Planting Churches Among the City's Poor - Volume 2

P ART II: C HURCH P LANTING T OOLKIT • 303

3. Description of the problem : The tendency to focus either on the need to feed individuals as little babes in the faith or structure all followup and discipleship in terms of formalized curricula and processes designed to ground new believers in the faith. 4. Deepening our perspective and practice : We must recruit, equip, and resource spiritual parents to care for the souls of the little ones in our churches on an individualized basis of mentoring and friendship as well as developing more efficient, standardized, and formalized instructional materials and processes that ensures that all new converts can understand, defend, and share the same basic core of truths regarding Christ and his kingdom to others. 1. Key texts : Matt. 28.18-20 – And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have com manded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” 2. Definition of the pair : We must strive to see each church grow and mobilized as a healthy, vital assembly while at the same time, develop standardized procedures to see hundreds, even thousands of vital churches planted throughout urban America. 3. Description of the problem : The tendency to focus either on the survival and growth of each single congregation as the end-all-and-be-all of our missional activity or to give limited attention to the needs of individual congregations for the sake of expansive numbers of new churches being planted among a people group. 4. Deepening our perspective and practice : We must do all we can to provide each congregation with competent pastoral care as well as do all we can to see the multiplication of many new churches within a particular homogenous people group among the city’s populations.

H. Complimentary Concept Eight : Congregational survival and health alongside multiplying church planting movements