On This Rock - A Church Planting Sampler

Introduction

We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God. ~ John Stott It has been many centuries since the time our risen Lord commanded the amazed and primed apostles to go and make disciples of all people groups (Matt. 28.18-20). Endued with all power from the Father on high, our Lord commanded his disciples (and through them, the Church through the ages) to sacrifice their lives, gifts, and capacities to win a world that desperately needs to hear of the grace of our God. This com- mand to go and make disciples, this simple yet revolutionary directive, gave birth to missions, and now today should shape everything that we are as believers, as congregations, as ministries and mission societies, and as movements under the authority of Christ. No higher call exists for the present generation of Christians than to do everything that we can to fulfill the commission of Christ to make disciples of the nations. This call is the critical call – for everyone who names his high name. He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” [16] Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” [17] And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. [18] And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Jesus’ unqualified conviction was that he would build his Church on the rock of Peter’s confession, and that the very gates of hell would not be able to withstand its advance. The center of Christ’s present-day work in the world is the calling out of his own from among the nations to become a part of his one, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic Church. Wherever his Church exists in local assembly, so does that community also represent a living, vital outpost of the Kingdom of God in our time. Planting and sustaining healthy churches is elemental to the kingdom mission of Christ in this age. This sampler represents a strategic smattering of the kind of resources contained in our recently published cadre of church planting materials. These are entitled Ripe for Harvest , our official textbook for the Evangel School of Urban Church Planting, The Evangel Dean Handbook to the Our Lord Jesus affirmed the significance of his church in his recognition of Peter’s confession of his messiahship in Matthew 16.15-18 (ESV):

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