How to Start a Church Planting Movement – Knowing the Next Step to Take
The question I am asked most frequently by those who are working in church multiplication is: “What do I do next?”
There are always two answers to the question: the first answer to spend time asking God that question. The second answer is to know what the steps are that you need to take to accomplish the task.
Every task is accomplished through a series of steps.
I recently found material that had put the church multiplication process into ten steps. This material is similar to Bruce Bennett’s and other church multiplication material. You can adapt these steps to the knowledge you already have.
This program is called “RAD” which stands for “Radically Advancing Disciples.”
These materials are available in two forms. One is a student booklet that you take new Christians through to begin to both disciple them and to help them to start their own group. The second is a larger teacher’s manual, or “Implementation Manual” that explains the lesson in the student manual. Both manuals are available for free on the internet.
The Student Booklet is available here:
The trainer’s manual (implementation manual) is available here:
Here are the ten steps to start a church planting movement.
1. Pray for Harvesters and go to the community that Jesus is sending you to.
2. Depend on God so you don’t waste time going.
3. Trust that God has a person of peace waiting to meet you.
4. Enter the house of the person of peace, and eat with them.
5. Meet needs and share the Gospel.
6. After one person follows Jesus, start a church in the house as soon as possible and teach them the lessons for the first three steps of following Jesus. (Lessons provided in the materials at the above links.) The first three lessons are: Be Assured of Your Salvation; Be Baptized; Go and Tell.
7. Explain and begin to give the Lord’s Supper to baptized believers.
8. Go at least once a week and disciple the new church to make it healthy. Teach the eight lessons for Paul’s patterns for healthy churches. (Lessons provided in the materials at the above links.)
9. Have the church begin Discipleship together and appoint servant-leaders.
10. Find obedient believers in the group and teach them the entire process.
So that answer to the question of, “what do I do next?” is found by finding which step you have completed so far and then put on your calendar a day to go and do the next step. By time you get to step Ten you will be assisting someone else to start step one. That is where the multiplication will come from.
These steps are based on the four fields that Bruce Bennett teaches. There will be more teaching on the four fields in future “Updates.”
Pottsville Church Planter Training
We are celebrating the first person of peace who is in church planter training.
Last Saturday, January 12, 2013, I taught church planter training at Pottsville, Pennsylvania. There were ten people present, coming from both the Pottsville church plant led by Storm Hutchison and from the Nescopeck church led by Mike Maleski. We were there from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. and spent the time learning the “Seven Values of a Church Planting Movement,” and “The Person of Peace.”
One of the people in the training was Ed. You have read about Ed if you have been reading these updates. Several issues back we had the story of Al Sones and Storm Hutchison going to Port Carbon, PA looking for a person of peace. You might remember the story of how Ed came running out of his house as Al and Storm were trying to intervene in a situation in which a young mother and her child were being threatened by a dog. Ed then invited Al and Storm into his house and they prayed with him. Ed is now training with Storm to plant a church.
This is a first for the Mt Bethel Project. Ed is the first person who was found by going into a new community and asking God to reveal a person who can help plant a church in that town and who is now in training to plant a church. We are praying for thousands more “Ed’s.”
Looking for Church Planters Who Will Gather a Group and Train Them to Plant Churches
The need for second-generation classes of church planters.
We met on last Saturday in Pottsville in a lovely conference room in the building where Storm has his office. Most of the people were sitting around the table, while Storm, as the host, was sitting away from the table, against the back wall. While I was doing this teaching I kept envisioning the day when one of the people sitting at the table as a student would be there sitting in Storm’s chair, hosting a group he or she had gathered. My prayer during this training was not just for the people being trained, but as I explained to them, I prayed that someday I would be able to go back to that conference room and teach those church planting lessons to a group of people God had gathered around one of the participants that was there last Saturday as a student.
This is the path to multiplication—that a current student in church planter training gets to the place where they have gathered their own group and are leading church planter training. Pray that we will soon see a second generation group.
Be With Him…
“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13