Leadership Essentials – Contextualization Is Not What You Think It Is

by davidwatson on September 2, 2010

There is an ongoing debate around the world regarding contextualization.  This is an extremely complex debate in which many very smart and dedicated people on all sides of the issue have taken interest.  I have mostly stayed out of the debate because I love everyone involved and did not want to alienate myself from the people or the debate.  My concern is that there is a rising tendency to categorize organizations and people by where they stand on contextualization.  This is a very disturbing trend that will cripple our global mission processes.

We have spent hundreds of years doing missions in an environment that stresses denominational/doctrinal adherence and/or differences.  This has led to rivalries, partitioning of countries along denominational lines, confusion, syncretism, and constant sniping at one another.  It is no wonder that those who are not Christian cannot understand us, especially if they are in areas where multiple denominational/doctrinal stances are present.  Now we are adding contextualization into the mix, and this is even more confusing and more detrimental to our Great Commission.

Where did denominationalism come from?  It came from good men who wanted to deal with certain parts of the Bible in their context in a way that would lessen confusion for their leaders and members in that context.  These arose out of conscience and a desire that practices would be uniform in their context.  The problem with this is that as the denominationalism expanded to new contexts it forced the old context solutions on the new Believers in a different context, instead of allowing the new Believers to develop their understanding and practices with the Bible as their guide rather than a doctrinal statement that was developed to address a different context.

What would Christianity look like today if loving, knowledgeable, experienced mentors had focused on making Disciples for Jesus who would obey His teachings in their clearest and simplest forms regardless of personal or corporate consequences?  We are so tied up in what Christianity looks like we have forgotten that it is only real in a deep abiding relationship with our Creator, Jesus Christ our Lord.  This relationship is personal and it is corporate!  Individuals and groups are held accountable to the Lord Jesus for our individual and corporate beliefs and practices.  The prophets and Jesus were harsh with religious leaders whose beliefs and practices did not agree.

I believe that Scripture has within it all we need to be obedient and pleasing to God in thought and practice.  I believe that each leader and each group has a responsibility to practice their faith in a way that best communicates their love and devotion for God through Jesus the Messiah in their own context, without the need for outsiders to tell them how to practice.

The role of the outsider is to introduce the Creator Christ and to demonstrate that our love response to God’s mercy is our consistent obedience to His Word in public and private, in all situations and circumstances, regardless of the personal consequences resulting from being obedient.  God demonstrates His love for us through His mercy (love/mercy).  We demonstrate our love for God through our obedience (love/obedience).

We cannot earn God’s love through obedience.  God’s love is absolute and one cannot have more of it or less of it at any given moment based on any legalistic adherence to a doctrine or the Bible.  God demonstrates His love for us through his mercy (love/mercy).  Those who love God demonstrate their love for God through obedience to His Word and the Holy Spirit speaking into their lives (love/obedience).  What the Holy Spirit reveals in our personal lives will be consistent with the revelation of His Word, the Bible.  We have a group responsibility to scripturally test the personal revelation of any individual before it is adopted as a personal or local group practice.

I appreciate what George Barna and Frank Viola were attempting with their book Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices.  However, I disagree with their fundamental premise.  Returning to First Century practices will not cure the ails of the modern church.  Our context is so much more complicated that those of the First Century.  Practices should flow out of Obedience to God in our current context, not out of some context that could not possibly understand the needs of the modern world and formulate practices that would be adequate for all times and places, and all seasons.  The Pagan Practices identified by Barna and Viola were contextual attempts to redeem local culture in obedience to the Word.  The problem came when the results of the process were passed on from generation to generation and from place to place, instead of passing on the process of redeeming local culture in the light of God’s Word.  Redeeming local pagan practices is a good thing.  Making those redeemed local practices the norm for the church in all times and places is not a good thing.  Instead, we should be mentoring leadership to redeem their context, not adopt a foreign expression of a redeemed foreign context.  We should be teaching process from leader to leader and generation to generation, not blind adherence to limited doctrinal responses from Scripture to address local and temporal issues.

We must resist passing on our solutions to our contexts to others as if our solutions are normative for Christianity and will work in every time and context.  What we must pass on is Scripture and a mentoring relationship that will develop leaders who can find the expressions of obedience to the Word in their own contexts in their own season.  Learning from others is a sign of maturity.  Copying others without thinking is immaturity.  The first leads to growth.  The second leads to destruction.

Our current educational processes seem to promote copying practices from the ages instead of learning from the Word of God and applying the principles to each new problem in each new generation in every different place.  Form is not universal.  If you don’t believe this simply look at the different kinds of brooms all over the planet.  Many forms, one function – clean the mess.  A single kind of broom is not suitable to all situations, nor is it suitable to every way different cultures prefer to sweep.  None of us would dream of forcing every person to use one kind of broom for every cleaning environment and every cultural style of sweeping.

Yet, this is exactly what we do with church and missions.  We insist that one form will suffice for all time in every situation.  This is absurd.  This is absurd whether we approach it from a doctrinal position, historical position, or cultural position.  Different times and different places and different contexts require different expressions of obedience to the Word of God.  Notice!  Not a different Word of God, but different expressions of obedience to the infallible and unchanging Word.

It is as wrong for us to contextualize practices for another culture as it is for us to foist our personal practices on another culture.  Contextualization is a local obedience response to the Word of God.  It is a local expression of love/obedience for God in response to God’s love/mercy for them.

I can introduce someone outside my context to the Word of God, assist them in understanding the Word of God, and ask them how they will obey the Word of God in their context; but I must not tell them how to obey.  The moment I move to telling “how”, I am teaching them to sweep the floor my way with my broom instead of allowing them to build from Scripture to Principle to Practice in a way that is relevant to their context.

In my opinion, there is no greater expression of faith in God and His Holy Spirit than to allow new Believers to read the Word, apply the Word, and then build their principles and practices through love/obedience to the Word and the Holy Spirit.  We say we believe in the Holy Spirit, but we act as if He is incompetent to do His part in the lives of new Believers and new churches.  When we have done our part (Show our love for God by being obedient to His Word and teaching other to be obedient to His Word), God does His part in the presence of the Holy Spirit who counsels, inspires, directs, convicts, emboldens us to obedience in the face of opposition and persecution, and grows our faith.

Contextualization by outsiders is not the issue!  Obedience to the Word of God and His Holy Spirit within each context is the issue.  I cannot formulate this for another context or time or place.  I cannot contextualize the Gospel for another.  I can only love, train, and mentor them to formulate their love response to God for themselves and thereby see true contextualization of the Gospel and the development of relevant local practices that demonstrate to the community their love for God and their obedience response to God’s love/mercy.  If I give anything beyond process I endanger the contextualization of the Gospel to a given people, context and time; and I hinder the spread of the Gospel.

My job is to give the Gospel as simply and purely as possible.  Train people to read and learn the Word and apply it to their context in their own ways; to teach them to obey by being obedient and expecting obedience from them to the simple Word of God; and depend on the Holy Spirit to do in them what He is doing in me.  Their job is to receive the Word of God, listen and learn the Word, apply the Word to their own lives, and contextualize the practices that come from the principles revealed in the Word by the Holy Spirit so that others in the context can see and respond to their transformed lives and culture.

I must deculturalize my expressions of obedience to the Gospel so that foreign practices (my practices) will not make it harder for people to hear the Gospel.  Local believers must contextualize their obedience to the Gospel and formulate practices that communicate their love/obedience for God in response to His Word and His Spirit to their context.

The contextualization debate is the wrong debate.  We need to be discussing why we think our peculiar brand of Christianity that was formulated for a particular time and context is relevant to any other time or context.  It is not!  It has become the barrier that is the most difficult to overcome in sharing the Gospel and teaching obedience to the commands of Jesus to new generations in new times and in different contexts.  Our personal preferences for worship, prayer, outreach, governance, clothing, and etc. are meaningless to anyone else.   The only thing that transcends time, space, and context is the Gospel and our love/obedience responses to God’s love/mercy.  Give the Gospel, teach love/obedience, and allow every obedient people to develop their own practices, not adopt peculiar outsider practices that are more barrier than help to those who do not know God.

Related Articles:

Blessings!

David Watson
Somewhere over the Atlantic

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Guest Post – When God births a Movement

by davidwatson on August 8, 2010

This is another Guest Post by David Broodryk from South Africa.  He continues his Hunter and Hearder analogy in this look at the leadership needed to casue movments.

Hope you enjoy.

Blessings!

David Watson
Irving, Texas

When God births a Movement

When God births a movement, He works through many different people.  In a previous article we looked at two roles in the church that often have little tolerance for one another – the hunter and the herder.  But when hunters and herders begin to appreciate one another and work together, we see healthy movements emerge.  However, as much as hunters and herders often misunderstand one another, they often both misunderstand and under-appreciate the roles of the strategist, catalyst and activist.

The reason we are so slow to recognize these roles, is because they are largely hidden.  But in true movements, you will always find them.  How do these people contribute to movements?  Strategists help us to do the right things.  We need them, but they cannot operate alone.  Strategists on their own make great plans that lead to nothing.  Catalysts help things to begin.  But catalysts on their own start lots of things that quickly collapse.  Activists get people involved.  But activists on their own rally people towards empty and meaningless causes.  The three need one another.  An individual may have a mix of these gifts, but seldom do we find all three at full capacity in one person.

The greatest movement we have on planet earth today, the church, was the result of a team effort.  The Father had a strategic plan to save mankind.  The plan needed a catalyst – someone who would come to earth and make the first disciples.  As the catalyst had completed his job and was leaving, He promised to send an activist from the Trinity to complete the mission.  The Holy Spirit provided the ongoing power and made true activists of the first disciples.  They were empowered to witness and enlist large numbers of people.  The first two roles can be outsiders to the target people group, but the activist is always an insider empowered by the Spirit.

Birthing movements takes hard work and passion.  Prayer and faith are non-negotiable.  No prayer, no power.  No work, no results.  These are obvious elements to launching movements.  Yet we often forget that battles are not only won on the battlefield, but also in the planning, strategy and subsequent execution.  Fiery passion without a good plan leads to defeat.  Hard work without smart work can lead to fruitless work.  The role of the strategist is to avoid fruitless work.  When the strategic work and planning have been done well with full attention to detail, the work of implementation is always much easier and more fruitful.

A strategist is sometimes a wise, old mentor.  At other times it may be a spouse, a sibling, a good friend or a co-worker who fills this role.  Jethro was a strategic counsellor to Moses.  His advice saved the well-meaning and hard-working Moses from total burnout.  Jethro did not lead Israel.  He quietly influenced Moses and gave him step-fatherly advice that greatly enhanced his leadership ability.  Behind every successful leader, you will find a skilled, wise and experienced strategist.  Strategists are vital to movements.  They are the architects and designers.  Their role is often undervalued.  But strategists on their own are unable to mobilize or launch movements.  The catalyst is the one who actually begins the movement. 

Catalysts are able to convert paper strategies into practical realities.  They have great faith.  They are able to “call those things that are not as though they are” (Heb 11:1-3).  But catalysts do not always have the ability to sustain the works they start.

If catalysts begin movements, activists help movements to gain momentum.  Every movement needs momentum to survive.  An activist is the person who manages to rally large groups of people towards the cause.  People often undervalue the activist.  They will latch onto the cause and then often forget the activist who enlisted them.  Every movement needs activists.  The biggest mistake the leaders of a movement can make is to undervalue the activists who rally people towards the goal.  Activists may not always become leaders in the movement, but their role is invaluable.

Paul was an amazing strategist and catalyst.  Through on-going revelation, he had amazing insight into God’s eternal plan for the church.  He wrote this down in letters to the new churches.  Through the ages, the church has gained enormous strength from understanding the big picture.  Paul was also a great catalyst.  He was able to start new work in places where no church existed.  But Paul does not seem to be much of an activist.  In fact, it seems that a real movement is only released on his third missionary journey.  Here we find him in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.  Again, he is not acting as an activist, but as a catalyst.  A movement is launched across all of Asia as Paul functions in the role of strategist and catalyst.

One reason that people undervalue the roles of the strategist, the catalyst and the activist is pride.  Some people are unable to acknowledge the input of others into their lives.  When they see success, they want the recognition rather than acknowledging that all success is a result of God working through a team of people.  As Paul said, “one person plants, one waters and another reaps.”  We easily forget the work that went into planting and watering.

Another reason people fail to acknowledge these roles is because they are stuck in a clergy/ laity paradigm.  Some people are simply blinded to the fact that they are building on their own charisma and personalities rather than on Christ.  They are so busy doing the work of the ministry that they fail to see Kingdom ministry as a movement of ordinary people not professionals.  The strategist/ catalyst/ activist team is able to mobilize thousands of ordinary people into ministry.  This makes those who are wearing themselves out in ministry – seeking recognition – envious and thus critical.  They fail to see that Kingdom movements are released through smart work as well as hard work.

A third reason that people fail to recognize these roles is that they refuse to work in team or they fail to recognize people with different strengths to their own.  Strong teams form when differently gifted people come together and find their roles in fulfilling the mission.  Independent people fail to understand that they need to be surrounded by people unlike themselves.  They attempt to project their own strengths and personalities onto others.  As a result, they end up with unbalanced teams that are unable to release movements.

Every strategist needs a catalyst

Every catalyst needs an activist

Every activist needs a cause

Every movement needs all three

Find your role.  Work in team.  The result is a movement.

Blessings!

David Broodryk
South Africa

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Leadership Essentials – The Purposes of Metrics

by davidwatson on August 2, 2010

Why do you count what you count?  Most leaders don’t have a good answer.  The most common answer is, “This is what we have always measured.”  History is not a good reason for your metrics.  In fact, metrics are about the future, not the past.  Metrics are about fulfilling our purposes and Kingdom purposes.  If we count the wrong things, and/or fail to count critical items, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

There are multiple reasons and purposes for metrics.   Bottom line: Is what we are measuring helping us to fulfill our individual or organizational purpose/call/objective?  Statisticians tend to want to measure anything that is measurable.  Collecting extraneous data that does not get us down the road to where we want to be can actually hinder our progress, miscommunicate what is important, cause problems for management, and potentially lead to failure when our people fixate on filling in all the blanks of our report forms and questionnaires, which have become more important than the task at hand.

Our definition of success and how we measure it are critical to being successful.  It is important that we measure the right things that mobilize and motivate toward fulfilling our purpose/call/objective.  So, look at your reporting instruments and ask yourself, “Does this line measure or motivate us to reach our goals, objectives, and purpose?”  When we collect only the data that gets us to our goals, then we are more likely to reach our goals.  But we also need to make sure we keep the bigger picture in mind, or we may not fulfill our purpose or Kingdom purpose.

So, why do we need metrics?

Metrics enhance accountability.  If we don’t measure it most people will not think it is important, and when there is a time crunch, or if they are simply not motivated, they will not do it.

Metrics help us to stay focused.  What is our real task?  If you measure everything your people will not know what to focus on.  Measure only what you want your people to do.  It might be nice to know other data points, but each extraneous data point fuzzes the focus of our people.

We usually achieve what we measure.  If you measure it, people will do it, as long as you are measuring what is essential to success.  The only time to capture lots of different data is when there is a problem, and the purpose of the data collection is then to find where the problem lays.

We communicate what is important by what we measure.  Not only is what we measure communicated as important, the order in which we organize the report communicates the importance of each data point we are tracking.  Start with the most important item that gets you to success, then break it out from there. 

Metrics allow leadership to evaluate progress and make course corrections.  You must evaluate your data as soon as possible and as frequently as possible in order to catch trends.  Trends let you know if you are moving towards success or on a trajectory that will miss success.  If you collect data, but never evaluate it, then you are wasting everyone’s time, effort, and money.  You may or may not succeed.  But in either case you will be surprised.

Metrics assist in decision-making related to strategy and resourcing.  Our data gathering should inform us regarding what resources we may need and where to spend critical or limited resources.  Resources include people, management efforts, material and goods, time and money.

Metrics enhance prayer mobilization.  When we measure only the things that get us to success, we know how to communicate to our constituency.  We know what is important and we know what our prayer needs are.

Do you have other reasons for your metrics?  Let me know.

Blessings!

David Watson
Irving, Texas

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Leadership Essentials – Measure what is Critical to Overall Success

by davidwatson on July 29, 2010

The right metrics are absolutely essential to strategic leadership, planning, sustainability, and success.  Many leaders only measure what communicates success internally and externally. Communicating internal success builds morale by letting people know they accomplished what the organization wants.  Communicating external success builds the loyalty of constituents and donors, thus keeping the organization alive.  Internal and external successes are certainly strategic.  I define “strategic” as those elements, which when broken or absent, cause the strategy to significantly falter or fail.  So, both internal and external successes can be strategic, but they are not the only strategic elements.  You can have the best happy workers and all the money in the world, but if you don’t have the right leaders with the right plans doing the right things at the right time in the right way for the right reasons, then the strategy will fail, unless your strategy is to keep workers and donors happy regardless of whether Kingdom purposes are met. 

In most complex strategies, there are numerous strategic or critical elements. In Gospel Planting that results in self replicating Disciples, leaders, groups, and churches that take seriously the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, these strategic or critical elements fall into three groups: Kingdom Elements, Tactical Elements, and Leadership Elements.  Following is a list of the critical elements the teams I relate to use.  Again, by critical, we mean that if it is missing we will have serious difficulties in fulfilling our Kingdom purposes.

Kingdom Elements include:

  • Prayer: Pervasive Prayer is the starting point for all ministry.  We must know the mind of God and join Him in His work.
  • Scripture: Scripture is foundational and the source of all teaching and preaching.  Scripture leads to Principles which lead to Practice.
  • Disciples: Make Disciples, not converts. Converts focus on religion.  Disciples focus on Jesus and obedience to His teachings.
  • Obedience: Teach Obedience to the Word, not doctrine.  Doctrine is our church’s teaching from the Bible as well as the historical practices of the church.  It may be highly interpretive, and may not consider the full counsel of the Bible. Communities of Believers (church): Form new believers into minimum Biblical practice groups that will become Communities of Believers (churches) who transform families and communities
  • Authority of the Word and the Holy Spirit: Authority of Scripture and the Holy Spirit are all that is needed to establish self-replicating Disciples, leaders, and churches. Church Planting is an act of God through His Spirit and His people who are obedient to the Word and the Spirit.
  • Persecution: Persecution is part of being a Christian.  In pioneer work it is expected and response is trained.
  • Spiritual Warfare: In areas where the Gospel has never been preached, or in areas where traditional religions have reigned for a significant amount of time, it is not unusual to find those engaging in CPM activities confronted by Spiritual Conflicts that range from annoying to life-threatening.

Tactical Elements include:

  • Groups: Groups/Communities learn more quickly, remember more things and remember them better, replicate more quickly and when correctly established protect against heresy and protect against bad leadership.
  • Plan/Be Intentional: Plan your work & work your plan. Be intentional in Ministry, Prayer, Scripture, Disciple-making, Appropriate Evangelism and Church Planting.
  • Ministry: Ministries open the door for Church Planting and lead to community transformation as the church obeys the ministry commands of Scripture.   Ministry should precede evangelism and evangelism must always be the desired result of ministry.  Timing is important and necessary, especially in highly resistant societies.
  • Man of Peace: Start with the Man of Peace or an existing relationship that will permit a Discovery Bible Study or Witness
  • Evangelize Households/families: Focus on households/ families, not individuals.  Households include non-related people living and relating together as family.
  • Appropriate Evangelism: Evangelism is an intentional calling to a family to study the Word of God in order to move from not knowing God to falling in Love with Him through Jesus. The primary method used is the Discovery Bible Study in relationship with maturing believers.  This makes Disciples, not Converts.
  • Reproducing: Reproducing disciples, leaders, groups and churches becomes a part of the group DNA.
  • Reaching Out (Missions): Reaching Out to “ALL” segments of society becomes a part of the group DNA as a result of obedience to the Great Commission (missions) and the Great Commandments.
  • Redeem Local Culture (Embrace the Local Culture): Do not import external culture, but redeem local culture by embracing all you Biblically can in a culture and allowing obedience to the Word to transform/redeem the rest.

Leadership Elements include:

  • Inside Leaders: Keep all things reproducible by Inside Leaders and directed/lead by Inside Leaders. 
  • Outside Leaders: Outside Leaders Model, Equip, Watch, and Leave.  Outside leaders introduce new concepts that are contextualized by inside leaders.  Outside leaders deculturalize, inside leaders contextualize.
  • Self-supporting: Self-supporting, local leaders start and sustain all work – including groups, fellowships, and churches.  Self-supporting may mean the worker has a job or business.  This improves access and breaks down the un-Biblical barriers between clergy and laity.
  • Education/Teaching – Training/Coaching – Equipping/Mentoring: Discipleship and Leadership Education and Training are “on the job,” continuous, and primarily through mentoring.   This builds communities that hold each other accountable for obedience to the Word of God. 
    • Education increases Knowledge though teaching.  The focus is on knowledge. 
    • Training increases Skill Sets primarily through coaching.  The focus is on the task and behaviors or character of the workers.
    • Equipping increases Capacity through mentoring relationships.  The focus is on the person, helping individuals become all that God has called them to be.

We have to make sure that our metrics measure the things that get us to Kingdom success in our strategic or critical elements.  One of the first steps to seeing Kingdom success is to evaluate what you measure and determine if they really get you to where you want to go.  Your teams will work to do what you measure.  So, if you are measuring what does not get you to Kingdom Purposes, you will never reach Kingdom goals.

Most organizations only measure quantitative goals.  These are the things that are easy to count:  number of Bibles distributed, number of Bible studies started, number of people evangelized, number of converts, number of baptisms, number of new churches, number of new places entered, number of leaders trained, and etc.  If you can count it, it’s most likely a quantitative goal.  Not all Kingdom goals can be counted.  Some are qualitative.  Number of Converts is a quantitative goal.  Discipleship is a qualitative goal – Hard to count, but absolutely essential to reaching Kingdom goals.  Number of Bible Studies is a quantitative goal.  Obedience is a qualitative goal.  Both are important and essential to reaching Kingdom goals.

In the next four posts I will explore the Purpose of Metrics, Kingdom Metrics, Qualitative Metrics, and Quantitative Metrics.

I would love to hear from you about the things you measure, especially if they are out of the ordinary, but help you reach your goals.

Blessings!

David Watson
Irving, Texas

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A Revolution in Church Multiplication in East Africa

by admin on July 23, 2010

This is a guest post from David Hunt.  David Hunt is a founding director of Horn of Africa Mission. After four years as coordinator of church planting ministries in East Africa he is transitioning to the role of Vice President for North American Church Planting for NewGenerations International, the church planting division of CityTeam Ministries with which he has served in several capacities since 1984. He graduated from Prairie Bible College in Alberta, Canada, did post-graduate work at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, and earned a Doctor of Ministry degree at Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, Washington. David and his wife Lynn currently reside in California along with their Ethiopian son, Tariku. Sons Ryan, Jason, and Brooklyn and five grandchildren live in California.

This is an excerpt of his doctoral dissertation. You can download the full dissertation using the link below. Feel free to read and share.

David Hunt’s dissertation is covered under the same Creative Commons Licensing as this website.  All attributions need to recognize David Hunt as the author of his dissertation.

http://www.davidlwatson.org/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/img/icons/default.gif download: A REVOLUTION IN CHURCH MULTIPLICATION IN EAST AFRICA (784.27KB)
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The provocative question was tossed like a grenade into the assembled group of CityTeam Ministries[1] executives seated around the table in the president’s conference room. “What do we have to show for the $75 million we’ve spent over the past ten years?”  For a few moments no one dared break the poignant silence.  It was almost as if we were holding our collective breaths.  Minds whirled with defensive answers, responses no one wanted to express because they seemed too shallow; the question was just too penetrating.  Most of this leadership team had been together for more than the past ten years.  Diligent effort, commitment to excellence, and kingdom thinking characterized each ones’ contribution.  There were many good answers.  Just look at the reports.  In ten years over five million hot nutritious meals and one million nights of warm safe shelter provided to the homeless.  Thousands of inner city kids had been given the opportunity of a lifetime, a week at summer camp.  Well over fifteen hundred babies were born to women in crisis pregnancy; many saved from abortion.  Thousands of families had been cared for; many marriages restored.  Hundreds of men and women had graduated clean and sober returning to jobs, families, and productive lives. And the list of good accomplishments could go on and on.

But the question still haunted as the hush extended.  It became one of those God-moments when silence was the only appropriate recourse.  Gently He stirred our hearts, “Yes, you have done many good things but I want you to do great things.”  We knew that, for us, the issue was “fruit that remained.” After ten years of service, how many real disciples of Jesus could we identify as a result of our ministry?

The grenade had exploded, shattering the complacent satisfaction with our ministry accomplishments and forcing a deeply introspective self-evaluation that was to lead to a ministry that looks fundamentally and radically different.

Since that day God has birthed a new vision in our hearts, a vision to raise up and empower truly transformational leaders who would be the catalysts to initiate an explosion of literally thousands of new churches – caring communities of Christ – that consistently and rapidly replicate themselves among the poor in communities throughout the world. As one CityTeam leader put it, “We are pregnant with a thousand churches!”

Perhaps there is no better way to communicate the intensity of the passion we began to feel than to quote Wolfgang Simson from Houses That Change the World.

Nothing short of the very presence of the living Christ in every neighbourhood and village of every corner of the nation will do. He has come to live amongst us – to stay on.  We therefore need to initiate and promote church-planting movements that initiate and promote other church-planting movements, until there is no space left for anyone to misunderstand, ignore or even escape the presence of Jesus in the form that He has chosen to take on earth – the local church.[2]

And so began the quest for my part in this new vision; a quest that led me into doctoral studies at Bakke Graduate University of Ministry[3] in the Church and Ministry Multiplication Specialization. Within a year I found myself living in Ethiopia, assigned by CityTeam Ministries as the Regional Coordinator for East Africa. I had little idea at the time what that really meant but had a strong sense that it was part of God’s plan for the revolution of our ministry, a revolution that would take CityTeam from doing good things to sustainable self-replicating ministry through the catalyzing of communities of believers, who would bring transformation to thousands of communities. This dissertation tells the story of that revolution.

Part One describes the church multiplication project that began when I moved to Ethiopia in 2005. These chapters describe the background and some of the discovery process that was initiated in the quest for a strategy that would be the catalyst for a dynamic movement of church multiplication. The specific goals that emerged are then outlined at the end of chapter two.

In Part Two the results of this search for a culturally relevant and thoroughly biblical model of church and church multiplication strategy are presented. Chapter three describes the new paradigms – a new understanding of church, a different kind of church planter, and a new strategy for rapid church multiplication. Chapters four through seven outline briefly the principles that have been implemented and are being used to plant thousands of new churches throughout East Africa.

The theological foundations under girding this project are integrated throughout part two with special attention to the biblical foundations included in the discussion of the new paradigm of church in chapter three and each of the church planting principles in chapters four through seven. In addition, several Scriptural sources are listed after each of these subjects.

This paper is an attempt to make clear a process that spans several years, includes thousands of participants, and is spread over several countries. It looks at the institutional or the traditional church in contrast to a new paradigm of church. It introduces a strategy of church planting that while seen more and more in North America and around the world, is not consistent with the majority of church planting that is done today. Inherent in all this is a significant risk of misunderstanding. Thus it is important that a few terms and concepts are defined at the outset of this paper.

Church Planting. The term church planting is used throughout this paper because it is part of our normal terminology when talking about church growth and multiplication. However, it is important to understand that missionaries or church planters or denominations don’t plant churches.  Planting churches is the work of God, a divinely produced phenomenon.  Jesus said, “I will build my church….”  (Matt. 16:18).  The church’s job is to discover what He is doing and cooperate with Him.  David Watson teaches in his workshops that effective church planting goes to the “edge.”  It is discovering “where God is working [emphasis mine] by His Holy Spirit and through His representatives to seek out and meet lostness for the purpose of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting….”[4]

Imagine being part of that seminal event when “everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles” (Acts 2:43).  The account of these awesome events makes it clear that the apostles were not the builders of the church but the catalysts.  Following the description of that simple first church, “They broke bread in their homes, and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people,” it says in verse 47, “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

New church development should be spontaneous and natural.  Church planting becomes the natural and essential expression of the missional church as the gospel is proclaimed in word and deed, and believers are gathered together for fellowship, worship, and mission. What the Church needs to do according to Christian Schwarz is to “concentrate on the removal of obstacles to church growth and multiplication within churches.  Then church growth can happen all by itself. God will do what He promised to do. He will grant growth (I Cor. 3:6).”[5] All by itself has the underlying thought of performed by God Himself.

Church planting today is often understood as essentially a program or strategy which church leaders develop and implement. They gather the financial resources, appoint a charismatic leader, establish an organizational structure, secure property, construct a building, and initiate a marketing program to draw people into the church building for various programs and activities. So the concept becomes one sided – the human side, and the real meaning is lost. Throughout this paper the word planting is still used although the concept of church emerging is also used and is perhaps a more meaningful description.

Church Multiplication: Multiplication refers to an exponential growth in the number of new churches emerging in a region. It is different than church growth that tends more to focus on growing larger churches. A strategy of addition adds one generation of daughter churches to the mother church. For example, the mother church adds one new church, then a few years later one more, then perhaps another one for a total of four churches. In multiplication a church seeks to catalyze multi-generational self-replication. For example, a church establishes three new churches. These three in turn quickly establish three more churches and each one of those establishes three more for a total of forty churches perhaps in as little as two years.

Model of church: Since labels often mislead, this paper avoids terms such as the post-modern church or the New Testament church, the emerging church or the alternative church. The term model is used to identify what the church looks like in the context of this project. This model that has emerged in East Africa is more fully described in chapter three.

New: Throughout the paper reference is made to a new model of church, a new way of “doing” church, a new kind of church planter, or a new church planting strategy. It should be understood that these are new in the context of the people involved in this project. Likely little if anything about this church planting revolution in East Africa is really new in the broader sense. But it has become a whole new paradigm with a whole new outcome for those involved in the project.

Church Multiplication Strategy: This paper frequently uses the term Church Multiplication (or Planting) Strategy. As discussed above it is not the intention to say that the establishing of new churches is essentially a human process. It is not. The term is used rather to define the human role as I have seen it in this project. It asks, “What, according to the Scripture is the Church called to do in terms of building the community of believers?” Rather than a step by step methodology, this strategy is defined in terms of church planting principles that are detailed in chapters four through seven. It should also be understood that it is not my intent to say that this strategy is the final word on how to plant churches. Many have gone before upon whose work we have the privilege and responsibility of building.

Catalyst: Believing that church planting is the work of God and that churches emerge spontaneously and naturally, perhaps the term catalyst best describes the human part in this process of church multiplication. God calls believers to be His servants. As such when they allow Him to inject them in His way into the church planting equation they can become the catalysts for an explosion of new churches. In this project in East Africa it appears that the training in a new understanding of church and a different strategy for church planting have become the catalysts to an explosion of new churches throughout the region.

Church Planting Movement: The term Church Planting Movements has gained extensive usage in recent years with many evangelicals since being popularized by the International Mission Board in 1998 and David Garrison’s[6] book of the same title in 2004. Perhaps it’s the new buzz word overtaking the former Church Growth terminology initiated much earlier at Fuller Theological Seminary. As such it is often used haphazardly and as a result may fail any longer to differentiate from various other strategies or processes of church planting. Because of this frequent mishandling the term is largely absent in this paper.

At the same time the concept of movement is foundational to this strategy of church planting. Movements in the context of Christian renewal or church planting are supernatural acts of God. They are outside of human control. They are not institutional, tradition-bound, managed, or owned. In this East Africa project the movements have been characterized by young believers still in a discipleship and maturing process themselves, passionately in love with Jesus who go from their newly established community of believers to make new disciples in a new region from which a new community of believers quickly emerges. For the participants in this project this rapid multi-generational self-replication of indigenous churches in a region defines church planting movements.

Community of believers: Church and community of believers are terms used interchangeably in this paper. The concept of church set forth in this paper is dramatically different than the concept of church for most Christians today; thus the inherent danger in using a term which we interpreted so differently. However, church is the biblical term and its true meaning should be recaptured as many have tried to do. Sometimes using an alternate term such as community of believers helps to remind the reader that I am talking about church in a different way than most people would think of it. The understanding of church in the context of the project will be discussed in chapter three.

Institutional or traditional church: Reference to the existing mainstream twentieth and twenty-first century church is problematic. While the terms institutional and traditional are used in this paper they are not meant to reflect negativity toward the existing church but to differentiate between them and what has emerged as a new way of doing church in the context of this East Africa project.

East Africa and Horn of Africa: Strictly speaking there is no designation for the seven-country region that is part of this project. Throughout this paper the reference to East Africa, or Horn and East Africa refers to the countries where the project has been initiated namely, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Finally, this project is about a revolution; it is not about a rebellion. Someone has said that a rebel attempts to change the past; a revolutionary attempts to change the future. This paper is about the future. Nevertheless, even revolutions are messy. They are chaotic. They are often out of control. And always revolutions are a dramatic departure from the past or the existing norm. By their nature they upset and change what has been. In all revolutions there are casualties. Some things cease to be. New untried realities become the new reality. As the new paradigm of church emerged, as a different understanding of the church planter was arrived at, and as a new strategy for planting churches evolved, it became clear that much would change. Through the determination and commitment of many godly and courageous men and women, a revolutionary process of church planting has begun. In places where the church has been stagnant a new energy has emerged and hundreds of new churches have been planted. In places where there was no church, courageous disciples have gone to declare the message of the gospel and hundreds of new communities of believers are now seeking to follow and obey Jesus. Often there has been intense persecution and sometimes opposition even from inside the existing institutional church, but the revolution continues to spread as a new generation of transformational leaders confront today’s challenges. Boldly they are charting a new course to plant churches in every city, town, village and community so that their nation “. . . will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9).

It has been my privilege over the past four years to initiate, oversee, and support this project. My role has been to develop the original network of partners in the seven countries, and then to provide the initial training in the new concepts of church and church planting. More than two thousand people were in workshops I conducted during the first three years. As young leaders began to grasp hold of the new paradigms they carried the training forward, and my role changed to one of discipling and mentoring these emerging new paradigm leaders. I also had the privilege of visiting hundreds of church planters and churches throughout the region often traveling for hours into the African bush mostly encouraging and praying for them. In the final year of the project I focused exclusively on the coaching and mentoring of national leaders and on the development of region-wide leaders to take my place. I thank God for the African leaders He is raising up to do even greater things throughout East Africa.

[1] CityTeam Ministries was founded in 1957 in San Jose, California. Its mission statement read “to glorify God by serving people in need, proclaiming the gospel, and establishing disciples among the disadvantaged people of cities.”

[2] Wolfgang Simson, Houses That Change the World (Waynesboro: Paternoster Publishing, 1998), xxvii.

[3] Bakke Graduate University was then called Northwest Graduate School of Ministry.

[4] David L.Watson, “Definitions.” Lecture in CPM Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, June 2006.

[5] Christian A. Schwarz, Natural Church Development (St. Charles: ChurchSmart Resources, 1996), 10.

[6] David Garrison. Church Planting Movements (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2004).

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