Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

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

The length of time required to bring a church to this point is a subject of much discussion in missionary research. The Apostle Paul normally spent between five and eighteen months in an area bringing his converts to a place where he could transfer control of the church to their elders. 159 Missionary efforts to constitute churches since then have ranged from a few months to hundreds of years. The church planting team should have clear goals in this area. Ben Sawatsky shares the Evangelical Free Church’s strategy in Malaysia when he says, The church planting strategy under consideration requires five years of training for each church planting team. In turn, the church planting team will work with a new church for a similar length of time [concurrently]. The assistance given each local church begins with the formation of the church planting team and continues to the stage where the new church has launched into the reproductive phase, assuming the role of a parent church giving birth to yet another church. 160

Southern Baptist Charles Chaney, in speaking of a church-planting campaign in Illinois, says,

. . . in forty-four months we counted exactly 100 new churches or church-type congregations. Of that 100, twelve either failed or did not follow through with official affiliation with IBSA and/or one of the thirty-four local associations within our state. At the end of the period, nine might legitimately have been called “Bible fellowships,” not having reached the full phase of “mission” or “chapel” status. 161

This campaign by an entire denomination took a little more than three and one half years.

Ezra Jones says that for mainline denominations doing church planting in the U.S., “Five years is the average time span for outside financial assistance.” 162 Our goal in World Impact is a four year church-planting cycle with a possible one year extension.

________________________________________________________________________

159 See Allen, 1962, pp. 84-85

160 Ben A. Sawatsky, “A Church Planting Strategy for World Class Cities”, Urban Mission 3.2, Nov. 1985, pp. 7-18

161 Chaney, p. 47

162 Jones, p. 102