church planting

believe it or not I am just starting to really understand how certain people interpret evangelism--whether that be for better or worse-- and how it is or is not at times a necessary focus on a ministry.


Here, evangelism is certainly a necessary focus-- to which "the great commission" seems to be a central motivation. Yet I've commonly found among missionaries that, in observing their practice, an unknowing observer would more likely deduce that it is a call to "go make church plants of every nation" rather than make disciples. Discipleship seems to go about as far as delivering a set lesson series (often once a week), at the end asking if they want to be a church, then passing on the lesson plans and sending them "planting". A missionary team here has talked about an approach they have taken of sending out 72 native church leaders in pairs to plant churches, as Jesus sent out the 72. Granted Jesus himself did send out his disciples to spread "the good news", what they had seen, experienced, and what he had taught them. If I understand correctly though, there was so much more to the relationship that Jesus had in his discipling prior and in addition to sending them out. In my time observing missionaries, this initial planting routine hasn't even been the main goings on (if that had been the case we would have had more repeated visits to the same villages). What we have mostly been doing is what might be referred to as "making the rounds" which seems to consist mainly of taking care of "business" and "making an appearance". what this means is that from time to time, in between new planting jobs, the missionaries go visiting villages where they have already planted a church to sell bibles, give more made up lesson plans, schedule their next visit and any other leadership business leaders might want to discuss. As I understand from the missionaries these visits mainly result from insistence from church leaders that they come because no matter how much they might try to distance themselves and let the leaders of that church be the leaders, the church still wants to hear from the white "missionaries".


"The missionaries" (the white people at that) still carry a certain status with them. To begin with, western religion as a whole carries a status of being new and trendy--as do most things from the west with most people for that matter. Yet what's more, is that most the churches of western religion (the majority also being the longest present churches) have a rather set common order of doing things which over time has taken its foothold in modern African culture--how to do church, some sort of hierarchical leadership, church buildings, special outfits, etc. So while the Church of Christ missionaries have done something different than most in their church planting, which is their attempting to distance themselves and put as little of their own interpretation and western church customs into the Africans as possible and let them interpret for themselves how to be a church in their culture, they still struggle with the people wanting all the things of all the other churches to feel more official.


I think the CoC missionaries here have a good idea with this sort of hands off approach in realizing that following Christ isn't limited to the western way and letting the Africans discern from what they know of scripture on how to follow Christ in their culture. However, it seems as though even though they aren't telling them how to order their worship services they are missioning with a clear assumption that they do have to have an orderly worship service and meet on Sunday (even if they don't necessarily believe it must be Sunday themselves) and other subtle traditional doing church practices. I am not saying that any of this is right or wrong, I do wonder though at what being a church is really about when you take ALL of the cultural customs out of it, including those recorded in scripture?


what bothers me more though, Whether rooted in their hands-off attempt or from their church plant factory approach to ministry, the missionaries have formed a very detached relationship for themselves with the villagers (church members). While Planting churches with relatively brief select stories from the old testament and a little more in depth look into the look into the life of Jesus, they seem to have lost a grasp of the actual story they were telling and what they were suppose to be planting. At times I can't help but feel like I am an intern for a business. To which affect they have taken the business practices of Jesus (sending out 72 in pairs) but are missing his life aspects like making himself self nothing, feeding the poor, counting others better than himself, loving unconditionally to (at the time) a seemingly meaningless death. This sort of relationship is so much of what was different about Jesus (and for that matter the early church) and certainly the Kingdom of God as a whole. We are outright told that Love is the most important thing, Love is how people will recognize the people of God, God is Love. Jesus' life was an example of the extents that this love goes and the Church is to complete what is lacking in Jesus' death and resurrection which to be presently living out that Love in a community. So much of "the gospel"--the good news-- that we act like we are teaching of the kingdom of God is the church loving like this. That is good news. what is news about it, much less good or true if people's lives aren't really changed by being loved and seeing love like this?


I am certainly not saying that the missionaries here don't believe any and/or of this and rather purposely leave it out. Only that in their focus on producing churches it feels deeply that they have lost track of it. Mind you, I think at least some of them are at least beginning to realize it more and more.


I think this too, is a great issue in their attempt to let the Africans be their own leaders and in communicating why all of those other "doing church" customs and rules and rulers aren't important or what Church is about. I think it is a great issue because without this sort of Love and close friendship in discipleship they will rarely be able to show what is different about following Christ and what is truly important. How can the Africans be expected to see and understand if they haven't been shown it in their very teachers? I fear they have left hollow the stories and teachings, to which I think "the parable of the sorrow" speaks relevantly in a way I have never read it before. My fear is that in this fashion of evangelism we westerners, as we are bringing this story of the people of God and Jesus for the first time to many while they are very receptive--and thus to their descendants-- we are quibbling their faith for them to become much like the us, where "non-believers" want very little to do with Christian moralist-"church doers", and many "believers" treat Christianity as not really following Christ at all--not to say that this is necessarily acknowledged.