Planting Churches Among the City's Poor - Volume 2

30 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 2

mega-churches, or cell or house churches) which together represent the body of Christ and kingdom witness in a region” (Don Davis, Winning the World: Facilitating Urban Church Plant Movements , Wichita: TUMI Press, 2007. p. 192).

2. The importance of unity.

a. “Who among you is noble-minded? Who compassionate? Who full of love? Let him declare, ‘If on my account sedition and disagreement and schisms have arisen, I will depart, I will go away whithersoever ye desire, and I will do whatever the majority commands; only let the flock of Christ live on terms of peace with the presbyters set over it.” The First Epistle of Clement, LIV. (Compare Phil. 2.1-4).

b. “We believe in one , holy, catholic, apostolic church.”

c. “If the church is not your mama, then God is not your dada.” Davis translation of Cyprian’s famous quotation.

d. Schism was as sinful as heresy to the early church.

B. Calvin of Geneva

1. The importance of a reproducible, easily accessible, shared leadership training tool. For the reformed churches, this was Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Living , or perhaps better translated, Instructions for Christian Living (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , ed. John McNeill, Library of Christian Classis, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960. p. xxxi). 2. A weekly pastor’s pool. “An additional provision was that the pastors in Geneva were to meet together once a week for discussion of Scripture. Pastors assigned to the outlying villages were to come as often as they could to the weekly gatherings, but at least once per month…The Company of Pastors of Geneva was instrumental in the expansion of the Reform of the Word. In the 1550’s, the Company began to send pastors to newly formed congregations of Reformed Christians. This was crucial to the growth and organization of those churches at both the local and national levels in the regions where they were located” (Jeannine Olson, “Calvin