NO MORE CHURCH PLANTS
Dear brothers and sisters, we must interrogate the language of church planting.
What is it that Christ has called us to plant? What is it that Christ has called us to water? According to the word, we are called to plant the gospel and we are called to water growth.
Church is the result of planting and watering the gospel. Therefore, we must start from the premise that the LORD has already sovereignly sent saints into the world. The Church is sent. The seeds of the gospel are planted and watered. The LORD gives the increase.
If the gathering of believers is assumed to be the plant, it is like a person going to Home Depot purchasing a plant and putting it in the ground as to say you planted something. Why yes, you took a plant from the store, moved it to your yard and now you have a plant in your yard—a transplant.
However, this is not what is meant in the scripture when we are charged to go and make disciples. I believe we have created new laws, added unnecessary layers, built new standards, on the model of Christ—and not for our good.
To keep with this analogy, this is where the mission of men falls short of the commission of Christ, because we spend years dealing with organ failure and rejected transplants.
Every one of the saints is sent by the Spirit, every day into a world in need of the seed of the gospel. Every one of the saints has the equipment necessary to add another person to the team, the body of Christ, if you will. Yet, are we who lead, equipping the saints to extend the message of the gospel where the LORD has already planted them, or are we doing damage to the sovereign discipleship pipeline by uprooting, transplanting, gathering and never going?
One may see this as semantics, but we who lead are not really commanded to compell the Church to go. We are more so articulating the ongoing going of the Church and calling the saint to stick with the plan.
There is nothing we are fabricating, nothing new we are creating. Which is not as the cessationist might contend, solely evidence of the finished work of Christ, rather it is the evidence of Christ’s finishedness along with the clarion call for the Church to fervently follow Christ to the very end.
The LORD is finished creating, inspiring, revealing—at least as it pertains to His redemptive plan on earth and how it is to be successfully carried out. What is in question is not the LORD's finishedness. It is whether we are fervently obeying in every way.
We cannot be all-in on equipping, but do it for only some of the saints. Yet, we cannot be all-in on all the saints, but cast aside the LORD's equipment for our own.
Many who I am speaking to would strongly affirm that the salvation that rescues sinners and makes them saints is the sovereign work of the LORD. These same folks would also affirm that equipment provided to the saints is sovereignly distributed, both in quantity and in kind.
This is not what is in question.
What is actually in question is whether we, the Church, as led by we who lead, are fervently obeying the plan laid out by the finished work of Christ, to use all of Christ's equipment for all of Christ's saints. If the answer is no, then something is wrong with our plan and we must release our plan and follow the plan of Christ.
As John 9:4 says,
“We must do the work
of Him who sent [us]!"
In returning to the earlier illustration, I would reframe this a bit and say we must let go of our plants and follow Christ's plan. This transplanting form of obeying Christ is only resulting in more confusion. Confusion on the part of leaders, confusion on the part of saints, confusion on the part of all those who desperately need salvation.
All the saints are sent. Christ's equipment is ready for our use. Will we lead all the saints to pick up and put to use all that Christ has equipped them with as they go into all the world (homes, workplaces, neighbors and nations) to plant and water the seed of the gospel?