Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART I: D EVELOPING U RBAN C ONGREGATIONS • 21

Introduction

By the year 2010, racial and ethnic minorities will make up one-quarter to one-third of the American population. These groups will concentrate in inner cities. Some missions experts fear that the church will not be ready to address their needs. Church planting and training resources continue to flow from city to suburb during a time of tremendous need in the city. 1 Fortunately, crisis and opportunity are often two sides of the same coin. Although city churches will face undeniable challenges, it is possible “new models for evangelism, church planting and theological training will come from the cities.” 2 This paper is intended to prepare World Impact church planters to be effective urban church planters. It provides an overview of the history and theology of church planting. It outlines a working model to guide the planting of urban churches. It suggests ways to build successful church-planting teams and coordinate church/mission relationships. A cautionary note is in order before beginning. The proverb “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” in practice may become, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he starves to death.” A wide gap frequently exists between theory and application! Therefore, we assume that the process of building churches is more dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit-given gifts of the church planter and the character of the converts than it is on the development and application of “perfect” models. The church-planting team must seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit for each decision. This will involve: . . . the acceptance of a trial and error methodology. No matter how hard missiologists try to make church planting a science, . . . it will always remain more an art than a science. Not that scientific methodology should not be used to gather data to understand the people and conditions in which the church planter works: every tool of the social sciences should be used. But the impression should not be given that if the church planter follows a definite type of methodology, and if conditions are right, the development of a

________________________________________________________________________

1 Harvie Conn, Urban Missions Newsletter, (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary), 28, Dec. 1990, 1-2

2 Harvie Conn, p. 2