Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART I: D EVELOPING U RBAN C ONGREGATIONS • 75

neighborhood. Rented facilities may actually increase the urban churches’ flexibility in this regard.

While some suburban church planters disparage the strategy of using home cell groups and house churches, 150 many urban church planters feel such a strategy is well suited to inner-city realities. 151 Roger Greenway says, To date, we have found no more effective way to promote growth, local leadership, and group identity than home cells and house churches. Big, united services are helpful, but home cells are the cutting edge of church growth and discipleship. Different configurations can be used to tie the cells together and rally believers periodically in larger gatherings. But in big cities nothing surpasses the small group for effective penetration of every apartment building, language group, social class, and neighborhood. 152 The fact that the largest churches in the world, including Pastor Cho’s 500,000 member church in Seoul, Korea, use the cell group strategy, is evidence of its effectiveness. 153 The strategy of multiplying small cell groups, tied together through periodic large-group meetings, is often called the cluster or network strategy. 154 This strategy provides a natural extension for discipling fellowships, assuming adequate indigenous leadership develops to lead diverse cell groups, and that a “rancher” 155 type pastor can be found to oversee the church.

Shenk and Stutzman portray their cell-group vision when they say,

Every city block of every city on earth deserves at least one thriving cluster of loving, witnessing Christians. Surely every people and

________________________________________________________________________

150 See Wagner, p. 122

151 See C. Kirk Hadaway, Stuart A. Wright, Francis M. Dubose, Home Cell Groups and House Churches: Emerging Alternatives for the Urban Church , (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987)

152 Greenway and Monsma, p. 244

153 See Paul Yonggi Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups . (South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Publishing, 1981), and Elmer Towns, John Vaughan, and David Seifert, The Complete Book of Church Growth , (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989), pp. 61-68

154 See Westgate, Urban Mission (November 1986) , p. 10

155 See Footnote 114 for a discussion of Wagner’s concept of “rancher” pastors.