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Transcript

The Joys of Planting a Church · Reformed Thinking

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All right, welcome to Reform Thinking.
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I'm your host, and as always, I'm here with our expert to walk
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through the landscape of theology and practice always
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through the lens of Scripture. It's good to be here.
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We hold to the Westminster Confession, and we really try to
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see the world from a, you know, a consistently reformed
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worldview. The goal is to understand how
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God works, His mechanisms of grace, and what He actually
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requires of us, His Church. And mechanisms of grace is a
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great way to put it. For today's deep dive, we spent
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a lot of time on the doctrines themselves, election,
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predestination, all of that. But today is much more about the
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the pavement. How do those doctrines play out
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on the ground? How does God actually gather his
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people? Exactly what is the machinery he
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uses? And the answer, of course, is
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the local church. But we're going a step further
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today. Not just the church's existence,
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but its multiplication. We've got a really fantastic set
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of sources. We're in the book Biblical
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Missions, Principles, Priorities, and Practices.
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A great resource. A great one, and we're zeroing
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in on one chapter by Conrad Mboue, The Joys of Planting a
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Church. He's often called the Spurgeon
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of Africa, a really powerful voice.
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Absolutely. And we're pairing that with a, a
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sort of case study insert by John Glass about planting
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churches in, of all places, Geneva.
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Yeah, that combination is what makes this so compelling.
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You've gotten a Bowie giving us the big biblical principles from
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a global self perspective, and then John Glass comes in with
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the boots on the ground reality of what that looks like in
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deeply secular post Christian Europe.
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And they're both driving at the exact same point from 2 very
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different angles. They really are.
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So before we jump into the text itself, let's start with a kind
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of diagnostic question. If you go to a biologist and you
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ask is this living thing healthy?
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What's the number one sign of biological health?
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It's reproduction, yeah, 100%. Right in almost any species.
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If an Organism just takes in nutrients, occupy space, but
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can't reproduce itself, it's a dead end.
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It's, to borrow the phrase, an evolutionary dead end.
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It's dying, and that's a. That's a tough analogy because
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when we look at the local church, we use all sorts of
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other metrics for health, don't we?
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Oh yeah, We look at seating capacity.
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We look at the annual budget, the quality of the music, the
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number of programs. But if we apply that simple
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biological principle, a church that doesn't reproduce, a church
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that doesn't plan other churches, is in a very real
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sense, sterile. It's dying.
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And that's the core tension that both of our sources are getting
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at today. The modern, maybe Western,
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tendency is to gather and to keep, to hoard.
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Hoard our best people, hoard our money.
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Right. Hoard the best musicians, the
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best teachers, all to create this one excellent singular
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experience for the people inside the building.
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But the biblical model, as Meiwei is going to argue pretty
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forcefully, is the opposite. It's scattering.
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It's planting. It's centrifugal.
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Pushing out, not just pulling in.
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Exactly. So let's look at the paradigm
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that Midway sets up. He doesn't start with theory.
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He takes us straight to the Bible, to Acts chapter 16 and
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the church at Philippi. A perfect place to start.
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This is Paul's second missionary tour, and just the way it begins
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is a master class in divine sovereignty.
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It. Really is because it starts with
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a closed door. Multiple closed doors.
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If you read the text, Paul has a strategy.
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He's not just wandering around. He wants to go into the Roman
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province of Asia, which is modern day Turkey.
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Makes perfect sense. It's a major hub.
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Populist. Wealthy.
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It's the logical next step, but the text just says the Holy
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Spirit prevented him. Which is a sentence that should
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just stop us in our tracks. The Apostle Paul, on a mission
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from God to preach the gospel, is told no by God.
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We so often think of closed doors from the devil, right?
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But here Scripture is crystal clear.
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They try to go into Bithynia, and again, the Spirit of Jesus
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did not allow them. So they're basically funneled
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geographically down to the coast to the city of Troas.
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They're at the edge of the map, basically they're standing there
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looking at the agency and there's nothing in front of them
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but water. Their plans are in ruins.
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They can't go north, they can't go east, and it's right there at
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that point of human frustration that the divine call comes.
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The famous Man of Macedonia vision.
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Correct. Paul has a vision in the night.
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He sees a man from Macedonia across the water in Europe,
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pleading with him. Come over to Macedonia and help
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us. And the conclusion is immediate.
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They conclude that God has called them to preach the gospel
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there. This is the moment, this is the
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pivot point where the Gospel officially crosses from Asia
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into Europe, and you just have to pause and think about how
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different world history would be if God had let Paul follow his
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original plan. But God sends him W.
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It's just it's a stunning example of God's direct
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management of this whole enterprise.
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It is so they get on a boat, they cross the water and they
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land in Philippi, the leading city of that district of
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Macedonia. Now, if I'm Paul, after a
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supernatural personal invitation like that, I'm probably
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expecting a bit of a welcome wagon.
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You're expecting something right?
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A crowd, maybe A synagogue that's just right for for
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revival. The man of Macedonia must be
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waiting for me. But that is not at all what they
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find. Not even close.
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First thing they notice is there's no synagogue, which is a
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key detail. That means there weren't even 10
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Jewish men in the entire city to form a quorum to start one.
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So it's a gentile city through and through.
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Very much so. So Paul does what he always
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does. He looks for a place of prayer.
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He hears there might be 1 down by the river.
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So on the Sabbath he goes down there, and who does he find?
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A group of women. Not the man of Macedonia.
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Not the man of Macedonia. And this is where Mumwi really
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wants us to focus. Look at the first fruits of
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Europe, the charter members of the first Church on the European
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continent, because this is not a strategic marketing plan, this
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is a display of raw unconditional election.
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So let's break them down. Who are the first three people
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God calls into this church? It's just an incredible group.
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The first one is a woman named Lydia.
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She's a seller of purple goods. So she's in luxury textiles,
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this high end stuff. Right.
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She's a businesswoman. She probably has some means,
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some status. She's described as a God fearer,
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which meant she was a Gentile who was attracted to the Jewish
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faith but hadn't fully converted, and the text says the
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Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was
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saying. So, convert #1A wealthy,
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religiously inclined female merchant.
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OK, who's next? Next you get the polar opposite.
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A slave girl. And not just a slave.
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No, she's possessed by a spirit of divination, a spirit of
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Python. She's being horribly exploited
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by her owners who are using her demonic affliction to make money
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telling fortunes. She's at the absolute bottom of
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the social ladder. Spiritually dark, socially
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invisible, Economically abused. And Paul, in a moment of, I
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think, compassion and frustration, he cast the demon
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out of. Her he does, which of course
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lands him in a world of trouble because he just destroyed her
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owner's source of income, and that's what gets him and Silas
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thrown into prison. Which providentially leads
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directly to the third convert. The Philippian jailer.
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Here's your blue collar civil servant.
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He's a Roman official, probably a former soldier who got this
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post as a kind of retirement plan.
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He's the guy who has just beaten Paul and Silas and locked them
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in the innermost prison with their feet in stocks.
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And after the earthquake, he's about to kill himself.
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So because he thinks the prisoners have escaped.
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And Paul stops him, and by the end of that night, this hardened
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Pagan jailer and his entire household have heard the gospel,
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believed, and been baptized. OK, so let's just pause and look
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at that congregation, the First Church of Philify.
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You have Lydia, the wealthy merchant.
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You have the formerly demon possessed slave girl and you
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have the rough and tumble Roman jailer.
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If you hired a church growth consultant today and gave them
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that demographic profile, they tell you you're doomed.
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They'd laugh you out of the room.
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What do these three people have in common?
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Socially, nothing. Economically, nothing.
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Culturally, they are worlds apart.
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But they have Christ in common, and that's the whole point.
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That's the glory of it. That's the glory of the church.
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It's not a social club for people with similar backgrounds.
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It's a new humanity being created out of the people God
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calls to himself. And Ambiwe's point is that this
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strange, unlikely little group became the launchpad for the
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evangelization of an entire continent.
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And and Bui also highlights what he calls the stick ability of
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this church. Paul's letter to them years
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later is just soaked in affection.
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It's called the Epistle of Joy. Why was he so uniquely fond of
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the Philippians? Because they got it, they
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understood what it meant to be partners in the gospel.
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He uses the Greek word Koinonia. It's not just fellowship, like
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having coffee after the service. It's a joint participation in a
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shared enterprise. They weren't passive consumers
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of his teaching. Not at all.
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They were active investors in his mission, and Buay points out
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that they were the ones who supported him financially.
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When Paul went on to Thessalonica, the Philippians
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sent aid. When he was in prison in Rome
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years later, they sent Epiphroditus with a gift.
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At one point Paul says no church entered into partnership with me
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and giving and receiving except you only.
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That's an astonishing detail. This tiny, persecuted church,
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born out of this chaotic series of events, immediately saw
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themselves as responsible for the spread of the Gospel beyond
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their own city walls. They weren't just members of a
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local club, they were shareholders in a global
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mission. And that right there is the
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transition point from Mabia. He holds up Philippi as the
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model and then turns to the church in his own context, the
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Global South, and asks why don't we look more like that?
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And he starts identifying these obstacles that prevent modern
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churches from acting like the Philippian church.
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I think these apply far beyond Africa.
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Oh, absolutely. They're universal.
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Let's walk through them. The first one he calls a lack of
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models. This is a really crucial point.
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He talks about what he calls the end of the chain mentality.
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The end of the chain. Yeah, in the New Testament you
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see this beautiful relay race. The church in Antioch sends Paul
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and Barnabas. Paul plants the church in
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Philippi. The church in Philippi supports
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Paul as he goes on to plant the church in Thessalonica.
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The baton is constantly being passed.
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There's a forward momentum. Always.
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But Ambui argues that today, especially in places that have
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historically been on the receiving end of missions,
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churches tend to see themselves as the destination.
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The baton stops here. We received the gospel.
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Now our job is just to maintain it for ourselves.
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And he gets very specific about how most new churches in his
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context are actually formed. And it's it's not a pretty
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picture. No, it's pretty tragic actually,
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he says. It's rarely through intentional,
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healthy planting. More often it's through splits.
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Church splits. Yeah, some faction in the church
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gets angry or frustrated with the leadership, or a charismatic
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leader gets ambitious and they just break off and start their
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own thing down the street. It's born out of conflict.
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Or the other model he mentions is the Bible.
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A college graduate who just wants a pulpit.
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Right. A young man finishes his
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training. He feels called to preach, but
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there's no established search for him, so he just hangs out a
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shingle and starts his own. It's about finding a platform
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for his gifts, not necessarily about a strategic plan to reach
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a community. And that's not multiplication,
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that's division in the first case, and it's individual
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ambition in the second. It's building a personal
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Kingdom, not the Kingdom of God. And Bee Wee's point is that a
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church born out of strife will almost always carry that DNA of
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strife into its future future. And because this is the common
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experience for so many, there just aren't many healthy mother
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churches who see it as their primary duty to conceive, birth
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and raise up a daughter church. If you've never seen it done
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well, it's hard to imagine doing it yourself.
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Precisely. OK, the second obstacle he lists
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flows from that. He calls it a theological
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disconnect in training, and this is a direct critique of those
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seminaries and Bible colleges and.
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He's very sharp here. He says, look, we do a pretty
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good job of training men in hermeneutics how to interpret
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the Bible, and we train them in homiletics, how to preach the
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Bible. And those are vital skills,
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absolutely. But he says we treat
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ecclesiology, specifically the mission of the church to
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multiply, as just another academic theory.
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It's a chapter in a textbook you have to read, not a practical
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urgent command you have to obey. It's not integrated into the
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core purpose of ministry. It's not.
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And he has this phrase that's just it's both funny and
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painful. He calls it the happy, clappy
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rebuke. Happy clappy rebuke.
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He says church has become content to just be a happy,
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clappy congregation. As long as the music is good and
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the sermon is encouraging and everyone feels good when they
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leave, they think they've succeeded.
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The holy huddle, The holy huddle, they've completely
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forgotten the creational mandate to be fruitful and multiply,
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which he argues applies just as much to the New Covenant church
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as it did to Adam and Eve. We're supposed to be filling the
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earth with worshippers of God. So if a seminary graduate can
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parse a Greek verb perfectly, but has no vision or strategy
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for how to reach the lost community 5 miles from his
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church, there's a serious gap in his training.
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It's the difference between training a shepherd to manage
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the sheep already in the pen versus training a shepherd to go
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out into the wilderness and find the lost ones.
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We need both, but we've almost exclusively focused on the
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former. OK, that leads to the third
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obstacle. And this is the one that always,
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you know, makes everyone shift in their seats.
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The money, the financial myth. This is the number one excuse,
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isn't it? In the global South, in a small
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town in America, in a struggling urban church, it's always we'd
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love to plant a church, but we just don't have the resources.
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We can barely keep our own lights on.
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And then Bui takes a sledgehammer to that argument.
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He really does. He starts with history.
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He says just look at the early church.
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They exploded across the Roman Empire with 0 state funding, 0
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tax breaks, no wealthy patrons underwriting the whole thing.
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They were a persecuted minority. And even today, he points out,
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Christianity is often growing fastest in the places with the
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least economic power. The Holy Spirit isn't waiting,
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looking for a nation's GDP to rise before he moves, but he
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goes deeper than that. He goes to theology, to what he
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calls the principle of reciprocity.
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This is from Matthew 6. The where your treasure is,
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there your heart will be also principal.
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Exactly. And Bowie argues that saying we
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have no money is almost never actually true.
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What we mean is it's not a priority.
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If a church's heart is truly in missions, they will find the
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money, even if it's a small amount.
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And he goes right back to the Philippians, his paradigm
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church, his paradigm church. Paul boasts about them in 2nd
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Corinthians 8. He says that in a severe test of
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affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty
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have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.
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Those two phrases together are just stunning.
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Extreme poverty and wealth of generosity.
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How is that even possible? It's because they didn't give
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out of their surplus, they gave out of their lack.
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They didn't wait until their own budget was comfortable before
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they invested in Paul's mission. And the theological point and
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Bill way makes from this is so important, he says.
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If a poor church only ever receives aid but never learns to
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give, it develops a welfare mentality.
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It sees itself as a charity case, not as a partner in the
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Gospel. It's a matter of dignity.
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He insists that even the poorest church must contribute something
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to the work of missions because it affirms that they are
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soldiers in the same army, not just civilians waiting for a
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supply drop. That's powerful.
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Now, from here, Mamboy makes a really interesting pivot.
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He talks about a specific opportunity that he sees for the
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church in the Global South. He frames the brain drain in a
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new way. Yeah, this was one of the most
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insightful parts of the chapter for me.
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We always hear about the brain drain as a negative thing,
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right? All the most educated doctors,
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engineers and IT professionals are leaving Africa or Asia to
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find better jobs in the West. It's seen as a loss for their
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home countries. It is, but Mbowei flips it on
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its head. He says.
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What if this isn't a brain drain?
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What if it's a tent making opportunity?
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Visionary deployment. What if God in his sovereignty
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is strategically moving his people from the global S into
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the post Christian W? The world sees economic
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migration. Mbowei sees God deploying A
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missionary force. But he says there's a problem
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with how it's currently being executed.
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A big problem, he says. What's happening is that these
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believers land in London or New York or Sydney and they
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immediately form an ethnic church.
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So you get a Zambian church in London that is, you know, 99%
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Zambian. A Nigerian church in Houston
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that's all Nigerian. Right.
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They're transplanting their home culture and creating a little
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bubble. They're not engaging with or
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evangelizing the local British or American population that's
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all around them. They're insulated.
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So the correction he's calling for is for these professionals
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to see themselves as missionaries first.
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Self funded missionaries, tent makers just like the Apostle
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Paul. Your engineering firm paid for
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your visa, your hospital paid for your plane ticket.
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God has provided for you to be a witness in a spiritually dark
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place. You should be planting churches
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that are for the community God has placed you in, not just for
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people from your home country. It's this incredible vision of a
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kind of reverse missions movement.
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The West, which once sent missionaries out, is now the
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mission field, and God is sending the missionaries from
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the very places they once went to.
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It's a beautiful picture of God's global plan, but it only
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works if those being sent understand the mission they're
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on. So that covers the obstacles and
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the opportunities. Let's shift now to the positive
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side, the motivations. Why should a local church go
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through the pain and cost of planting?
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What's in it for them? Mbuy gives 3 biblical
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motivations. The first is preserving the
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gospel. This one feels a little
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counterintuitive at first. You'd think if we send away our
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best teacher and our most solid families to plant the church,
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our own doctrinal integrity will get weaker.
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We'll be spread too thin, right? But Mbuy argues the exact
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opposite is true. He says the act of planting
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forces a church to get crystal clear about what the gospel
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actually is. You cannot export what you
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haven't defined. If you had to package your core
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DNA to create a new living body, you have to be absolutely sure
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what that DNA consists. Of that's a great way to put it.
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He goes back to Philippians. Paul is constantly telling them
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to stand firm and contend for the faith.
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He warns them about the Judaizers.
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The people trying to add works of the law to faith in Christ.
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Exactly. And Paul uses that incredibly
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strong language. He lists his own religious
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resume, his pedigree, his law keeping, and he says he counts
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it all as Scubala, as dung, as rubbish, compared to the
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surpassing worth of knowing Christ and gaining his
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righteousness. A.
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Righteousness that comes through faith, not from the law.
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That's the core of it, and Maywe's point is that a church
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that is actively planting has to keep that pure gospel of grace
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front and center. It's the only message that has
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the power to save people and build a new church.
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A stagnant church, on the other hand, can drift for years into
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moralism or legalism or liberalism, because its
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foundations are never being tested by the demands of
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mission. That makes a lot of sense.
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The second motivation he gives a spiritual maturity.
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This links back to that biological health idea we
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started with. It does.
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Health leads to growth. But he also argues that the act
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of growing forces you to be healthy.
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He references that warning in Hebrews 5 about believers who
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have been Christians for a long time but are still infants.
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They still need milk. They can't handle solid food.
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They haven't matured. They haven't, and Moe Weiwei
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makes this incredibly sharp pastoral observation.
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He says a church that is consumed with internal
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squabbles, fighting over the budget or the style of music or
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the color of the carpet, is almost always a church that has
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lost its outward focus. When you're in the trenches of a
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spiritual war, you don't have time to argue about the decor
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and the barracks. That's it exactly.
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The mission itself unifies and matures the church.
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When the leadership is constantly wrestling with how do
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we reach that unchurched neighborhood across town, the
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petty inward looking conflicts tend to fade into the background
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it. Forces you to have the mind of
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Christ, which Paul talks about in Philippians 2.
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Yes. Jesus humbled himself, He
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emptied himself of his glory for the sake of redemption.
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Church planting in a small way is the most Christ like thing a
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congregation can do. It has to empty itself of its
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comfort, of its best people, for the sake of rebemption in a new
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place. OK, And his third motivation is
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joyful prayer. This one really hit me.
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He starts with a critique of the typical prayer meeting.
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He called them organ recitals. It's such a great phrase.
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It's funny, but it's also a stinging rebuke.
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What does he mean by that? He means we get together and we
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just recite a list of failing organs.
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We pray for Aunt Susie's liver and Uncle Bob's kidney and
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someone's spleen and safe travels for the family going on
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vacation. Now obviously God cares about
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our health. The Bible tells us to pray for
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the sick. Of course, but if that is the
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sum total of our corporate prayer life, we have a very
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small vision of God's Kingdom. The very first petitions of the
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Lord's Prayer are hallowed. Be your name, your Kingdom come,
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Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Our prayers should be Kingdom focus first.
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And Ambia's point is that church planting radically changes a
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church's prayer life. Suddenly you're not just praying
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in the abstract. You have a daughter church.
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You have specific pastor, Pastor John, in a specific town,
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Geneva, facing specific challenges.
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The prayers become substantive. They become strategic.
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They become urgent. Lord, we know they're trying to
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do outreach in that secular neighborhood this Saturday.
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Please breakthrough the spiritual darkness there.
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Give them divine appointments. Exactly.
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And then when the report comes back from the front lines that
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someone got saved or that a new family started attending, the
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joy isn't just containing in that little church plant.
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The mother church shares in it. The whole enterprise is fueled
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by prayer and results in shared joy.
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It changes the whole emotional and spiritual temperature of the
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church. It forces you to look out, not
22:00
just in. And that is a perfect bridge to
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our second source for today, because we've been talking about
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Ambui's biblical principles. Now with John Glass, we get to
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see what this actually looks like in practice in one of the
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hardest soils imaginable. Yeah.
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Let's go to the case study. Geneva, Switzerland.
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I mean, the name itself is just heavy with history.
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This is the city of the Reformation, John Calvin City.
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This is where he preached, where he wrote the institutes of the
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Christian religion, where he trained pastors who were sent
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all over Europe. It was the epicenter of the
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Protestant world for a time. And today, today it's a
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spiritual graveyard. Glass describes it as this
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international, wealthy, secular city.
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It's home to the United Nations and countless other
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organizations. But he says the percentage of
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actual evangelical believers is, and I'm quoting, negligible.
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It's post Christian in the most profound way.
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It has a Christian memory, but no Christian.
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Faith and Glass's personal story is just It's a testament to that
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reality. He was born to American parents
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in Paris, but he grew up in Geneva as an unbeliever.
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He says he lived in Calvin City for 15 years and not once did
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anyone ever share the gospel with him.
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That's just staggering. It is.
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The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
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He had to go backpacking in New Delhi, India, to get saved.
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A Dutch missionary showed the gospel with him there.
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You have to leave the city of the Reformation and go to a
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Hindu nation to hear about Jesus Christ.
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God's Providence has a sense of humor.
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It certainly does. So he gets saved, he gets
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trained for ministry, and he feels this call to go back to
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the city that was his home. He goes back to Geneva to a
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small church called Action Biblique, or La Servat.
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And this is where the strategy, the practical nuts and bolts get
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really fascinating. La Servat was an established
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church for 40 years. They had paid the salary for
23:49
their pastor. Right.
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But Glass comes in and he has his own missionary support from
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churches in the States, so he doesn't need a salary from the
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church. Now the church has a choice.
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They could just see that as a budget surplus.
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Pave the parking lot, get new chairs, upgrade the sound
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system. All the things we normally do,
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but they did something radically different on Glass's advice.
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They took the money that would have been his salary, and every
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single month they put it into a separate bank account, a fund
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designated exclusively for planting future churches.
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They built a war chest for. Years.
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They just let it accumulate. It's this incredible picture of
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delayed gratification for the sake of the Kingdom.
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So they're building this fund and eventually the time comes to
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launch their first daughter church.
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Yes, they targeted a town called Animas, which is right across
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the border in France. A lot of people commute from
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there into Geneva. It started very small, just a
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children's Bible club. Humble beginnings.
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Very. Then, as it grew, they sent one
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of their own young elders from LA Cervet to be the pastor.
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And here's the key They used that war chest they had built up
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to support him, but it wasn't a permanent subsidy.
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They had a time limit. Exactly.
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They phased out the financial support over five years.
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The goal was for the new church to become self-sustaining.
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It was a runway, not a permanent life support system.
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And did it work? It worked.
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That Church in Animas is now a healthy self supporting church.
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And then they did it again. They did it again in another
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French town called Anasi. This one came about a little
25:23
differently. It was more of a providential
25:25
connection. A missionary colleague of
25:27
Glasses was finishing his ministry in another country, and
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Glass called him just as he was wondering what to do next.
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The timing was perfect. So Las Vet supported them to
25:37
start the work in Annecy. They did, and today that church
25:40
in Annecy is not only self supporting, but it fully
25:42
supports its own native French pastor.
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So you have the mother church, LA servant, and it gives birth
25:48
to these daughter churches. But the story doesn't end there,
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does it? No, this is where the
25:53
exponential math starts to kick in.
25:55
Those daughter churches have now planted granddaughter churches.
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The multiplication continues. And the numbers are just
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incredible. He says if you add up the Sunday
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attendance of the Mother Church, plus all her daughters and
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granddaughters, the total number of people gathering for worship
26:10
is triple the size of the single largest evangelical church in
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the entire Canton of Geneva. Wow, so if Lasser Vet had just
26:18
focused on its own growth, just tried to become a mega church,
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it might have added fifty, maybe 100 people in that same time?
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At best. But by sending, by giving away
26:27
its people and its resources, its Kingdom impact was
26:30
multiplied many times over. But Glass is a realist.
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He doesn't just paint this rosy, triumphant picture.
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He ends his piece with four very hard lessons learned from the
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process. The first one is simple.
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The cost? He's brutally honest here.
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Planting a church hurts the mother Church.
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It just does, because who are the people who volunteer to go?
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These are your best people, your most committed, most
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evangelistic, most generous members, your future elders.
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You're sending away your A-Team. You lose leaders, you lose
27:00
givers, he says. The pastor of the Mother Church
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has to enter what he calls perpetual reboot.
27:06
Mode Perpetual reboot mode. You identify a leader, you train
27:10
them up, you invest in them, and then you send them away and you
27:13
start all over again. For a pastor who wants to build
27:15
something big and stable and impressive, it's exhausting and
27:19
it feels like you're constantly taking 2 steps forward and one
27:22
step back. It requires A fundamental shift
27:25
in your mindset. You have to value the growth of
27:28
the Kingdom of God in the city more than the growth of your own
27:31
local church. It's a death to ego.
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You're building for a Kingdom, not for your own fiefdom.
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But the second lesson balance is that out lesson 2 is it works.
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Right. Despite the cost, it's the most
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effective strategy. We already saw the numbers, but
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it works because it puts gospel outposts into new neighborhoods.
27:48
It lowers the barrier to entry. A non believer is far more
27:52
likely to check out a small new church in their own community
27:55
than they are to drive 20 minutes into the city to a big
27:58
intimidating building. It makes the gospel local and
28:00
accessible. The third lesson is it
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motivates. And this goes right back to MD
28:06
ways. Happy clappy problem.
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It does. When you're a member of a church
28:10
with 500 people, it's very easy to be a passive consumer.
28:14
You can slip in the back, listen to the sermon, and slip out
28:17
without ever talking to anyone or serving in any capacity.
28:20
You can hide. You can hide, but when you are
28:23
one of 40 people in a brand new church plant meeting in a school
28:26
gym, there's nowhere to hide. If you don't help set up the
28:30
chairs, there are no chairs. If you don't greet the visitors,
28:34
no one greets them. It forces people off the
28:36
sidelines and into the game. Passive consumers become active
28:40
participants out of sheer necessity.
28:42
It activates the priesthood of all believers in a way that a
28:45
large established church often struggles to do.
28:49
Your theology suddenly has to become practical because you're
28:51
the one on the frontline, and the fourth lesson he lists is
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the darkest one. It distresses.
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Yeah, he's very open about the spiritual warfare involved.
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He even mentions the phenomenon of splants splits that try to
29:03
disguise themselves as plans. He acknowledges that Satan hates
29:06
church planting more than almost anything else.
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If you're content to be a quiet, inwardly focused social club,
29:12
the enemy will probably leave you alone.
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Why bother? You're no threat, but the moment
29:17
you start talking about invading his territory, about planting a
29:20
new embassy for King Jesus in a dark place, you can expect a
29:24
counter attack. And what does that look like?
29:26
Internal conflict, discouragement, financial crises
29:30
that come out of nowhere, misunderstandings between the
29:33
mother church and the daughter church.
29:35
Glass says. This is Satan's primary tactic
29:37
to put the brakes on evangelism through internal strife.
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But even with that warning, he ends on a note of just profound
29:45
gratitude. Churches have been planted.
29:47
Thank you, Lord. It's a war.
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It's costly and distressing, but it's a war that we are on the
29:52
winning side of. The gates of hell will not
29:54
prevail against Christ's church planting church.
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So let's try to bring this all together.
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We have membiwe from scripture telling us why we should plant
30:03
and how to think about it. And then we have glass from the
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streets of Geneva showing us what it actually looks like when
30:08
you do it in hard soil. And the synthesis is just so
30:11
clear, isn't it? Whether you are in 1st century
30:13
Philippi with Paul, in 21st century Zambia with Conrad and
30:17
Buay, or in the secular wasteland of modern Geneva with
30:20
John Glass, the fundamental method is the same.
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It's not about new techniques or better marketing strategies.
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No, it's about the faithful proclamation of the pure gospel,
30:31
the supernatural gathering of God's elect into a local body,
30:34
and then the intentional sacrificial scattering of that
30:36
body's resources, its people, and its finances to do it all
30:41
over again somewhere else. It completely redefines our
30:44
ideas of success. Success is not a full room.
30:47
In a way, success is an empty seat because the family who used
30:50
to sit there has been sent out to start something new.
30:53
That's the beautiful paradox of the Kingdom, isn't it?
30:56
You gain your life by losing it. You become rich by giving away.
30:59
You grow by scattering. I think that leaves us with a
31:02
final and maybe a pretty provocative thought for you, the
31:05
listener, to chew on. We've talked all this time about
31:08
biological health being reproduction, but the necessity
31:11
of planting. So here's the question for you
31:13
to take home If your local church closed its doors
31:16
tomorrow, if the building was padlocked and sold and turned
31:20
into condos, would anyone in the surrounding community outside of
31:24
your own members even notice? Would they care?
31:28
That is a haunting question, because if the only people who
31:32
would mourn the loss of a church are the people who were in it,
31:36
then that church wasn't really a lighthouse to its community.
31:38
It was a private clubhouse. But if we're doing what bubbly
31:41
and glass are calling us to do, if we're planting, if we're
31:44
serving, if we're actively invading the darkness around us
31:47
with the light of the gospel, our absence should leave a
31:50
gaping hole. We're called to leave a lineage,
31:53
not just a building. The mandate is not mere
31:55
survival, it's fruitfulness. Amen to that.
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A powerful word to end on. This has been a heavy one, but I
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think a really necessary deep dive.
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We hope it sparks some good and maybe hard conversations in your
32:06
own churches. Until next time, this has been
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Reformed thinking.