PA 2008 - Day 4 (Wednesday)

On Day one of training we discussed the core functions of church planters:

Preparing
Connecting
Gathering
Maturing

Those are the first four. Monday and Tuesday and part of Wednesday all focused on Preparation. The point being that effective preparation is of critical importance. Understanding the culture, and building the right team to meet the culture with the unchanging truth of the Bible is so very important.

The rest of the day was occupied with Connecting, Gathering, and Maturing.

Connecting or "pre-evangelism" is simply the process of building relationships within the community and earning the right to share your faith. Gathering grows out of connecting, and is the beginning of a church. It sounds simple, but many missionaries have held "Connecting" events that offend or simply don't interest the culture. At other times missionaries have held connecting events that don't lend themselves to starting close relationships.

It's also important that the connecting events "mirror" the Gathering style. If the intent is to start a church that is informal, lively and contemporary then the connection events should have that atmosphere. If the gathering or church services are intended to be more traditional, then somehow that must be reflected in the connecting events. In that way, there will be a natural transition into drawing people into gathering together for worship.

Maturing involves training the new congregation to stand on their own. Obviously no church group stands on their own. They stand in the enabling power of Jesus Christ, but it's important that the group be taught to continue in their growing faith without having a missionary team. We as missionaries "lead in view of leaving".

The end game of the vision is to establish churches that start other churches and ultimately that send out missionaries in their own country and around the world.