Church Planting Related Issues - Panel Discussion | CGS 2019

Our four passes this morning are David Brussell, Alan Roth, Gary Kaufman, and Ernest Eby, and we will get started on some of our questions.

Number one—I'll probably go down through the order for the most part—but number one, um, I wanted to get involved with Kingdom Building or evangelism outreach, about in the way to get started. What resources or, um, activities, places I could get training for this type of work? I will leave it open to anybody that wants to answer these, um, if you—you don't all talk at once, so kind of watch, make sure nobody else is talking.

Uh, we do have a list of training opportunities on the paperback beside the donation box in the very back of the auditorium, uh, but I'll let, uh, some of these men talk about some that they're involved with.

Well, I would say first, uh, when you look in the Scripture, it never tells us to go Kingdom Building. It does say Kingdom Proclaiming. So His kingdom rules over all, and we actually don't build it. We proclaim it, and He rules, but that's just a small little quibble there.

Um, I would say, if you have opportunity, go to one of our Bible institutes and, uh, and get some Bible, uh, organized Bible study under your belt. Uh, that can be very, very useful. Um, the, uh, in New York City, we have a mission training center where you can go for six weeks, or you can also do a nine-month internship there that can give you some, uh, opportunity to get your feet wet.

There are good, uh, resources, good books to read. If you email me, I'll send you some of my favorite books about, uh, church planting. Unfortunately, I don't know that we really have a good vehicle designed yet within our circles specifically for training people in church planting. And it's hard because it doesn't happen overnight. It requires engaging with people and building relationships, and it's long—it can be long and slow. So that makes the, the, um, the training component much more challenging.

Um, the Church Planters Forum and Retreat that's held each year at, um, Penn Valley, several days of people interacting, of input, and so on, can be very useful. That's a start.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I was going to avoid this question because, of course, that is the big need in our circles. We don't have training books, videos, um, those sort of things that are—our churches that are growing or that have been very, um, good at growing, yeah, they have lots of that. That's where they focus. And, and, um, we have focused on preserving what we have. And I'm talking as a conservative Anabaptist—I know there's all stripes, um, uh, out here—is that we have not wanted to lose what we have. And, and, and I'm not ridiculing that. There's, there's a lot of value there, but we have focused so much on that, it's been pretty much to the exclusion of, of, uh, reaching out and bringing other people in.

Um, I did want to share—uh, just this is something I learned just a couple months ago, and to me it was sort of a—what he was sharing about, uh, somebody saying, "I assume every Muslim I meet is open until they prove me otherwise." It was kind of like one of those sort of moments. Um, I was at a little, uh, seminar, and a, uh, brother from Lancaster County was sharing how he had brought this, uh, Chinese man to Christ. Uh, he was actually visiting up in Boston, um, and was just witnessing on the street. And, uh, he approached these Chinese people, and, and he said, "Are you—uh, I wanted to ask you, are you a Christian?"

And there was a group of them, and three of them said no, and they, they walked off. And then there was another one who, who went a different direction. So he followed up with that one and said, "Uh, I just wanted to ask you, are you a Christian?"

And from, from there, um, it actually—uh, he was able to invite the, the, uh, Chinese man over, uh, for a meal and then to a Bible study. And this man was just recently baptized. He went from being an atheist from China to, to now being a Kingdom Christian. And I was sort of stunned. And, and after the, the seminar, I went up to this man. I said, "You mean that was your approach? Are you a Christian? You found a convert by that?" I mean, that, that seemed to me like the dumbest approach. I've never heard of that. Are you a Christian? You know? But it actually—when I asked him about it, uh, there was a plan behind it because the person is going to say either, "Yes, yeah, I'm already a Christian."

Well, then the follow-up was, "Oh, great. I'd like to invite you to a Bible study." And then if they said no, then the follow-up was going to be, "Would you believe in Jesus Christ if I could prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that He is the Son of God?" Now, that's a pretty big challenge, but that was—that was the, the approach. But he never even got to that part. It was—that's as far as he got is, "Are you a Christian?" And the Chinese man said, "No, I'm not, but actually my grandmother in China is." And then they got to talking and, and all that. So for me, the lesson from that was talk to people.

I mean, don't feel like, "Man, I've got to have the perfect thing," because that's in my mind, I'm thinking, "Yeah, I've got to have a really good line," you know? And, and yeah, just going out in faith and talking to people. I mean, actually, there was a, like I say, a reason thing behind it, but yeah, too often we're just afraid, "Well, I don't know what to say." And so we pass up an opportunity, and here's a guy from, uh, just a stark atheist is, is now a, a Kingdom Christian.

If, if you want to start somewhere, um, and you have internet access, uh, churchplantersforum.org, uh, starting, I think, seven years ago, all the sessions have been recorded. Uh, that's another good place to go to if you want to, uh, at home, uh, start getting a passion for that kind of thing.

And Alan Roth mentioned his, uh, list of books. They're on that website as well. So you can go there to the resources tab and find his list of books.

And I think we greatly underestimate the, um, the power and the willingness of the Holy Spirit to teach us as we go along. You know, you think about those early Christians. Okay, how many videos, books, seminars, and classes did they have? And you say, "Well, some of them got to walk with Jesus for three years. That's pretty impressive." It is, but most of them didn't.

And so, you know, the Holy Spirit has done this before. Been there, done that. He's got 2,000 years of experience in church planting, and He's still very available. And the other thing we underestimate is what, uh, David here has pointed out: the importance of talking to people one-on-one, being proactive. That's right where it's at.

Because no matter how many courses and videos and classes you take, if you don't engage people in this great topic of Jesus, you won't get there unless you're only going to draw off people from other churches who are dissatisfied.

Okay, the next question is, "Church planting sounds exciting. Is it really, or what is it really like?" Um, give me maybe a day in the life of a church planter. What's it like to be a church planter?

So I think church planting can be as exciting as you want it to be. And what I mean by that is, if you're just going to sit back and hope that church planting happens, it's not going to be very exciting.

But as Alan was just saying, something that has struck me, uh, for some time is that when we think of church planting, often I think we, we think of the organizing part of it and what all we're going to do, the formulas, the, the ways in which we're going to go about, uh, planting churches and, and doing church planting. Um, that's all well and good, but let's remember that church planting is about engaging people.

And when we engage people, that can be exciting. And so if you want to—if you want to have exciting and interesting and sometimes, frankly, terrifying times, start interacting with people. You'll come up against some things that you don't know what to do with. Uh, but remember, you're engaging with people who are made in the image of God, and, and He wants those people to hear the gospel of the kingdom. And as you do that, that opens the door to this whole thing of church planting.

So church planting is mostly hard work. It's, uh, the kind of thing that, uh, you do day in and day out, and, and it's like any other job in the sense of there just being lots of things that need to be done, and somebody needs to do it, and so you do it. It's also hard work in the sense that, uh, uh, many here and few are chosen. And so out of the many people you talk to, uh, there's not that many who respond. But the ones who do, that's what makes, uh, church planting exciting.

And people who take a real interest in Bible studies or something like that, after a day of, of engaging somebody one-on-one and they're—we've studied the Bible for two hours, and they wish they could go longer, and evenings like that, I can't go to sleep. That's the days that are exciting.

Some days it's just flat-out lonely. And, uh, you say, "Where are the people that are going to come along?" Sometimes it's just heartbreaking when people make a start and then pull back. That's a part of it too. And then other times you can't sleep because you're so full of joy.

So it's a whole mix, and you see that in the New Testament. Just read Paul's letters, and you'll see the whole range of emotions. He had some exciting moments too. I'd rather not have some of his exciting moments.

Yeah, my thought was the same thing that several have said. When I think of church planting, I think of hard work. Um, our church is just, you know, planting here locally, and the reward is seeing people come to Christ to embrace the kingdom of God. And that is just something rich that, that it's hard to find a joy that, that equals that. But it's hard work. You know, I thought it'd be like asking, "Is it exciting being a farmer?" Well, yeah, I think there's probably some rewards in farming, but it's hard work. I mean, it's not a glamorous thing, and I don't think church planting—if you're thinking it's glamorous and exciting, then you're probably not going to succeed because it's, yeah, it's hard work bringing people to Christ.

And then even when you bring people to a certain point, the discipleship continues on. And so it's, it's hard work, and it's a lot easier. I can see kind of why our churches have put up walls. It's just easier to just not have to mess with people. You know, just put up walls and say, "Well, if they're interested, they'll come." And of course, they won't if the wall's big enough. Um, and yeah, you're going to have headaches, but there's, you know, wonderful rewards as well, which is why people do that. And of course, it's being obedient to Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Okay, the next one I had, and then people gave me a question along the lines of this, and I'm going to kind of paraphrase a couple of them together. Um, looking at—and this was more format of how do you go about planting churches.

And for at least Anabaptist-minded people, we have tended when we go overseas to send one or two missionaries and plant a church by raising up the local people. Um, here in the United States, we tend to plant churches by taking a number of families—six, eight, ten families from a congregation—and moving to the next town or down the road a little farther and planting a church that way. What are some of the pros and cons to these different types of planting churches, and why do we tend to do one method other places and another method here? Maybe talk a little bit more about what is more—is there one way it's more effective than other ways? So along that line of thought.

Some of the things I've thought about as it relates to this question, and we've been involved in both models in some of our endeavors over the years, usually in overseas mission endeavors, church planting endeavors, there is usually a board of directors or a mission board of sorts that will be responsible to get the funds together to support the missionaries that are going. And with all the competing mission organizations around the world, it's sometimes hard to raise enough funds to send eight to ten families to Belize or Liberia or somewhere like that. And the other thing is that when a missionary or a church planter is fully supported to where he can focus all of his time and energy on just that, it does give more opportunities for the church planting endeavor to really be more focused.

Whereas here in America, that's usually not the case, and I'm not sure why that is, why we couldn't put together boards to send just two or three families and then support them in that work. It's just something that is not done very much here.

But as we think about how we do it, the model of sending eight or ten families out, everyone, yes, should be involved in the spreading of the gospel and that kind of thing, but everyone is usually involved as well in making a living. And so the time is, you know, is taken up with some of that. I remember, I think it was about ten years ago, Brother Ernest and I were teaching at a Bible school together, and we began talking—this was right after we got back from Liberia—we began talking about church planting models, and this is one of the things that we discussed. And so we were talking about what is commonly referred to in Anabaptist—conservative Anabaptist settings—of evangelization by colonization.

We probably—most of us have heard that term before—evangelization by colonization, which implies sending a colony of people, which, you know, six, eight, ten families or whatever, and then starting to evangelize as a result of that. But then Brother Ernest said something that really caught my attention. He said, I think somebody suggested to him, "Maybe we ought to turn that around, and we ought to adopt here in America more of what we do overseas, which is a colonization by evangelization model, which gives the idea that you're going to grow the church. You're going to build the church by evangelization of the local culture or the local people." And that has not been a method that has been used much here in America, and it's something that I wish we would see more of.

And I'll share more of that in my topic later on, some of the things that we're doing in our little church planting endeavor.

Yeah, I agree with that. And I would say that you have to figure out what your focus is, what your purpose is. Are you going to spread out the salt and light across the nation? If you're getting too many people on a pilot, it is good to spread that out. And there's maybe people that can function in a swarm model. They wouldn't be able to function as a team of one or two families, but they could function in a bigger group. And so it has to be clear from the beginning which one you're going to go after. Are you going to go after the swarm model and then expect maybe other people that are interested in the vision to move in and start the colony, or are you going with this model of growing the church from the local population?

Yeah, I think it can work either way. When I looked at the question, I thought colonization isn't necessarily a bad thing. It depends what you do when you get there. I've seen groups of Mennonites where eight families have moved somewhere, and they don't do anything. They do the same thing they did back here in Pennsylvania. And yeah, they get a few people who come in because of curiosity or something like that, but they're not really actively evangelizing. And then other ones, one that comes to my mind is, and probably a lot of you know, the group out—is it Caldwell, Idaho, right outside of Boise? A group of German Baptists moved there. It was probably a colonization, I think about eight families.

But they're doing all kinds of things to reach out, and they're growing. They're having a very active and fruitful ministry there. So it's the difference between do you have people who are wanting to reach out, and in that case, it's helpful to have those eight families to give you support, or are you just going to be there and do nothing and then wonder why people don't come in?

Next question. I've had a couple of questions like this, and I tried to paraphrase them together as well. But it goes along the line of my church isn't very supportive of outreach, of bringing people into church. Maybe it's because they're scared of who's going to come in, the problems that are going to come in, don't know why all the reasons are. But my church is not very supportive. They have not forbidden me from participating in kingdom work, but it's kind of something that is not—they're kind of not—you could tell they don't really approve of it, or they're scared of it. Should I continue on in my local church? Should I find another church? Is there some way I can help in my church to get on board with this type of outreach work, or what should be my response here?

Well, I would think that at the very beginning, you ought to pray and pray a lot and fast and ask God to give you direction. From a pastoral point of view, pastors, especially those who have to make their own living, are so overwhelmed with all that there is to do. And then to think of bringing in more work and more needs when you're already tired, sometimes that can be interpreted then as, well, they're not really interested in outreach. And I would say too, really, the great shepherd, the chief shepherd, has already said we're supposed to do it.

It's a matter of how we go about it. And I would say too, if this individual has made a personal commitment to a lifestyle of personal witnessing and disciple-making, he or she will find a way. The Lord will open a way for them. I would say don't leave your church as the first option.

Stay there as long as you can to try to work within the network in which God has placed you. I would suggest to ask to talk personally with your leaders, not after church when he's busy trying to take care of people, but sit across the table from him sometime with coffee or whatever, and just share with him your vision and ask him for prayer.

Ask him what is his vision for the church's outreach. Is there a way that you can be involved and try to approach it that way rather than going head to head? They're not interested in outreach. Therefore, I'm out of here.

Evangelists by nature usually are passionate, and they look for ways to take that gospel of the kingdom out. And I think perhaps too often in our conservative Anabaptist churches, we have not recognized enough the gift of evangelization or the gift of the evangelist.

And we have perhaps tended to look at evangelists with more of a critical eye sometimes because they are so passionate, and they have all these big ideas about how to reach out and things like that. So I think if we could recognize that God, he gives the gift of evangelization to people. And if we as churches could begin to recognize that, let's utilize that gift.

But on the other hand, I would say that evangelists, just like any other calling, need to be humble. And we need to recognize that humility across the board in whatever we do, everyone needs to recognize that this is God's work. We're doing it for him. It's not about ourselves or anything like that. So I think if you have the gift of evangelism that God has given you, be humble about it. And as Brother Allen said, go to your leaders in a humble way and share your passion with them and pray that God would open up possibilities from within your own church to do that. I think that would perhaps open the eyes of some of our leaders and those who are looking on to the great need for the gift of evangelism that God has talked about in his word.

A couple of months ago, we had a speaker at our church planners' forum who was talking about his role as the lead pastor in their church and how that there was a request came to their church to send a brother to Greece.

And he just felt they were too overwhelmed. They had too many things going, too many things coming up on the horizon. There's just no way that he could manage this. And so his thought was, "Well, we just can't do it right now because we're just so busy." And after the meeting was over where they discussed this, a couple of lay brothers came to him and said, "What if we would do this? What if we'd help this fellow get to Greece? And you can keep on with your work."

And it was a brand new idea, but he liked it, and the Holy Spirit was working in his life, and he blessed them, and they were able to do that. That was Brother Dean Taylor. And so sometimes it's just making ourselves available, offering.

And it won't always turn out that way, but there's nothing wrong with trying it.

Yeah, I like what the brothers here have said, that I would be very slow to just accept that, yeah, my church just doesn't want to outreach. I think there are some churches like that. But like Allen suggested, maybe the pastor is just overwhelmed, or Gary mentioned, what is the attitude of the evangelist? Are you being just running ahead of everybody and being brash and all of that? And so it may be you may be interpreting my church doesn't want to reach out to others, and maybe it's something on your own part.

But I think if I were in a church that just absolutely know we do not want to reach out, I think there are some churches like that. Like I said, I'd be slow to conclude that that's the problem. But if that is, I myself would want to be obedient to Jesus Christ and find a church that is eager to outreach. But like I say, the options that they mentioned, explore all of that first to be sure that's really the problem because maybe they don't know how to do it, and they're kind of afraid and all of that. And if you're approaching it humbly, and rather than as a confrontational thing, you may find that actually they'll get behind you.

I remember a brother a few years ago saying that he hears people talking about their church won't allow them to do evangelism and outreach. And he says, "If your bishop won't allow you to pass out martyr's mirrors at the truck stop, have him come talk to me."

Okay, next question is, "What is a necessary ingredient to start and maintain a faithful church?" And then on top of that, as a second follow-up, do you have some of these faithful churches, church plants that you could refer us to that we could go and visit?

So what does it take to start a faithful church and maintain a faithful church? And then where are some of these faithful churches that have started and have maintained a Christian witness?

Well, obviously, it takes faithful people to start faithful churches. It has to start there. The other thing that becomes obvious before too long is that no church is ideal.

When we went to Central America, I was going to start genuine New Testament churches that had no traditions. How dumb can you get? I mean, anytime you do something twice in a row, it becomes a tradition, right? And it never occurred to me to ask, "Well, which of the New Testament churches am I thinking about? Is it Corinth?

Is it Laodicea? Is it Philadelphia or Smyrna?" And so churches are never going to be measuring up totally to our ideal. And I'm not downplaying the importance of attempting to be faithful or being careless or anything like that. But obviously, it first takes faithful people who have the courage to point people to Jesus and to his words and to live it out in front of them and to call them toward it. That's to get our discussion started here.

Could you give that question again? What are the necessary ingredients to start and maintain a faithful church?

So I'll branch off of the faithful people there that you were talking about. Here's some basic ingredients for anybody that wants to work anywhere, whether it's church planning or whether it's evangelization or discipleship or whatever. People need to be able to work with a team. So many church plants falter because there's people in the group that can't work as a team. People need to have lots and lots and lots of patience for people.

People need to have some basic guiding principles for how to instruct others in the scriptures and maybe have some experience in instructing others in the scriptures. And the way you get experience is to start doing it.

Just basic responsibility, being willing to do things for the Lord that nobody ever sees. I would say those are just some foundational things that every person needs to have if they're going to be effective as a faithful person.

And I'll let somebody else branch off from there.

Something that came to my mind is we, first of all, have to believe that Jesus meant what he said when he said, "Go and make disciples." We must believe that. That must be at the heart of church planting.

And discipleship-making or disciple-making can be tough work. And it takes perseverance. It takes diligence. It takes a lot of prayer. It takes a lot of wisdom from God to make disciples. And that's ultimately what we're doing when we're planting churches, is we're making disciples. We're discipling people into the kingdom. And so I think perhaps if in some of our church planting endeavors, we would think more about the great commission as we do it rather than just we want our particular branch of Anabaptism or whatever to expand, and that's what we're looking to do. Rather than that, we would look at the great commission and try to figure out ways then to make it practical where we are, to make the great commission practical.

Sometimes we get ideas of what we want to do for the Lord, whether it's in a city or in a country or whatever. And we go in there with this idea of how we would like this to look. And in order to make it look that way, we have to bring people in to make that vision happen.

What if a church would convert some people, find out what their talents are, what their gifts are, what their passions are, and then help them establish their ministry? I think that's what I've seen outside of our kinds of churches of people who start evangelicals and so forth. They will convert some people and then figure out what these people have to contribute and then form a ministry around that.

So there's a number of churches that are considering offering internships. Jason at his church in Hamilton, Ohio, is offering some internships. We're just getting ready to start that in State College. There's a church in North Central Pennsylvania, Bradford, Pennsylvania. Kevin Groff is the contact person there.

If you go to our churchplannersforum.org website, you can see those listed there. A few years ago, whenever I was interested in getting involved in church planning, I wanted to go somewhere and experience it first before I moved somewhere myself. So I went to a church that was located in the city and said, "Could I be an intern? Could I be an apprentice here for a couple of years?" They said, "Well, we haven't done that before, but perhaps we could arrange some things to make that happen." So they didn't have a program as such, but they were willing to do that. And it's possible there's a lot more churches that would be willing to do that if you just asked them.

But I found it very helpful to go there to that church in the city and just experience some irregularities. I remember one Sunday morning, we had two people in the church that got to arguing with each other after Sunday school right in the open meeting.

And this went on for about two or three minutes. And I was watching the pastor up front to see how you handle situations like this. And he handled it very well. And that's just one example of the kinds of things you can experience with watching how somebody else does it first.

The one in Hamilton, we do have you can come as an intern. I'm also offering some shorter-term stuff, a weekend exposure just if you haven't been to the city before, an urban area, and you'd like to see what it's like. You come in for a weekend or a week. So if you want something shorter, we can do that there as well. But yeah, a lot of times there are places you can go. And if you need some help, talk to anyone up front. Up front here, we can probably get you linked up with somebody to get some exposure. So there are some options there.