Indigenous Church Planting USA

Ed Stetzer has coined it well, "Most church planters start the church in their head and not in their community." In other words, a lot of cp's (church planters) come into an area with preconceived ideas about things they have always wanted to try and find out it doesn't work. The reason for this is that the cp needs to contextualize himself. He will need to become culturally relevant in his target community.

Doing indigenous church planting in the USA is most essential in order to reach the people in any community. Our country is so diverse that you cannot use the same methods of church planting in California as you would in NY City or in East Texas as you would West Texas or in Miami as you would in Seattle. The cp will need to become incarnate to his community and then reach them. The cp will need to study his target group adequately and personally before he jumps in with all "fours''.

One of the reasons we have fewer churches being planted is that there are fewer men who
are willing to start churches in cultures other than white, middle-class, suburban communities. It seems that we are training men exclusively for that kind of ministry in our Bible Institutes and not entertaining cross cultural church planting as a valid exercise of church planting. To plant churches in the types of communities for which our men have been generally trained for is expensive and disheartening. People may not be as responsive as they are in other communities.

The belief that a beautiful church building will draw them in is false, unless your goal is to move Christians from one church to another church. "Build it and they will come" does not work effectively unless there is a greater vision in place than just building a building. Indigenous church planting does not consider the building as the end to a means but a means to an end.

Indigenous church planting works for our Foreign missonaries and will work here at home. Let's do it!

David