Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

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

________________________________________________________________________ Discipleship, or training others to train others, begins with the selection of new Christians who show faithfulness during the follow-up process. Success in church-planting is directly linked to the identification and development of leaders from the indigenous community. These future leaders need to become the priority of the church-planter. It is here that the model of Christ and his disciples has its most direct application. The church planting team must spend significant amounts of time with these future leaders, not only in actual training for ministry but also personal and relational time in which the Christian life is modeled as well as taught. 103 Note that many cultures allow children to attend adult group meetings. The church planter should discover what is normative for the group of people that he works with. Church planters are bound to encounter obstacles as they seek to form a cohesive mission fellowship. Troubled people may disrupt the group. Attendance may be sporadic. Children will need attention and care to allow parental participation. 103 The leader must move, with prayer and the Spirit’s guidance, to overcome these obstacles to insure the success of the group. Recruit and Train Leaders Once the group is functioning, people are growing in Christ, and new members are being added, the leaders must concentrate on training the emerging indigenous leaders in the group. These emerging leaders will soon be called upon to lead the existing group so the church planters can focus on newly forming fellowships. One-on-one discipleship is a key tool for the missionary in training individual indigenous leaders. 104 One-on-one discipleship has been the foundation of World Impact’s ministry since its inception. World Impact’s strategy statement affirms, “Our mission strategy is `to make God known’ through evangelism, follow-up, discipleship and church planting.” 105 This strategy is one which Mortimer Arias calls “discipleship evangelization.” 106 The goal is not to make converts who give intellectual assent to the gospel and attend church but rather to produce disciples who are equipped to lead an indigenous church.

104 See Keith Phillips, The Making of a Disciple , (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1981)

105 World Impact Mission Strategy , 1991

106 Mortimer Arias, Announcing the Reign of God: Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 101