Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

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

Cultivate the Community

Spiritual Warfare The essence of church planting is taking territory for the reign of Christ. The church-planting team is invading areas falsely claimed by Satan with the good news of Christ’s redemption and triumph. They intend to plant “communities of the Kingdom” which will change people and neighborhoods both now and in the years to come. Obviously, Satan will not take this invasion lightly. Thus, the initial steps toward understanding and cultivating communities to receive the gospel are based on a recognition of spiritual realities. Every member of the church-planting team should understand that they have volunteered to engage in spiritual warfare of the highest and most crucial order. The church-planting team should begin by gathering prayer support for their efforts that focuses on defeating Satan’s forces and loosing the power of the Holy Spirit in their target area (Matthew 18:18-20). Supporting churches are an excellent resource for prayer support as are existing World Impact Celebration bodies, Bible studies, etc. Be creative and aggressive in enlisting groups of believers to pray consistently for the endeavor. Second, the team itself should set aside a regular time to do spiritual warfare for the church-planting effort. This is the single most important part of the task and the priorities of the team should reflect this. This priority must be jealously safeguarded as the many urgent pressures created by the task of church planting clamor for the time and attention of the church planters. Third, the team should work to increase its knowledge of effective spiritual warfare. Bible studies on this topic are critical. Study books on spiritual warfare. 77 Read, discuss and apply principles from missiological journals and missionary biographies. Nowhere is it more true than in the task of church planting that “. . . our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians

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77 A good starting point for this is the book Taking Our Cities for God: How to Break Spiritual Strongholds by John Dawson (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 1989)