“Church Planting”?

Sometimes we meet Christians who claim to be “planting churches”.

Now, the concept, in itself, is definitely Biblical, however we need wisdom if we are to work with such people, or support them, to understand what exactly is happening with their “church planting”, as to whether truly the Lord is building His church, or whether a man is building a religious organization and financially benefitting from being in control of it.

The difference between a true church plant and that of an organization is that the true is totally relational in nature.

Those whose church experience is not relational will find they need to develop financial relationships to achieve their vision of planting churches.

This means, they will need to offer “pastors” financial support in order to get them to work under their umbrella.

It also presupposes that such a “church planter” is a spiritual authority, as in one at the top of a pyramid scheme of hierarchical authority (like a mini pope).

It also presupposes, usually, that the method of “planting churches” is to find people who are willing to attend services and submit to the person in control of those services.

Which then leads to the topic of, What is a church? Is it simply a church service, that is, a preprogrammed liturgical ritual which is performed, and presided over by a “pastor”?

If that’s what church is, then it’s a simple matter to “plant churches”. All you need to do is sign up with an organisation, and receive financial support in return for following their orders, and then start your “service” anywhere where you can find people who are willing to come under your spiritual control.

This means you need to find people who are ignorant of what a church actually is, by the Biblical definition, and then prolong that ignorance so that these people will cooperate with you and you can use them to build “your church”, while remembering that the man who pays you will take the credit and call it one of “his churches”, and then after some time he will make a trip to America to proclaim that he has planted hundreds of “churches”, when, in reality, it is nothing more than one of those pyramid schemes.

Now, to add to the mix, there is the fact that, regardless of these facts, the Gospel does get preached in some form or other, and some people do get genuinely born again, amidst the crowds of those who have wrong motives and are not born again.

Jesus said MANY will come to Him claiming to be His disciples and He will tell them He never knew them. They had wrong motives for being a Christian. Some see it as a formula to earn salvation through being religious. Others see it as a means for wealth or power.

Will continue this another time.