WHAT IS A HEALTHY INDIGENOUS CHURCH?

May 8

STATEMENT

A healthy indigenous church submits to the authority of Scripture above all things and is unified by faith in the true gospel, hope in Christ, and love for one another. It should have primarily indigenous elders and deacons, be marked by the biblical principles of a healthy church, and worship in a local language. Further, it should have a biblically contextualized church life with faithful sacrificial giving and service by its members.

Article Written by Jacob Canonsburg

About 10 years ago, I finished my graduate work in the US and looked for a job in an unreached part of the world. I found a job in the Middle East. My wife and I moved there, and we joined the only English speaking church in the city. As we lived life and became friends with local families, we sought to connect them with an indigenous church so they could hear the gospel in their own language and see God’s love among His people. However, there was no indigenous church to be found despite the presence of many missionaries and decades of missions work. I was surprised, so I began investigating.

As I talked with missionaries and local believers, I heard stories of hundreds of local people baptized and churches started in the previous decades. But those churches didn’t last and the local believers were divided. I heard rumors of house church meetings, but I could never find one that met consistently. Despite all the mission work going on in the area, there was no lasting indigenous church to show for it. This caused me to cry out in anguish, “Oh Lord, where is the fruit of all the mission work in the city? Where is your church?”

Sports camps, campus ministries, medical clinics, and so on. They’re all wonderful ministries and often necessary entry ramps to hard to reach communities. They have been and can be used powerfully by God. But the ultimate aim of all mission work is the building up of healthy indigenous churches. Healthy churches last from generation to generation; they are God’s good plan for preserving his people and proclaiming the gospel to the nations. Christ died for his bride. It’s precious in his sight. So we must take great care as we work for our master to build up healthy indigenous churches.

The Goal Must Be Clear

If a missionary isn’t crystal-clear on what they’re aiming for and working toward, then their toil is likely going toward something other than healthy indigenous churches. This goal may sound vague or mystical, but it doesn’t have to. God’s word gives answers and norms for churches and how to plant them.

Further, we aren’t the first generation of Christians or missionaries. We would be foolish to ignore the centuries of careful answers to these questions, many of which are preserved in widely used statements of faith. When they move overseas, missionaries aren’t free to redefine what a church is or how to start one. The Bible doesn’t change based on location. The challenges will certainly be different cross-culturally, and our work and worship will take different forms. However, because scripture doesn’t change, an indigenous church in Nigeria, Iraq, and China will have the same elements and DNA.

If you ask several church planting missionaries, “What does a healthy indigenous church look like?” I’m sure you would get a wide range of answers. Part of the reason for this diversity would be the different cultural contexts with their unique challenges. But I would venture to guess that many differences would stem from how these missionaries would answer this basic question “What’s a church?”

Would the missionaries your church supports be able to answer this question clearly? Could they defend their answer with Scripture? Don’t take this for granted; the aim of missions depends on it.

I like to use this definition: “A church is a community of believers committed to one another in gospel love who regularly gather under the right preaching of God’s word and who practice the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” If these basic elements are not solidified, then the aim of missions will be warped and lost as the stresses and difficulties rise. Cross-cultural ministry among people harshly opposed to the gospel is hard. It’s exhausting. So our aim must be crystal-clear, or even the most determined missionaries will veer off course and miss the target.

Why Do Some Missionaries Work Toward a Different Goal?

Why do some missionaries ignore the basic elements of church when seeking to plant indigenous churches? I suspect many answers would be illuminating. The most all-encompassing answer for my part is that many mission methods are guided by American pragmatism. In other words, missionaries are primarily trying to answer the question “what works best?” As a result, their methods aren’t as shaped by Scripture as they should be.

Let me illustrate some examples of how this plays out on the field. These examples are not hypothetical. I’ve experienced them all firsthand.

Let’s start with the first element of this definition, “a community of believers.” This means that the members of a church are born again; they’ve been regenerated by the Spirit of God. The foundational unifying element of a church is unity of the Spirit, not of tribe, family, social class, or nationality.

Unfortunately, many church planting methods used on the field rely more on social theories than biblical principles. They encourage missionaries to grow churches along family lines. If a person or family comes to faith, then that family should focus on witnessing to and adding new members from their family. Missionaries who adopt this method don’t encourage new believers to share with people without family or tribal ties. Why? The reason is pragmatic. Because people don’t easily trust others outside their own family or tribe. So trying to add members outside family or tribal ties will slow the growth of the church and create division.

But this strategy blatantly ignores 1 Corinthians 12:12–13. Church members' unity is from the Spirit. So this strategy doubts the power of God’s Spirit to unify believers of one heart and mind. It undersells and even obscures the gospel’s ability to bring together people who would normally hate each other. Such people now love each other because of Christ.

Now let’s take the second part of this definition, “who regularly gather together.” Christians have gathered together on the Lord’s day to worship our Savior since he rose from the dead. But gathering weekly with the church takes much sacrifice on the field; it can be logistically difficult in places without government recognized places of worship. In many situations (like the strict Muslim context I’m in), people are watched closely and scrutinized by their family or the government.

In light of this, I’ve known missionaries who have removed the requirement for a church to gather. They do so without giving it much thought (possibly because sending churches functionally do the same?). Why? Pragmatic reasons. The obstacles make it too difficult, or too dangerous. I’ve personally seen two consequences of this thinking. First, the “church” starts to meet online so the members naturally lose accountability and connectedness. They lose the opportunity to love one another, or to bear one another’s burdens. After all, they hardly see each other! Second, when the gathering becomes optional or irregular, I’ve seen church planters emphasize that members only need to meet with a few people they’re already close to. It’s not necessary to have the church gather together, they say. What does this communicate? That the church is nothing more than a loosely connected network of small groups. But would a pastor of a sending church in the states ever recommend splitting up his church like this, into an invisible network of small groups who rarely see each other? Why is it suddenly a good idea on the field?

Let’s look at the third part of the definition: “under the right preaching of God’s word.” In 2 Timothy 4:2, Paul tells Timothy to “preach the word.” As crazy as it may sound, the authoritative proclamation of God’s word is often removed as an essential part indigenous churches. Why? Because it’s hard to do, especially for the foreign missionary who doesn’t yet have an excellent command of the local language t. And it’s even hard for the local person because it takes time for a new believer to gain the ability to speak about theology and the Bible in their local language.

Preaching is hard. It takes time to do well. If a church planter insisted on preaching as an essential element of the church, that would take years to develop. This slow development is a barrier in the eyes of missionaries who want to plant churches quickly. This need for speed often comes from good motives. We want to reach lots of people for Jesus quickly; so many are without the gospel and on their way to hell. While we should work diligently, we can’t let our timetable of success cause us to neglect the call to build up faithful pastors who can exposit the word of God and feed the flock of God.

The urgency of the task isn’t the only reason people forsake preaching. There’s another common reason. Research says that the socratic, question-and-answer teaching style is more effective than a monologue. Therefore, preaching gets tossed out the window. In its place, someone leads a discussion-based Bible study.

Don’t get me wrong, inductive Bible studies are great. I do them all the time. We need people in our churches leading discussion-based Bible studies. But it’s not a replacement for the authoritative declaration and exposition of God’s word. God brings life to dead souls through his proclaimed word, and it must be rightly preached for a church to survive.

If missionaries are not grounded in their understanding of what a church is, then the pressures of the field can cause them to ignore essential elements of healthy indigenous churches.

Don’t Forget The Obvious

Admittedly, this statement doesn’t answer the question, “What is a church?” Rather, it primarily addresses marks that are particularly important signs of health. But don’t breeze through the first sentence. Our statement starts with the authority of Scripture. Hopefully the above illustrations make it clear how important it is to have scripture, not culture or modern missionary methods, as our norm for faith and practice.

As we search Scripture, we must not fail to see Paul commending churches for three things over and over again (Eph. 1:15, Col. 1:4, 1 Thess. 1:3, 1 Cor. 13:13): faith, hope, and love. If a church has indigenous elders and deacons, if they preach expositionally, meet weekly, have a known membership, and carefully practice the ordinances, but don’t have love, then they have nothing. If a church has a good pastoral training program, yet they’re setting their hope on worldly success rather than pleasing Christ, then their hope will fail.

While our first sentence isn’t necessarily unique to indigenous churches, it’s important to ground our goal and definition in both Scripture and the attitudes that please Christ.

What Happens When the Goal Is Clear?

Here are three primary results of having a clear goal of healthy, indigenous churches.

Clarity on when to exit. Missionaries want to work themselves out of a job. They want to establish a healthy indigenous church that can thrive without them or their financial backing. So when does a missionary know to leave? They will know if they have a clear goal. No parent would want to leave their 12-year-old to live by themselves. They’re not babies, but they still have much growing to do. Clarity on what a healthy indigenous church looks like will help the missionary neither leave prematurely nor stay too long.
Longevity. A healthy indigenous church continues after the missionary leaves. In our statement, one of the marks of a healthy indigenous church is that its leaders (the elders and the deacons) are primarily indigenous people. For various reasons (political, health, family, etc) outside of the missionaries control, a missionary’s long-term stay in a country is never guaranteed. That’s one reason why local leadership is so vital. This doesn’t mean that once a foreigner places one local as a leader that his job is done. Not so fast. The missionary must work to see a plurality of elders that know the word of God and live out the word. Qualified elders will protect the church against false doctrine and people who seek to lead the flock astray. Furthermore, they’ll be equipped to raise up other elders themselves through faithful teaching and discipling so that the church will continue for generations.
The glory of Christ. God has created all people in his image. He redeems his children to reflect his glory to the world. As God is worshiped in different languages and cultures according to his instruction, the many facets of God’s image are displayed, bringing glory to God’s name.

Concluding Exhortation

I’m going on my 11th year on the field. Recently I’ve had the privilege of leading an indigenous church plant. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d see it in my lifetime. Praise God! Still our goal should be to serve Christ as he accomplishes his plans in his time. May we not be knocked off-course by cultural pressures or pragmatic thinking as we strive to please Christ and work to see healthy indigenous churches that will last.