mgpcpastor's blog

The Acts 29 Network is about churches planting churches. They’re not afraid to make a provocative and challenging statements.

Last week Scott Thomas (Acts 29 president and director) wrote Send Your Best Men Out On Mission:

It won’t hurt the church if people are called away to go and make disciples elsewhere. It will hurt the mission if they stay. As I read about the church in Jerusalem and Antioch, I see them identifying, equipping and sending men to plant churches.

What hinders that New Testament dynamic today?

The problem I am seeing is that we are so desperate for good men that we are not sending them into the field. We take men designed to be warriors and we make them into ecclesiastical pacifists. All men start out as a jackass, are designed to be stallions but the church tries to make them mules: sturdy, less volatile, sterile. I think the church has a dysfunctional codependent relationship with its men. Some pastors need affirmation from other men generally because their own absentee father never did. Conversely, the men need the pastor to do the work of the ministry so they don’t have to. As a result, the pastor works slavishly, often at the expense of his family, for affirmation and the men pay tithes and compliments to avoid the work of mission so their lives aren’t distracted away from their own goals—often financial gain or recreation. It’s a convenient relationship, but it’s not Biblical.

The solution:

I attest that every local church should be constantly and intentionally discipling, training, developing and then sending its best men out into mission—to make disciples of all nations. We have to get out of the mindset of building up one single church and start developing a Kingdom mindset; a movement mindset. The mission of the church is about the movement of God and not about the monument to our self or our denomination or our tribe.

As a church in a provincial town we have a mixed composition. There are people who have family roots that extend back generations, others have moved here from other places. Some have a particular commitment to an understanding of the Scriptures that is expressed by Presbyterian distinctives, others are partnering with us because we are the closest expression to their own available in this community.
I’m aware that folk can move away from our fellowship, some because they leave town, others because they choose to partner with other churches here in town. It would be good to believe that those who go have grown in their capacity for witness and service due to their time at mgpc.
The idea of intentionally preparing people to go is a much more intimidating idea. It doesn’t seem likely that we will be planting another church here in town. Perhaps the time will come when we plant a second congregation, but that doesn’t remove the planters from us. At the moment a church planter who would be sent by us would be absent physically in terms very much like those of the New Testament.
I confess that I don’t think about people that way yet. When people come and partner with mgpc I generally think about how they can support our mission and ministry here, and not about which field of service they could ultimately be sent to.
It’s tough to see that someone has the potential to be sent to the field when the property committee needs a new member. (No, I’m not saying these two are mutually exclusive, I’m confessing that my mind doesn’t keep both these realities in balanced perspective.)
A pastoral ego feels more secure when it is surrounded by a competent and supportive team. I’m afraid to send the best, I’m so fearful sometimes that I even want to hold on to everyone who isn’t the best, just in case.
Thanks be to God, who constantly teaches that my security is in Him alone by maintaining and growing our work and witness while different valued folk have come and gone.

Another point that Thomas makes can be applied to local churches, as well:

That call from God to plant a church might be a call to go join a team led by another man to help plant a church, or it might actually be a call to financially support so others can go.

I’ve continually stressed to the saints here at mgpc that mission support and giving is not ‘second mile’ giving. It’s not what you give when all the other bills are paid. It is a core essential.
Presently we don’t directly support a church plant here in Australia. That’s an oversight that needs to be addressed. It will not always be the case that someone has to be sent from our town to participate in a church plant somewhere, but, as a local church, we should always have an interest in another local church somewhere in our nation.

Today’s universal statement: “Every local congregation, right from day one, should have a current interest in the planting of at least one other local congregation.”