Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART I: D EVELOPING U RBAN C ONGREGATIONS • 37

Social action, like evangelism, will happen on a person-to-person spontaneous basis. However, since many of the causes of poverty have an institutional basis, the church needs to prepare an institutional response as well. 39 The growing church must plan and organize to respond to needs inside and outside the church. This is the self-giving quality of the church. Summary of Six Qualities Each of these six qualities of the indigenous church is an end goal of the process. There are countless decisions of discernment, of give-and-take along the road that lead to a Body that is completely indigenous. Some mission agencies have labored for decades without planting a single truly indigenous church. After twenty years, the Assembly of God mission in Central America concluded, “Our problem lies in the failure to work for an indigenous church.” 40 Correction of that problem led to a spectacular move of God among their work in Latin America. Even if this goal is in place, church planters must realize that it takes time to develop an indigenous church. It requires a balance between pushing indigeneity too fast and controlling the work too long. 41 However, as the balance of nurture and independence is achieved, a dynamic church can emerge. “When indigenous people . . . think of the Lord as their own, not a foreign Christ; when they do things as unto the Lord, meeting the cultural needs around them, worshiping in patterns they understand; when their congregations function in participation in a body, which is structurally indigenous; then you have an indigenous church.” 42 This is World Impact’s goal and prayer for the churches that are planted.

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39 Greenway and Monsma, p. 181

40 Hodges, p. 13

41 Tippet, p.390 Tippet mentions three causes of failure when the mission pulls out too quickly. First is the failure to instill a vision for evangelism in the new church so that it does not reproduce itself once the missionaries have gone. Second is the failure to develop a solid leadership structure in the new church so that internal problems stifle the church life. And third is the failure to develop the stewardship dimension of the church so that it fails to support itself and its outreach. Each aspect of the indigenous church must be nurtured so that the young adult church is able to stand on its own.

42 Tippet, p. 381