WHAT IS CHURCH PLANTING?
STATEMENT
Churches planting churches is the aim of missions. Church planting is gathering a new body of baptized believers in Christ who commit to one another, rightly administer the ordinances, and regularly sit under the preaching of the Word. Missionaries and churches should not stop at this bare minimum for church but should work to cultivate all the biblical characteristics of healthy churches. Missionaries should prioritize biblical principles even as they give serious attention to contextualization. Missionaries play a valuable role in the churches they plant as they teach and model faithful discipleship, leadership, and membership.
Article Written by Sam MartynFrom a biblical perspective, it may seem strange to identify churches planting churches as the aim of missions. After all, wasn’t Jesus’s missionary command to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19–20)? Doesn’t he tell his followers that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)? So shouldn’t the aim of missions be to share the gospel and make disciples, not necessarily plant churches? And how do we know this mission was given to the whole church, not just individuals?
Churches Planting Churches
The New Testament reveals that the church is God’s means of carrying out his mission. Take Paul and Barnabas, for example. When they went on their first missionary journey, it wasn’t just a personal endeavor—the Holy Spirit called the church at Antioch to send them out (Acts 13:2–3). Later, they returned to that same church to report everything God had done through them (Acts 14:27–28). The church was involved from beginning to end. Missions is not just an individual task, but a community effort.
But God not only has a “church for his mission”; “the revelatory activity of God (and those he sends) is to create and redeem a people for communion.”[1] God’s mission is to create the church. The church appears as the fruit of missions throughout the New Testament. Jesus Himself assumed His followers would be part of a local church (Matthew 18:17). Everywhere the apostles went, churches were established. Churches were “strengthened and grew in number” through the apostles’ ministry (Acts 16:5). The New Testament letters reinforce the local church's centrality to spiritual growth and maturity. Believers are called to gather regularly, encourage one another, and serve one another, all of which God uses to mature disciples into the likeness of Christ (Hebrews 10:24–25; 1 Corinthians 12:12–27; Ephesians 4:11–16). If we want to be biblical, then our understanding of what it means to be a “disciple” and to “make disciples” should be church-shaped.
If making disciples is inherently church-shaped, then the mission cannot be fulfilled apart from planting churches. Discipleship and the church are inseparable because the church is the God-ordained context where believers mature in Christ. Therefore, churches planting churches cannot be an afterthought—it’s essential for making disciples as envisioned in the New Testament.
History of Church Planting Philosophies
Church planting philosophies have looked different throughout missions history. During the monastic period, monasteries became hubs of evangelism and learning, spreading Christianity into rural areas. This was true not only in medieval Europe but also among the Church of the East as Nestorian monks traveled with traders along the silk trade routes deep into Asia, forming Christian communities in major trade centers along the way. In the colonial period, Christianity spread through European expansion. Agents of both Roman Catholic and Protestant empires engaged indigenous populations using colonial settlements as a base (though some, such as German Pietists, were less willing to become entangled in political affairs as they went out for the Name).
The Modern Missionary Movement saw the professionalization of church planting as missionary societies sent laborers to areas of the world where the gospel had not yet reached. Though some emphases—such as translating the Bible into local languages—hugely benefited long-term church planting efforts, two developments stifled a focus on church planting: missionaries’ paternalistic control of the work, and missionary societies’ regular establishment of schools and hospitals. The Indigenous Movement, arising in the mid-nineteenth century, worked to correct the first problem by empowering local churches to be self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. As for institutions of social uplift, they no doubt provided many good and needed services, but they came to displace a focus on evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. This was especially true as the “social gospel” began to replace a biblical gospel amid the rise of Protestant liberalism.
The Church Growth Movement (CGM) of the mid-twentieth century sought to return evangelism and church planting to the center of the missionary task. But this movement also relied on burgeoning social sciences like sociology and anthropology to guide its strategy. Above all, the CGM was concerned with measurable growth and defining the methods that caused such growth. In the 1990s, new church planting strategies like Disciple-Making Movements (DMM) and Church Planting Movements (CPM) emphasized rapidly reproducing disciples and churches. These approaches typically use a more relaxed definition of the church. They simplify discipleship to focus on obeying a few key commands of Jesus and quickly identify new leaders who are then charged to quickly identify and start training leaders themselves. They also stress making every aspect of church life easy to reproduce. They encourage all members to take on roles typically overseen by church leaders, such as administering baptism. The goal in all of this is speed and multiplication, leading to a rapid church planting movement.
While all these approaches in the history of missions offer us insights into church planting, we are not free to plant churches simply based on what we think works. Nor are we free to redefine what a church is to make them easier to plant. A common catchphrase in missions today, particularly popular among movement methodology proponents, is “plant the church that is.” In other words, missionaries should not worry too much if a church plant meets the biblical standard of what a church should be, especially at the beginning.
Instead, our watchword should be, “Plant the church as defined by Scripture.” A church that disregards Christ’s guidance does not deserve to bear His name. The example of the apostolic era in Acts and the apostles' teachings in their letters must guide us more than the latest tools or ideas borrowed from sociology, even when they claim to be based on Scripture. True churches are not manufactured through clever techniques. They are established by the power of the Word and the Spirit of the living God.
Characteristics of a Biblical Church Plant
So, what is a church according to the Bible? A biblical church includes several elements. First, a church must be formed of born-again believers who commit to one another as members of the Body of Christ and recognize themselves as a church (Matt. 18:15-17, Acts, 2:42, 1 Cor. 12:14-26, Eph. 4:15-16, Heb. 10:24-25).
Second, the church expresses this commitment, in part, through the right administration of the ordinances—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These symbols function like wedding rings in a marriage. Baptism represents the entry point into the visible, local Body of Christ. By receiving baptism, the believer says, “I identify with Jesus and his people” (Rom. 6:3-5). By conferring baptism, the church affirms the believer’s confession as authentic and takes on the responsibility of caring for the new member (Matt. 18:18-20, 28:18-20). In the Lord’s Supper, these commitments between the individual believer and the church are continually renewed (1 Cor. 10:16-17, 11:17-34).
Third, the church must proclaim the true gospel and uphold the right preaching and teaching of the Word of God (Rom. 10:14-17, Gal 1:6-9). The message of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is the foundation of the church’s life and mission. Without this central proclamation, a gathering of people cannot be called a biblical church.[2] Biblical preaching and teaching shapes the church’s doctrine and practice, guiding believers toward faithful living.
These are the essential elements of a church, but they amount to a minimalist definition. Missionaries, churches, and church leaders must refuse to settle for this bare minimum. The apostles did not settle for it. From the epistles to the opening chapters of Revelation, the New Testament reveals that the apostles longed to see the churches they planted to attain the fullness of spiritual health. In other words, they wanted them to be led by faithful and qualified elders and deacons, to guard the gospel and the church’s doctrine, to exercise discipline, to abide in prayer, to care for one another, and to engage in mission. Missionaries today should cultivate the apostles’ expectations for the congregations they plant.
Key Concerns in Church Planting
1. Speed vs. Health
Sometimes, biblical church health seems to work against the speed and urgency of the missionary task. It would be quicker and easier to artificially limit the size of a church to a believing husband, wife, and their teenage son to avoid getting bogged down in the complications that come with a larger body. Certainly, such a “church” could reproduce more quickly. While two or three are all that are necessary for a church (Matt. 18:20), this instinct assumes a lean, underfed church will run farther and faster than a well-fed one. Sure, church planting would be quicker and easier if we trained an army of new believers with basic skills to become church planters. It would be even easier if we offered them financial incentives to plant more churches. But how would we know if these leaders were biblically qualified for such work without taking time to observe their growth and faithfulness?
Consider specifically the importance of developing leaders for church planting. When our family served as missionaries in Central Asia for most of a decade, I gave most of my attention to leadership development. In our Muslim context, it was not uncommon to see up to three-fourths of those who professed faith, including many who had even been discipled for long periods, turn away from the faith. These once-professing believers often buckled under the weight of persecution and social pressure. It often felt like Jesus’ parable of the soils got the ratio exactly right! Leadership development could be equally challenging. A national partner and I spent nearly two years investing in one brother who showed great promise as an elder or church planter. Out of nowhere, this brother had a psychological break during which he chased me and my national partner down the street, hurling large rocks past our heads. Many of our efforts to train leaders ended with similar disappointment.
Some criticized our work for moving too slowly. However, imagine the consequences of minimizing the biblical qualifications for elders, simplifying training, or failing to walk with potential leaders long enough to observe their character. Cutting corners would create even more setbacks. How would such an approach help young churches grow strong enough to guard the gospel and make faithful disciples?
Introducing financial incentives—which is an unfortunately common practice—further compounds the problems. During British colonial rule in India, the government offered locals a bounty for every dead cobra. Though the strategy was initially met with success, eventually, locals began breeding cobras to cash in on the reward.[3] Incentivizing under-qualified church planters and leaders may produce large numbers of churches quickly, but how many of those churches will endure the testing fire on the Last Day (1 Corinthians 3:12–13)?
2. Cultural Norms vs. Biblical Commands
Contextualization is another important concern in church planting. Some missionaries make a contextualized church their primary aim in church planting. For example, they might modify biblical language, like removing any references to Jesus as the Son of God, in an effort not to offend Muslim-background believers. Or they might modify biblical values by allowing caste distinctions to take precedence over biblical qualifications for church leadership. A new church that reflects local cultural forms in a new context is a beautiful expression of how God redeems diverse image-bearers. But from a biblical perspective, contextualization should never be a more sacred value than preserving the gospel itself. The goal of contextualization is not to create or preserve a Christian expression of the local culture as a kind of museum piece. The goal is to express the gospel and the Christian faith so that it will be both understandable and relatable to those who inhabit that culture.[4]
The missionary’s main role in contextualization is cross-cultural communication of the gospel. Like Paul in Acts 17, a missionary seeks to understand and evaluate the culture and then communicate the message of the gospel using language that is both understandable and relatable. Learning the local language and adapting one’s lifestyle to both surface and hidden aspects of culture, such as dress and customs, are a part of this process.
When it comes to church planting, however, local believers should take the lead in contextualization. As cultural insiders, they will do a better job than missionaries anyway. Sure, as an ambassador from the global church, a missionary can indeed make valuable contributions to discussions about the contextualization of church forms. But again, his aim should not be a contextualized church. Instead, he should aim to plant a biblical church, embodying the characteristics outlined above, even as he provides wisdom to locals to ensure that their efforts at contextualization don’t lapse into syncretism—the blending of Christianity with other religious beliefs and practices.
Missionaries can err in two directions as they seek to evaluate the health of a church planted cross-culturally. First, they may treat their own culture as superior. Second, they may leave everything up to the local culture. The first mistake—colonial paternalism—happens when missionaries confuse their own cultural preferences with biblical principles and impose every aspect of a foreign way of doing church in a new place. The second mistake—hyper-indigeneity—happens when missionaries imagine they can just drop the seed of the gospel into a new context and walk away, assuming a healthy church will grow without any further guidance. Neither approach honors the biblical data. Neither establishes biblically robust, faithful churches. In fact, such errors often hinder the work.
The apostles were both willing to leave when the time came (Romans 15:23) and willing to remain and put things in order when needed (Acts 19:9-10). We read about the apostles’ ongoing concern for the churches in their letters. Likewise, missionaries play a valuable role in the churches they plant as they teach and model faithful discipleship, leadership, and membership. Recognizing the legacy of colonialist missions in the past, good missionaries participate in local churches with humility. They downplay any attempt to exalt their status as “experts” just because they are foreigners. They seek to raise up local leaders as soon as possible and insist that any role in church leadership should be seen as transitional. At the same time, such missionaries generally should not pass on opportunities to teach by their example what it means to be faithful church members, deacons, or even elders—provided they meet the qualifications.
Years ago, a fellow missionary friend came to serve among an unreached people in Central Asia. He was convinced that methods emphasizing oral Bible storytelling and keeping missionaries in the background, away from direct, visible ministry, would lead to rapidly multiplying churches. But over time, he grew concerned. He realizes that his partners in Central Asia had been trying similar methods for a decade without seeing a single church planted.
Eventually, his approach changed as he became convinced of the New Testament’s teaching about healthy churches. Over time, the church he helped to plant in a place where there previously was no church installed its first local elder. I heard recently that this church now has two dozen members and continues to grow. It even aspires to plant more churches among its people group.
Conclusion
Despite what church planting gurus say, and despite the temptations missionaries face to cut corners, the insistence to plant healthy churches cannot inhibit gospel advance. Instead, a concern for healthy churches is the surest path to gospel advance. That’s because healthy churches, by definition, not only have a white-hot burden for advancing the gospel through church planting, they also refuse to compromise on biblical principles—from the nature of the church to the content of the gospel. Over time, this approach guards the gospel from heresy.
As we continue the work of missions today, we must resist the temptation to settle for expedient methods. We must refuse to redefine the church. With care and skill, we can commit to planting churches that are faithful to Scripture and embody Christ’s design for his people (1 Cor. 3:10). By doing so, we participate in God’s mission of redemption, where the gospel is proclaimed, disciples are made, and churches—grounded on the truth of God’s Word—are multiplied to the glory of God.
May this be the legacy of our missionary efforts: churches planting churches that last, churches that stand on the Last Day. That’s how we bring the transforming power of the gospel to every tribe, tongue, and nation.
footnotes
[1] Justin A. Schell, The Mission of God and the Witness of the Church, Short Studies in Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024). Cf. Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 62.
[2] See GCC article “The Priority of Proclamation.”
[3] Horst Siebert, Der Kobra-Effekt: Wie man Irrwege der Wirtschaftspolitik vermeidet (Munich: Piper, 2001).
[4] See GCC article “Culture through a Biblical Lens”
