starting with a group not an individual
Starting a new simple church - do you try and lead individuals to Jesus, then bring them together to form a new simple church? Or, should you start with an existing 'oikos' (network of relationships)? This is something we have wrestled with constantly. In the excitment of someone new coming to Jesus we often forget about this person's existing network and how open they may be to the gospel too. Starting a community with an existing web of relationships is far far easier than trying to create community from a group of strangers.

Here is David Watson on this subject:

It is very important to start new groups with the Core Values (DNA) you want to see in the church. This is probably the most common mistake I see in church planting. People start groups without the essentials of church and hope to reform the group once they become Believers. Or, they establish unintentional DNA that hinder replication and/or growth.

The heart of a church start is a lost family or affinity group. Redeem existing groups; don’t build new groups by winning individuals to Christ and congregating them, or by using existing Christians. Most church planters try to build new groups by winning individuals to Christ and then forming them into groups. If you take any time to think about this you will realize that this form of church planting is very slow, is not easy to replicate, and is not keeping up with current population growth.

I never start churches using personal evangelism or with Christians. If you use personal evangelism, you miss the New Testament concepts of disciple-making to salvation, family-focused evangelism and establishing the new church around a minimum social unit or existing group. (See Matthew 10 and 28, Luke 9, Luke 10, Acts 10, and more) If you start a church with Christians you have just established an unintentional Core Value that it requires a group of Christians to start a church. These kinds of churches do not replicate well because, if the church is dynamic and growing, no one wants to leave it in order to start a new group.

Go here for the full article by David.

Labels: Planting

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