Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

302 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

6. Ever increasing reality of despair, leading to out-of-control levels of violence in America’s inner city (nearly half of the number of people killed in Vietnam conflict are murdered on American streets each year!)

E. Implications and conclusions

1. The elements of America’s inner city must be factored into all discussions of church planting, growth, and mobilization, especially in applying models and approaches which have been used effectively in other places. 2. An effective approach to church planting models in America’s inner city must seek to address and meet head on all elements of that context if it hopes to be effective. 3. Uncritical application of church planting models which fail to take into account these factors will only invite real failure in the missionaries and pastors, and real failure in the communities targeted and served by them. 4. Church planting movement insights, in order to be effective, must be contextualized both by the pastors who serve as well as missionaries who evangelize and plant churches. III. WHO Will Be the Central Players in Igniting, Sustaining, and Multiplying Vital Church Planting Movements in American Inner City Contexts? In sync with all that we have learned of church planting movements abroad, all efforts toward creating, sustaining, and multiplying vital, healthy church planting movements in America’s inner cities must begin and end with indigenous leadership development. The most effective evangelism, follow-up, discipleship, and church planting will be done by city people on behalf of city people through the resources of city people. All of our attention, planning, and effort must concentrate, therefore, on raising up urban men and women, urban families, and urban young people who will reach their own neighbors and webs with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Acts 14.21-23 (ESV) – When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through