Church Planting

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Introduction

Over the years, church planters passionately stepped into church planting across the globe at great costs in obedience to God’s call. Some used the mother-church method and cell or house church method in cross-cultural settings. Some planters believe that it is the quality of their planting methods, effective publicity, attractive programmes, missional teams and resources that will make their church plant successful. Whereas these are helpful, the central factor is the God of mission, who, through the work of the Holy Spirit and the gospel reveals himself to people, convicts of sin, transforms people and brings them salvation.

For effectiveness, planters with the right mix of spiritual gifts including outreach and evangelism, missional leadership, pastoral care skills, good administrative gifts, and physical strength are helpful in leading the missional work. The church functions to participate in God’s ongoing mission with the mandate to proclaim the gospel. Proclaiming the gospel requires crossing of cultural barriers and planting of churches into the social context of the missional community among others, planters have lessons to learn from these past experiences. Church planting is an important subject, though it’s often not given the required attention. For example, summarising the report of the working group of the Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Council, in the late 1970s, church planting in England was largely unknown although the Church of England was familiar with the idea of daughter churches, and in the decade following each world war the century-wide overall decline in opening new church buildings was reversed. The report notes that:

...church growth thinking arrived in the UK via the...

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