Planting Churches
The next two steps to starting a church and the church plant process is the issue that most of us, if not all of us like to deal with very much. That is the issue of suffering. Who wants to suffer? Yet planting a church, and growing churches as well as our individual spiritual lives will involve suffering if we are to be Biblical about it.
5. Step five is to suffer. (Acts 14:22 “and that through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”) All of the steps are action verbs except this one. It is implied in verse 22 though. The word used here is a word that was used in those days for a threshing instrument used to separate wheat from the chaff. It helps us to understand what God’s doing in our lives when problems and trials come. He’s separating wheat from chaff.
We must help people to understand that the Christian life is not a life of having no problems. It is necessary to suffer because that’s how God shakes us down and separates what’s real and not real. It’s necessary. Part of church planting is helping people to understand a realistic perspective of the Christian life.
6. The sixth step to planting church is they ordained. (Acts 14:23 “and when they had ordained them elders”).
This is the step of designating leadership. Here’s the real end of discipleship. The disciples now can feed themselves and so they are ordained. There’s no ceremony implied, it means they designated them. When they ordained elders in every church, what’s being said is that part of that church planting process was training leaders that can be left in leadership positions. That’s part of your responsibility.
It’s training leaders to do what you do so you don’t have to do it anymore because you ought to be growing in Christ and doing stuff that nobody else can do yet.
Notice the word elders is plural. There’s always a leader, whether it’s Paul, Barnabus, Moses, David and so forth.
God always works through an anointed leader but that leader is always a leader of a team! You see that word elder is used as it appears in the New Testament. They were set apart. Ordaining someone is recognizing what God is already doing in someone’s life. Remember whatever job you have, you must train somebody else to do it as well.
This is key to planting churches and ordaining leadership inside the church to carry out ministries.
Read steps 1 and 2
- How To Plant A Church
- Start A Church
Steps 3 – 4
March 30th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Where can I read about the rest of the steps in the church planting process?
March 30th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
To read all of the steps in the church planting process – go to this page:
http://church-bible.com/church-planting/
Then on the left hand menu navigation – you will see the
Church and Bible SubTopics
Simply click on each of the subtopic headings under that heading to read all of the church planting steps:
Read all of these pages to get all of the steps to the church planting process:
o How To Plant A Church
o Start A Church
o Planting Churches
o Starting A New Church
o Bible Churches