffee shops, restaurants, flower shops, and schools. Imagine that each of them becomes friends with a handful of people and they begin growing in their spiritual curiosity and their relational connection to you. In the past, your natural next step would be to invite them to church. But not this time. Because at this point, you don’t have one.
Building a faith community
What you have is a faith community.
That’s all you need at this point. You will find that a group of people will thrive in this new, transformed community. As people move toward your tribe as friends, they will notice your group differs from any other. This transformed community will become the oasis for which a great number of thirsty people cry. Some who are not socially confident will not easily branch out to initiate spiritual conversations. They will, however, gladly encourage those around them to take a step to follow Jesus simply by inviting others into your transformed community.
Through ad hoc discussions about God and the way we live our lives and our invitations to join us as we are about our Jesus mission, they can’t help but ask questions. They know there is a deeper core to our identity. They often ask us things like, “So what are you guys all about?” As we began to connect with our friends socially and recreationally, they began to invite themselves into our spiritual community.
As the community takes shape we also will continue to engage more people. These new disciples will learn from each other.
Post-Christian culture and the Jesus Pattern
Our Western context is recovering from Christendom, I find that people will sniff out “church agendas” regardless of how slickly you apply a bait and switch. When they sniff it out, they often will feel betrayed if they sense you are trying to “go church on them.” They will, however, be drawn to a transformed Jesus community. They will often be compelled to participate and move seamlessly into the spiritual community as long as it doesn’t appear to have false motives or sub-terranean agendas. It’s pretty safe to say that most people are leery of institutional church cultures.
Launching authentic Christian communities
Yet, they are drawn like a moth to flame toward authentic environments where they can find friends and discover who Jesus is. Spiritual environments don’t scare them; hidden agendas do. This is why many will be far more comfortable drawing friends into a transformed spiritual community than the initial hard work of engaging in the first round of spiritual conversations that are necessary to launch the movement.
Be patient as you start your process. The first step of spiritual conversations can’t be short-circuited, bypassed or programmed. There is no substitute for this critical step. Remember, before long a transformed community will emerge and many more of your leaders will find their groove, embracing people into the Kingdom life of following Jesus and creating even more transformed communities. Once a transformed community emerges, you have the momentum required to actually start a movement in the Jesus Pattern.
If they are disciples, this group will naturally multiply to take the next step on the left of this graph. This step is for those you reach to have spirit-led dependence modeled for them. They will naturally catch this skill and continue to have Spirit-empowered, spiritual conversations with those who are outside of your community. This contagion will spread and Jesus will be building His Church.
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