How you define “church” shapes your approach to church planting
Reflections on “Church Planting: A Theological Perspective” by Tim Chester, part 1
(an old post I wrote on March 25, 2009 but wasn’t reposted here)
“Church Planting: A Theological Perspective” is a chapter written by Tim Chester in a book entitled, Multiplying Churches edited by Stephen Timmis (Christian Focus, 2000). Tim Chester’s chapter has 5 major points: (1) The doctrine of the church and church planting, (2) the centrality of the church in the purposes of God, (3) the centrality of the congregation in the mission of God, (4) church planting and the mission of God, (5) a final word.
Tim Chester summarizes this first point by saying:
A failure to think biblically about the church will stifle church planting
Good church planting should renew our understanding of the church and the gospel
There need be no second generation churches if the church is constantly re-configuring itself through church planting
I have a few reflections on this section 1.1 (the impact of ecclesiology on church planting):
First, How one defines a church shapes their approach to church planting. “Pastor, building, sermons, membership role, constitution – implicitly these shape the image of church for many people. But do they define what it means to be church? Here the challenge is not just to do the theological thinking, but to have the imagination to strip away the traditional or denominational baggage from our images of church.” So we have to strip ourselves of baggage and allow the Scriptures to shape what we believe the essence of church to be. I think at CrossView our idea of church began with what we believe, how we agree to live, and covenanting to commit to loving each other in all the ways the Bible tells a church to love each other (like Matt. 18:15-17). The major barriers I had to strip away from what I thought of as functionally fundamental to church is a paid elder/pastor/overseer. CrossView began with a statement of faith and a church covenant. Then we began to work on a church constitution, incorporation, a bank account, a church budget, a website, how to serve the community, etc. Now as we’ve been at it a few months and as we look to see other churches planted, I don’t think incorporation, budget, website, and a bank account may be helpful. Maybe having one corporation as a network (say, CrossView Network of Churches) and then having a bunch of household churches so that there are legal safeguards in place for the churches would be expedient. That sounds like the same set up as The Crowded House in the UK. So at its essence what makes a church a church? How would you define what a church is? This leads to my next thought.
Second, When does a church plant become a church? This is a great question that reveals your functional definition of what a church is. Chester lists a few answers: “Is it when a launch takes place? Is it when a constitution is agreed? Is it when leaders are appointed? Or is it, as Luke’s definition might suggest (referring to Luke 2:42), when the church planting team first gathers?” So it sounds like Chester is saying that when a team first gathers, it is a church. I think that’s on the right track. In the church tradition from which I come, a church is “The church is that collection of people who are hearing the Word of God, responding to it with their lives, and who have obeyed Jesus specific commands to be baptized and proclaim his death in the Lord’s Supper” (Mark Dever). Nestled into that is a commitment to church discipline. I’d define the church as a collection of people committed to the Lord Jesus and his gospel, committed to loving one another in full accountability including church discipline, and working together to make disciples of Jesus Christ. (This is the same in essence as Driscoll’s definition, though even less cumbersome). So at CrossView we didn’t have a launch. We had a constituting of the church where we heard each others’ testimonies of how God saved us with the gospel and clearly communicated that we are committing to love one another as a church and make disciples of Jesus Christ together.
Bottom line: how you define a church effects how you go about planting a church. It also determines how confident people think they are in being able to be part of a pioneer planting team. As a pastor at CrossView I want all our members to have the confidence that they can be part of a small church planting team. But this is almost exclusively dependent on what they think a church is or how a church is defined.