Winning the World

Session 6: Mobilizing American Cities for Church Planting Movements 131

4. Missionary activity in urban America must determine to learn and emulate missionary activity in foreign contexts: Missionaries coordinate strategies with indigenous laborers in order to maximize their ability to advance the gospel in their communities and cities. D. Vital church plant movements in urban America will be ignited when the churches that are planted are authentically indigenous, with full authority, oversight, and stewardship transferred to indigenous leaders who make the decisions and determine the directions.

1. The equipping of leaders is the single most important issue involved in the creation and sustaining of vital church planting movements among America’s urban poor.

2. We must rediscover new, more biblical, less enculturated ways to raise up and release urban leaders for the work of leading the church, and advancing the Kingdom in mission.

3. While we must be careful not to lay hands on any person too quickly, we must also be careful to recognize that unless indigenous leaders fully receive the authority and responsibility to do the task, the Gospel will not penetrate the receiving culture.

VII. Conclusion

1 Thess. 5.21 (ESV) but test everything; hold fast what is good.

How do these views above coincide with the New Testament definition of the body of Christ, as well as the Nicene theology of the Church embodied in the creed, i.e., that which defines the church as one (biblical identity), holy (shared spirituality), catholic (historic roots and connectivity), and apostolic (representative authority)?

A. Clarification between the facts and the claims