Planting Churches Among the City's Poor - Volume 2

P ART II: C HURCH P LANTING T OOLKIT • 283

Dry Wood for a Really Hot Fire Laying the Foundation for Aggressive Urban Church Planting Movements Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis

Every Generation of Christians Must Learn How to Biblically Define Church

We may consider the blunt, prosaic injunction: “Let the church be the church.” Such a slogan implies that the church is not now fully the church. It implies that the true self-image is not at present the effectual image that it should be. But what is the church when it allows itself to become the church? Do we know? Yes. And no. We who stand within the church have allowed its true character to become obscured. Yet we know enough concerning God’s design for the church to be haunted by the accusation of the church’s lord: “I never knew you.” So there is much about the character of the church to which the church itself is blind. Our self-understanding is never complete, never uncorrupted, never deep enough, never wholly transparent. In every generation the use and re-use of the Biblical images has been one path by which the church has tried to learn what the church truly is, so that it could become what it is not. For evoking this kind of self-knowledge, images may be more effective than formal dogmatic assertions. This may well be one reason why the New Testament did not legislate any particular definition of the church and why Christian theology has never agreed upon any such definition.

~ Paul S. Minear. Images of the Church in the New Testament. p. 25.

I. Defining Church Planting Movements

For those who question whether house churches can stand the test of time, Choudhrie points to their alternative. “The empty cathedrals in Europe are silent witnesses to the barrenness of the church. Why continue to imitate a failed model?” (Garrison, Church Planting Movements , p. 37). 1 Cor. 12.21-25 – The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less