Missions Textbook 50
Church Planting Made Easy

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Planting a church can be as easy as just letting the nationals go. If we jump over the myriad of organizational structures for the past two thousand years, we find the simplest method ever for initially planting a local church in Acts 2: 40-47. Can we imagine over 3,000 people meeting on one day of the week for evangelism (v.40), teaching (v.42), fellowship (v.42), prayer (v.42), and breaking of bread in their homes (vv.42, 46)? And we find no authoritative structure higher than twelve apostles until elders were introduced sometime before Acts 11:30.

Although we can assume that a local church got started by Philip in Samaria in Acts 8:17 (because they received the Holy Spirit), the first mention of a local church named as a “church” occurred in Acts 11:26. After Stephen’s martyrdom the believers fled to Antioch (vv.19-26). After Barnabas confirmed that those believers were following Jesus, he did not instruct them to hold firm to Jerusalem, but to stay organizationally independent and “continue with the Lord” (v.23). When Barnabas brought Paul to teach the believers, “they assembled with the church and taught a great many people” (v.26). This church already existed before Barnabas and Paul showed up. We have no record of how that happened, other than evangelism brought people together into a local body of believers. It apparently became the second, independent local church established, as indicated by the definite article in front of each description, “the” church in Jerusalem (v.22) and “the” church in Antioch (v.26).

If Barnabas had not been present at Pentecost, he would have joined the believers early enough to have witnessed how the church continued to function around the five activities described in Acts 2:40-42. He would have witnessed how the apostles focused on the teaching and turned over all other matters to the congregation (6:1-7). Elder leadership surfaced for the first time in Jerusalem (11:30) and was mentioned again in Acts 15:2 at the Jerusalem council. Between those two references we find Paul “appointing” elders in the Gentile churches in Asia Minor.

The interesting thing about Paul’s first missionary journey is the fact that he started local churches and left them without putting anyone in charge. The text simply states that he “preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples,” and then he left and went to other cities. Then, when he returned to those “leaderless” local churches, he “appointed” elders – the word “appoint” meaning to “elect by a show of hands” or a popular vote – and then he committed that local church to the Lord and left again. Obviously, Paul did not personally choose the leadership in the local churches, but expected the congregation to do so, just as the church in Jerusalem did in Acts 6:1-4.

            Christianity has developed an almost unlimited number of different church hierarchies, leadership training programs, church growth theories, accumulation of wealth, and property acquisition along the way. The Book of Acts is not prescriptive, i.e., commanding every local church in every century to do things exactly like Paul did, otherwise we would all have to speak Greek in our worship services. It does seem, however, that returning to the pattern of church planting in Acts 13-14 would free up believers in a local church to spend more time on evangelism, teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread (the center of worship) and prayer, as well as choosing their own in-house leadership whom they already trust. Just some food for thought.

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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