Church Planting Movement Leaders

From Bill Easum

I. Introduction

A. Let me contextualize my thoughts.

1. It’s about the emerging church planting, multiplication, movements that are springing up all across North America. Most church planting efforts in the past focused on planting churches. While we recommend any form of church planting, we believe it's more important and strategic to the Kingdom to focus on planting reproducing churches that will become the centers from which other churches will be planted. They may partner and work with denominational church planting efforts, but they do not let the locus of activity reside there. Unlike most approaches to church planting that are sequential attempts at addition, movements involve the exponential multiplication of concurrent efforts.

2. It is my contention that the world, and especially North America, is more like the first century than the 20th century. If that is true, the our strategies must be different and the world is ripe for a major new movement that could reshape the world. The question is will it be Christianity of something else?

3. Let me identify nine cultural issues that shaped Christian mission in ancient times.

a. The dominance of the Roman Empire.
b. The role of urban centers overshadowing vast regions.
c. Increasingly rigid class boundaries linking wealth, status, and virtue as well as controlling the legal system.
d. The elevation of sports to replace traditional family and religious rituals.
e. The emergence of spiritually yearning, institutionally alienated public
f. The exhaustion and disappearance of the middle class that
g. The emergence of a militaristic mentality unsupported by the masses.
h. The dominance of Polytheism and agnostic view toward Christianity.
i. The rise of the mean age of affluent people.
j. Mass migration exceeding the absorption power of the traditional Roman society.’
k. A growing inability to control resurgence groups.

B. Even though there are differences in the movements of the West and the rest of the world, I will focus primarily on what works in the rest of the world because I believer it will work in the U.S. as well.

C. When I note a cultural difference to large to overcome, I will note in my notes.

II. The problem with most movements is that when the founder dies so dies the movement. Couple this with church planting being one of the trends that come along every decade or so we have an explosive issue that requires serious questions

A. How do you know that you are the leader of a movement rather than a follower of a trend?

1. You must determine why you want to lead a church planting movement

a. To increase your groups size
b. To get more money to feed the system
c. The questions you must ask yourself are

(i) Am I about planting churches or changing the world”
(ii) Am I content without much hierarchy of authority and bureaucratic decision-making?
(iii) Do I make every decision based on the movement or are some of them for other reasons?
(iv) Do I have a comprehensive strategy for birthing a movement or for planting churches? Every successful church planting movement stands or falls on the following strategy:

(a) Prayer
(b) Scripture
(c) Evangelism
(d) Church Planting

(v) What plan do I have to insure that the church planting DNA is embedded deeply into every fabric of our organization so that oozes out of every leader and church planting pastor?

2. If your pastors see church planting as a trend, in time their part in the movement will plateau.

a. Because it is The trend and trends change
b. To add more people to your role
c. The questions you’re planters must ask are:

(i) Is my goal to plant a church or participate in a movement much larger than my church?
(ii) How soon are we prepared to birth another church?

3. There is only one reason to be part of a movement: an increasing passion ignited by the holy spirit to change all of the world

a. This passion must come out of a heart for winning the lost, not  some denominational effort
b. Then you decide what ways would be the best to reach the lost. That’s where church planting comes in.  Church planting is never the goal in a movement.

B. What are you doing to insure that the movement will continue after you are gone?

1. Who among your church planting pastors is your successor?
2. What system do you have in place to farm and harvest apostolic leaders from which your successor will emerge.  

a. Are you looking for “demonstrated credentials” instead of academic credentials?
b. How much time do you spend praying about this?

3. What system do you have in place to determine the difference between apostolic and pastoral issues.

a. a catalytic person may be good at starting a new church and then not having the abilities to build it out
b. Paul’s gifts were different than timothy’s.  

(i) A mistake made in the U.S. is the attempt to turn a Paul (apostolic) into a pastor or vice
(ii) Or a pastor into an apostolic leader. The U.S. exported this idea for years

4. What are you doing to develop team based ministries?

a. Paul always had a Barnabus
b. Solo pastors never give momentum to a movement. Do all of your pastors have an apprentice planter under their wing?  How many of them would rather minister to someone rather than equip others to minister to one another.

5. In the U.S., what do you have a way to determine the difference between a founder pastor and a planting pastor. There aren’t near as many founders as planters. To be a founding pastor, one has to go through multiple growth levels.

III. The real change that has to happen is the all of your planters have to understand the “Go” over the “Come.”  The old wine skin was to attract people to. A  “come unto us” approach. The new wine skin is “go to them.

A. How are immersed in the culture are you and your planters.

B. Are you an Inviting church rather than a welcoming church.  Inviting is make to the environment inviting.  The church becomes the incubator of conversion and faith.

C. What is your plan to turn church planters into missionaries?

1. We have to get past mere equipping and edifying.
2. We must have a fractal concept, small groups and cell groups that multiply.

IV. Other Key questions

A. What are you doing to increase the speed of reproduction and multiplication?  Do not think that slower is better. Speed does not dimish quality. Shorten as much as you can. Do training in shorter bursts.

1. Do your planters begin preaching and teaching before they learn the language?
2. Do they streamline their bible studies and baptism procedures?
3. What can you do to shorten the reproduction cycle of your churches?
4. Do they expect new converts to begin witnessing immediately.
5. Do they begin discipleship even before conversion?
6. If you want a movement you must begin your work as a movement.

a. You must model movement from the beginning by including in the planters training, evangelism, discipleship, multiplication, within a cell-group setting.
b. Remember, your goal is not to plant churches. Your goal is follow the passion ignited by the Holy Spirit to change the world.  Church planting is just the best way to do that.

B. What are you plans to address the mass migration in the U.S. (not from Europe) and reach the various people groups?

1. This will require indigenous ministries just like oversees, and will require modeling a way of life more than inculcating ideological or dogmatic information.
2. What are you doing to create “indigenous partnerships” with the various people groups in the areas you are targeting.
3. How far are you willing to go to support the apocalyptic and supernatural Christian message.

C. What are your plans to penetrate the large urban centers of the world with church planting movements.  Profoundly embedding the gospel in such locations is a key to the future.

D. How are you addressing the Accountability issues?

1. In the U.S. American church, accountability hasn't been practiced as much as it should.

Often, Track Three leaders are held accountable only for mission by some official church body and even that level of accountability is weak especially if you’re a planting pastor, most of the people tend to just nod their ascent whenever you speak about mission, vision, values and how to carry that out.
2. Accountability for an apostolic leader can be a special problem that requires additional levels.

a. A Personal Coach. A coach holds you accountable for accomplishing what you set out to accomplish. They know you, know your abilities, and they bring the best out in you.
b. An Accountability Partner. An accountability partner meets with you each week and together you hold each other accountable for your behavior and your character.

3. Do you dictate mission, vision, and basic structure and hold planters accountability for effectiveness and success, but allow total freedom in strategies and tactics? If your focus is on reproduction not planting you are open to all kinds of reproductive endeavors, multiple worship services (reaching different generations or language groups in the same church), one church doing multiple campuses, etc.  When you think about reproducing congregations in any form or format it opens all kinds of doors that you would not approach if you only think of one model.

E. What kind of on-going coaching system do you have?

1. Is the planter coached until the church plants another church
2. Or is the planter coached until beginning a church planting movement?
3. Do you differentiate between a coach and mentor?

a. Mentor is the long term spiritual formation of the person. Produces a bigger heart.Coaching is about helping that person achieve what they want to do; when they leave, tactics and strategy
b. I call coaches “spiritual midwives.”
c. A mistake many groups make is to believe that if you’re godly and practice the disciplines you will be successful.  To much time given to spiritual formation without stressing the right thing at the right time

(a) They tie too much to character and not enough on competency.
(b) You need both.  
(c) Planters need direction more than the spiritual formation.

4. Do you keep your personal biases out of your coaching?

a. Do you keep from putting your expectations on the one being coached?
b. Do you start where the planter is? What did God say to them? Follow your heart.

F. Do you plant churches where you find leaders or are you still tied to geography?

G. Do you take only take church planters who have leadership ability and have proven that by growing something, a business, a church, a youth group? This is especially true in the U.S.

V. What you are about is the most crucial issue facing humanity at this juncture in history.  You cannot fail!  Too much depends on you. So,
What is your final measure of successes?