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The Place of Church Planting in Mission: Towards a Theological Framework

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The Place of Church Planting in Mission: Towards a Theological Framework ERT (2009) 33:4, 316-331 The Place of Church Planting in Mission: Towards a Theological Framework Richard Yates Hibbert KEYWORDS: Church planting; Missio points out, ‘theological reflection is the Dei; Kingdom of God; Holistic beginning point of ministry formation’.2 Mission; Theology of Mission While insights from the history of mis- sion and the social sciences are extremely helpful in shaping church I The Need for a Theological planting practice, a biblical and theo- Framework logical foundation is essential if church Until 1980, there were very few books planting is to fulfil God’s purposes for giving practical guidance to church it. Robinson and Christine are right in planters. The succeeding years have insisting that ‘we need to be sure that the activity of church planting lies not seen this vital need met through the just on the practical agenda of activists publication of scores of texts. Very few but that it also belongs to the purpose of these texts, though, provide any- and call of God for his church’.3 Murray thing approaching a satisfying theolog- warns: ical basis for church planting, one notable exception being Stuart Mur- An inadequate theological basis ray’s Church Planting: Laying Founda- [for church planting] will not nec- tions, first published in 1998.1 The biblical and theological founda- 2 Gailyn Van Rheenen, ‘The Missional Helix: tion for the planting of churches has Example of Church Planting’, Monthly Missio- generally been assumed rather than logical Reflections 26 (January 2001), explicitly articulated. As Van Rheenen http://www.missiology.org/mmr/mmr26.htm (accessed 21 May 2003). 3 Martin Robinson and Stuart Christine, Planting Tomorrow’s Churches Today: A Com- 1 Stuart Murray, Church Planting: Laying prehensive Handbook (Tunbridge Wells: Foundations (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998). Monarch, 1992), 15. Richard Hibbert, (D.Min., Columbia Biblical Seminary), PhD (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), a medical doctor, is Director of the School of Cross-Cultural Mission, Sydney Missionary and Bible College, Australia. With experience in church planting in Turkey and Bulgaria, he has also served with WEC International as Director for Equipping and Advance, providing in-service training and consultation for missionaries. He has published ‘Defilement and cleansing: a possible approach to Christian encounter with Muslims’ (Missiology: An International Review 36: 343-355). The Place of Church Planting in Mission 317 essarily hinder short-term growth, the end of the first century from the or result in widespread heresy mobile ministry of the apostles, among newly planted churches. prophets, and evangelists of the first But it will limit the long-term century, to the more settled ministry of impact of church planting, and may bishops, elders and deacons. This, he result in dangerous distortions of believes, led to the church focusing in the way in which the mission of the on itself. The central concern of mis- church is understood.4 sion activity in both the Eastern Malphurs provides this helpful defi- Church and the Roman Church became nition of church planting: ‘a planned the planting and growth of the church, process of beginning and growing new with the emphasis on church as insti- local churches’.5 Inherent in his defini- tution. Expansion of the church was tion are three key concepts: (1) Church often achieved through coercion, and planting is an intentional activity the words ‘compel them to come in’ which involves human planning; (2) (Lk. 14:26) became the paradigmatic church planting is a dynamic process; text of the medieval Catholic Church.6 (3) church planting involves both start- Thomas Aquinas wrote that ‘the ing new churches and helping those purpose of mission is to so thoroughly churches grow. root the church… in the various cul- This article sets out firstly to survey tures and societies that it serves as an the perspectives of evangelical schol- instrument to salvation and good’.7 ars on church planting, especially over Catholic missiologists of the Louvain the past fifty years. These perspectives and Munster schools continued to will be arranged topically so that the emphasise church planting, the Lou- major themes are highlighted. The sec- vain school still focusing on the church ond objective of this paper is to evalu- as institution, and the Munster school ate the themes that emerge from the taking a more person-centred view. ‘conversation’ in the literature, and This influence is reflected in the Sec- through this process to highlight ond Vatican Council’s decree on mis- themes that promise to be significant sion, Ad Gentes, which describes the contributions to a biblical and theolog- goal of mission as ‘to preach the ical framework for church planting Gospel and plant the Church among practice, and attempt to integrate peoples or groups in which it has not them. yet been established’.8 The Catholic focus on church plant- ing follows naturally from Catholic the- II Historical Perspectives on Church Planting in Mission David Bosch notes a shift took place at 6 David Bosch. Transforming Mission. (Mary- knoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 236 7 Cited in Johannes Verkuyl, Contemporary 4 Murray, Church Planting, 30. Missiology: An Introduction, trans. Dale Cooper 5 Aubrey Malphurs, Planting Growing (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 182. Churches for the 21st Century (Grand Rapids, 8 Verkuyl, Contemporary Missiology, 182- MI: Baker, 1998), 21. 183. 318 Richard Yates Hibbert ology, which was shaped by Cyprian of support of oppressed or impoverished Carthage’s statement, ‘… salus extra churches.12 ecclesiam non est….,’ i.e., there is no Very little cross-cultural missionary salvation outside the Church.9 This work was engaged in by Protestants came to be interpreted in terms of the until the Pietistic movement began. Catholic Church.10 Augustine of Hippo Pietism, being a movement within pointed to the central purpose of state churches, rather than a specific Roman Catholic mission when he branch of the church itself, did not responded to another bishop that the emphasise church planting, but rather world was not about to end because individual salvation. The primary aim first, ‘… in nations where the Church and overriding focus of Pietist mission- does not yet exist, she must come into aries was the conversion of individu- existence’.11 Since the Church is the als, even though churches were administrator of the sacraments, and planted through them.13 William Carey the sacraments are seen as the means and the many non-denominational mis- of grace, Catholic theology maintained sionary societies arising from his that salvation was available only to example also saw mission primarily as people who were within reach of a local the conversion of individuals, and thus church. Church planting has thus they attached little importance to out- remained the primary goal of Catholic ward and organizational forms of mission thinking through the cen- church life.14 turies. These early missionaries were not Following the Reformation in the much concerned with establishing 16th century, Gisbertus Voetius, a mis- indigenous national churches for sev- sionary and mission theologian, in his eral reasons: (1) The Enlightenment Politica Ecclesiastica, stated a seven- view that separated spiritual concerns fold purpose of mission, six aspects of from the material and practical realm, which were directly connected to the and in which religion was seen as the planting and growth of churches. private concern of the individual;15 (2) Examples include the planting, grow- the prevailing materialism, which led ing, and establishment of churches, the missionaries to believe they were supe- regathering of scattered churches, the rior and the assumption they would reunification and reincorporation of need to remain there indefinitely to divided or separated churches, and the 12 Jan Jongeneel, ‘The Missiology of Gisber- 9 Cyprian, letter 73.21, cited in Jayakiran tus Voetius’, Calvin Theological Journal 26 Sebastian, ‘Sensitivity and Proclamation: Per- (1991), 63-64. spectives on Mission from the Writings of 13 Verkuyl, Contemporary Missiology, 178. Cyprian’, Mission Studies 15 (1998): 40. 14 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 331; Brian 10 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 258. Woodford, ‘One Church, Many Churches: A 11 Augustine, letter 199, cited in Documents Five-Model Approach to Church Planting and in Early Christian Thought, eds. Maurice Wiles Evaluation, PhD diss., Fuller Theological and Mark Santer (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- Seminary, 1997, 23. versity Press, 1975), 259. 15 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 262-273. The Place of Church Planting in Mission 319 provide education and material churches which were self-governing, goods;16 and (3) the influence of self-supporting, and self-propagating.19 pietism, which had a highly spiritu- In the middle of this century, the three- alised concept of the church and self formula of Henry Venn and Rufus attached little importance to its visible Anderson helped to crystallise the form and ministry.17 focus among evangelicals on church This is not to say that church plant- planting as the key to mission, but ing was entirely missing from the their rationale for doing this was prag- agenda of these early Protestant mis- matic—the missions needed to be sionaries. William Ward, one of the relieved of the burden of financially Serampore trio together with Carey, supporting the newer churches— wrote in his journal of 1805 ‘that in rather than theological. planting separate churches native pas- The first
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