Why Plant Churches? – Towards a Missional Ecclesiology

This is a series on church planting in the city. While I am no expert, I hope this series will ask the hard questions about consumerism vs. discipleship, money, contextualized mission, race and the future of American cities. Every Monday a new topic will begin with further posts on that topic posted throughout the week. You can see a rough schedule of these posts here. Links are provided to the rest of the series at the bottom of the post.

Ecclesiology is the theological and Biblical study of what the Church is and for what purpose it exists. This understanding of the Church will dictate what the local church does on a Sunday, what the church does throughout the week and what the church encourages its members to do. In Evangelical circles there has been this tension between identifying the church as an cosmic/spiritual institution and as simply the gathering of believers. There are a host of movements where individuals feel no need to belong to a local church because they feel that the occasional gathering of like-minded Christians “counts” as church (I am by no means referring to the House Church Movement, which is completely separate). On the other hand, individuals believe that the Church only exists in its institutional form consisting of a three fold order of leadership (Bishops, Priests and Deacons) and in its proper administration of the sacraments in a specific way. But why is this important? This is important because when we begin to understand that an essential purpose of the Church is to be on mission, we begun to understand why church planting is a necessary action of the Church.

“Church is only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.”
-William Temple

Jesus was incarnated and sent into our world in order to bring about the Kingdom of God. The central part of this bringing of the Kingdom was his atoning work on the cross. Jesus then established the Church on earth in order to facilitate Gospel growth and the Kingdom of God. His final commandments in Matthew 28.18-20 and Acts 1.7-8 send the disciples into the world. Now the Church is also essentially doxological and purposed to guide and aid in the sanctification of the People of God. However, each of these other two essentials encourages and facilitates mission. They are all in a feedback loop which each creates opportunity for growth in one another. Mike Breen calls these three components Up (doxological), In (sanctification/fellowship) and Out (missiological). When our ecclesiology forgets one of these, our church can get our of whack.

This Out is what drives church planting in a post-Christian context. In Christendom, church planting was often done to hold Gospel Growth. When sanctuaries grew too small or when individuals moved into new territories without churches (west coast expansion), churches were planted. It was an “In” decision. Not an “Out” one. However, in a post-Christian context like New England, churches are planted to facilitate Gospel Growth (Out). Ed Stetzer, Phillip Jensen, David Helm and others have all pointed out that generally there are great numbers of conversions in church plants for a number of reasons. So the call for church planting is both a contextual call (it’s what works in a post-Christiandom society) and a theological call (ourmissional ecclesiology). How does your ecclesiology direct your view of church planting? For your church/denomination, is Church Planting inside the “In” category or the “Out” category?

Posts in this Series

Sex in the City: Do We Still Need Urban Church Plants?
Consumerism, Competition and Celebrities
The Boston Shuffle
Why plant Churches? – Towards A Missional Ecclesiology