Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

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

Commission the Church-Planting Team

Value of Team Strategy Churches and mission agencies employ a variety of church-planting strategies. 57 Some strategies work best when planting churches in one’s own culture. Such methods lead to expansion or extension of the church in a given culture. However, a mission organization does “bridging growth” church planting across cultures. 58 The cross-cultural nature of missionary church planting calls for tested methods and strategies. The strategy of using church-planting teams has proven effective in cross-cultural church planting. 59 The Apostle Paul functioned as the leader of a church-planting team commissioned by the church in Antioch (Acts:13:1-4). Paul continued the team approach throughout his years of church-planting ministry (Acts 16:6). Team church planting was not the only church-planting strategy employed in the New Testament church, but it was the predominant strategy. Modern missions have often followed Paul’s example of sending a team of missionaries to plant churches cross-culturally. 60 They cite several reasons for their use of the team strategy. 61 First, the team itself is a microcosm of the kingdom. The team’s life together models the church to those converted through evangelism in the target community (John 13:35). Second, culturally dissimilar team members can help when planting churches cross-culturally. Paul may have selected Timothy because he was a bi-cultural person who could help in reaching the Greeks (Acts 16:1-3). Luke also helped Paul in the cross-cultural ministry

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57 See Elmer Towns, Getting a Church Started , (Lynchburg, VA: Church Growth Institute, 1985), pp. 69-116

58 James H. Feeney, Church Planting By The Team Method , (Anchorage: Abbott Loop Christian Center, 1988), p. 21

59 See Dan Bacon and William Goheen, “Should Mission Boards Send Teams as Well as Individuals?”, P erspectives on the World Christian Movement , pp. 775-781

60 See David Hesselgrave, Planting Churches Cross-Culturally , (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), pp. 135-154 and Charles J. Mellis, Committed Communities: Fresh Streams for World Missions , (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1976), pp. 93-104

61 See Shenk and Stutzman, pp. 42-55