Very good. Yeah, thank you for that. So we have three questions here that kind of all fall into the same category. And I'm just gonna read all three of them, and then you can kind of feel free to answer them how you see fit. The first one's from Mark Zier. Is it important to have a sending church or group of churches? Is it possible for two or three couples who are agreed on doing a church plant to glorify Jesus to do it without a sending church or denomination?
And then from Sam and Christina Bear, we, my wife and I are trying to follow Jesus literally and have burdens for our town. Is it okay to try and start a church on our own? Joe Morris said, " Should church planting asked, should church planting only be done with the blessing of your current church leaders? What if your current church does not have the vision for church planting or is very slow to act? " I don't want to forget the example of Patrick of Ireland though, smiley face.
Yeah, I appreciate very much the tone that I heard in those questions. And I think that's a great sign of that humility that we were talking about before. Yeah, so, you know, the first off that we can say is that, you know, one of the most successful churches in history was the Church of Antioch. And we have shadowy records of that in the book of Acts. But as far as we can tell, and I think almost everyone would agree on this, it was not a formal church that began with an apostolic delegate from Jerusalem.
It mentions these anonymous people that came from Cyprus and Cyrene that went and evangelized there. And the church began as a result of that. And so we do see precedent for that right in the New Testament of one of the most impressive, maybe the most impressive church outside of Jerusalem to begin was not the result of a formal sendoff there. So I would say absolutely it is very, very possible there and to glorify Jesus just as the Antioch Church did.
There's a kind of a related question in all this, which is, even though it's possible and that I think there's many examples of that in church history, is it the wisest course? And here is where it's a little bit of a case-by-case, but I would say that if one can do it in a way that secures the blessing of those that you're coming from, that's certainly the best. And we want to be as good as possible at keeping bridges and working with those that we have some kind of relationship with.
There are times, however, where one of our trust points right now that we're working with, there's a very negative view in general of evangelism that one of the churches that the couples come from have, and they just would not be supportive at all. And so I think there are times where we just have to say the differences are so stark and biblically, we're coming at such a different perspective on things that it doesn't seem like here. It's very productive to wait for that.
You know In Patrick's case there, of course, that was of course he was working under the Roman Catholic paradigm. And that was something that I don't know that we want to press too far. I love that book. And I love Let Me Die in Ireland. It's a really great book. For those who haven't read it about patience and showing that submissive spirit.
But I think in general, I would say possible to do it, often advisable, but if at all possible, we should try to work with those and at least get the blessing of those and not do it in an underhanded way from those that we're working out with. And we can have a good testimony, hopefully, as we depart and say, hey, we want to bless you. Hopefully you'll bless us in that. And hopefully there would even be some exchange of people and ideas as the church plant begins. Thank you for that.
The next question is kind of in the same vein as that, but more specific to efforts that they've already put in to try to start a community. And I don't know if you'd have any advice or direction for them, but this is from Boaz and Rebecca. They asked, " Dear brother Finny, we are living as conservative Anabaptists in the Netherlands for now more than eight years. And we know David Bercot very well, preaching a lot, giving Bible resources, et cetera.
But we haven't yet found people who will make the same commitment to Christ in His kingdom. Why can't we start a fellowship over here? What are we doing wrong? Could there be maybe two or three couples from USA or Canada who are willing to help church planting? Please, your advice and help. May God bless you, Boaz, and Rebecca. Yeah, great. And I believe you're on the call here. I'd love to meet you both there. And actually, if there is some way to communicate, I would love to do so.
There's a couple of people that I'm thinking of in the Netherlands who are native Dutch that we've been in communication with. And I've not been able to plug them in to anyone there. They're both single women who are one of them who was very interested in followers of the way when she was here and just recently graduated with her PhD. So I would love to share both of their contact information with you there. And there might be something there.
So yeah, a couple comments there besides wanting to share those contacts with you and not knowing your specific contacts that well. One of the things that I wonder if, going back to an earlier question, if there would be that validation from having the other one or two couples or families to work with you, which is I understand what you're asking for anyway there.
There is a principle in the Bible that I think we can generalize, which is that it says from the mouth from the mouth of two or three witnesses, everything shall be confirmed. And I remember just from personal experience when we were starting followers of the way in 2012, that I really felt like I wanted to have someone else with us from the outset as a way to validate that God was going to bless what we were doing.
And so I like the direction that your question is aimed at looking at other couples who want to potentially help with that. So there may well be other families from the U.S. or Canada who want to help with that. And again, it would be some way for us to connect outside of this forum. I'd love to discuss that.
I do want to say one other point here, which is going to come up, I think, in other questions as well, which is that often what I have found is that you can have the right first couple there, but they're missing the gifts of a second couple that might have the complementary gifts that are required in order to make a church plant truly viable.
And in particular, one of the most important gifts that we should be looking for as one of the gifts that say the two or three singles or families have is this church planting or apostolic gifting there. And what I mean by that is not apostle in the sense of one of the 12, but I mean by that in the church planting sense. And there's a lot to be said for this gift, which is just such an important gift to have where it's usually someone who has a proven success in starting things from scratch.
And then they also are often very hungry for branching out into new directions. And often where you will find such people is actually in the business world, they've often been very successful as entrepreneurs and they're often very successful in sort of winning people and traveling and sort of building up something that, like I said, often manifests in the business sense as well.
There's a corresponding aspect to the lowercase apostolic or church planting gift, which is that there's often a zeal for fidelity to Jesus and to the movement. And on all of these attributes, let's call it entrepreneurial ability, a desire to be itinerant, a fidelity for the movement. You can see them in people long before they actually begin their career as a church planter. And so I like to use the example of the apostle Paul. And we should ask, was he a person who was starting things? Was he itinerant?
Was he zealous for guarding the movement? And he was all those things, right? He was someone who was itinerant on behalf of Judaism. He was zealous to guard Judaism. And he was even trying to capture Christians and imprison them. And Paul ended up being that catalyst that was required to get Barnabas mobilized and commissioned. And obviously the missionary journeys began from that. And so the question, it may not be, what are we doing wrong, but it may be, who are we missing?
And do we have that church planter gift in our midst? And I think you would find pretty consistently that without at least one individual with a strong church planting gift in that apostolic gift, lowercase apostolic gift, it'll be difficult to gain traction. So that would be my working hypothesis there. But I would really love to communicate with you offline. So maybe I'll work with Clark on doing that.
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