Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART I: D EVELOPING U RBAN C ONGREGATIONS • 43

A Strategy for Planting Churches

Strategy for an Urban Area World Impact’s goal is to use the principles of indigenous church planting to plant a cluster of churches in an urban area. It is not World Impact’s desire to develop isolated, individual congregations, but rather, a network of mutually supporting congregations in proximity to each other.

There are four reasons to develop clusters of congregations.:

1. The large number of unchurched people in the inner city calls for a dynamic strategy that will reach multiple neighborhoods for Christ. 2. Newly planted churches need supportive networking with other churches. 3. Not every congregation will proceed to full-fledged-church identity. Some will fail or will combine with other near-by congregations. 4. A dynamic strategy insures greater indigenous-leadership development. The following section describes a strategy for planting a single church in an inner-city area. Church planters will need to repeat these steps in each target area to create clusters of mutually supportive churches.

World Impact’s church-planting strategy consists of seven steps. 56

A. Commission the Church Planting Team B. Cultivate the Community C. Establish Discipling Fellowships D. Form a Celebration Group E. Plan the Finances

F. Determine Facilities G. Constitute the Church

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56 We would like to acknowledge our indebtedness to Jack Redford’s excellent book Planting New Churches (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1978) as a guideline for church-planting strategy. Although we have modified his steps to apply more directly to the cross-cultural missions situation, they serve as a framework for this section.