Why True Church Planting Must Start with Conversion

Dietrich Schindler • Apr 20, 2021

Many contemporary church-planting ministries are conceived much like a business. The model centers on administrative, gifted leadership that guides already-committed Christians to organize the birth of a new church.

But can I be bold and say this isn‘t a true “birth,“ but rather a reorganization of believers from one location to another? Therein lies the crisis of contemporary church planting in the Western world: organizing churches without birthing them.

See if this sounds familiar: A called and gifted leader inspires other Christians to start a new church. They meet regularly to pray, plan and lay out a strategy they’ll use to plant the new church. Often, this involves what the worship service will look like and what kinds of programs the church will offer.

Unaware of what’s happening, the leaders of the new venture often reduce the meaning of church to an event, equating the church with a worship service. The worship service becomes the ministry’s driving force, which quickly translates into attention to numbers, giving, staff, technology and image projection .

This commonly held assumption about church planting is depriving people of discovering the hope of Christ at a time when we desperately need that hope.

If we commit our church-planting efforts into the hands of the god-of-what-works, we shouldn‘t be surprised when the wheels come off.

Total Surrender Over Pragmatism

Truly, we need the Holy Spirit in our church planting! When the Holy Spirit is in the driver’s seat, radical and beautiful things happen. We give up control, we’re humbled. We seek the face of the Father above success and invest in less-than-perfect people. The antidote to pragmatism is prayer — total surrender and dependence upon God to be in charge.

In contemporary church planting, we tend to neglect calling people outside the church to follow Jesus in the initial stages. Instead, we favor the gathering of a core group of believers. Only after having convened a team of highly committed people does the church-planting leader begin to evangelize. I firmly believe the need for today is to return to an emphasis on conversion-based church multiplication that produces organically grown multiplying churches.

Conversions that Grew the Church

Conversion growth is a gift from God. So why is what was normative in the New Testament era considered a church-planting anomaly today?

Conversion growth is a gift from God. So why is what was normative in the New Testament era considered a church-planting anomaly today?

In the early church, all churches started by conversion. The apostle Paul began his church-planting ministry in Europe after an initial conversion to Jesus Christ and a time of discipleship.

When we read through the Book of Acts, Luke uses the familiar phrase “… and they were added to their number” ( 2:41 ). On five different occasions in Luke’s account, we come across the Greek term prostithymi (meaning “to add to” or “to grow”). The term described conversion growth that grew the Church.

Scripture repeatedly shows us that the church in Jerusalem was a church that was started by means of conversion growth through Peter’s preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit. The church in Antioch started with the newly converted as well. And the first church in Europe was in Philippi, started the same way.

Conversion growth is a gift from God. So why is what was normative in the New Testament era considered a church-planting anomaly today ?


What’s Holding Us Back?

Based on what I’ve seen, we can look at five reasons why we’re not seeing people coming to Christ as the foundation for forming new churches. Check these out and see if any or all of these resonate.

1. The people we‘re trying to reach have already been discipled — by popular culture.

In my European context, this translates to freedom from religion to personal preference. The greatest sin in secular European culture is intolerance: daring to tell another person they’re wrong to hold to their “truth.”

Today, many truths are based upon personal preference. We shop today in what sociologist Bryan Wilson calls a “random supermarket of knowledge.” All secular people possess spirituality (just look at the popularity of icons like Oprah Winfrey). We live in an age in which most people believe that life can be lived well without God. In neglecting Him, they insert the conviction that human agency is enough for humans to flourish.

2. Our expectations of what God can do have been domesticated.

The common assumption of how we start churches reflects how God has become too small to many of us. Instead of allowing the New Testament to influence how we go about planting churches, we bow to commonly held assumptions.

Think about a circus elephant. At a very young age, the elephant is chained to a stake in the ground. Try as he might, the little creature is no match against the strength of the stake and the chain. As it grows older, it gets stronger. Yet the elephant, although physically easily able to free himself from the confines of the stake, can’t do it. He has been domesticated. He has been trained to believe that the chain and the stake will dominate his life . And it does.

We have been trained that there is only one way to go about church planting, and that way is to organize it instead of expecting God to pneumatize it. Have we become the elephant chained to the stake, unable to conceive that God might have a better way?

3. Our church-planting approach is pastoral when it needs to be missional.

I don’t think you’ll argue with me that most church planters are shepherds who occasionally function as missionaries. We need the reverse: missionaries who occasionally function as pastors.

I get it. Pastors functioning as church planters is an understandable phenomenon. We receive our training from professors who are teachers. Very rarely do apostles and evangelists become educators because apostles and evangelists would rather be on the front lines than talking about what it‘s like being on the front lines while grading papers .

The pastoral approach, steeped in theological education, has seeped into our approach to church planting. The pastoral church planter will spend large amounts of their time behind a study desk because that’s what they were taught: prepare well, feed the flock, and don‘t neglect the study of the Word. The problem is this approach, while understandable, often leads to concentrating on the found instead of seeking out the lost.

4. Our lack of faith in what God wants to do prevents us from seeing conversion-based church planting.

One of the gravest reasons why we‘re not seeing conversion-based church planting is because we‘re not looking for it! And tragically, we‘re not looking for it because we‘re not looking to God for it. The Lord loves big, hairy, audacious faith.

What‘s the difference between great faith and little faith?

Great faith always trusts God for what‘s beyond our human means and capacity to produce. Little faith trusts God for what we can usually engineer by human effort — denigrating church planting to what we can do. If we ourselves can get the job done, there is little need for great faith . Great faith is seen in offensive praying — thanking God for the miracles of new birth before they happen. Little faith is seen in defensive praying — “Lord, keep us safe, be with us, protect us, heal us, help us . . .” Little faith is reflected in “us-prayers.”

Church planting is like creation. God created our world twice. The first creation was a vivid picture of what the fully created world would look like living in the mind of God—His own dream or vision. The second creation was when God spoke, “and it was . . .” Churches are always planted twice: first in the hearts of the church planters, and then visibly.

The vision is where the action is. We need to learn to pray along our vision of conversion-based church planting, instead of along the lines of what has always been.

5. We lack role models of conversion-based church planting.

Have you ever seen or been a part of a church that started with new believers? Most of us haven‘t witnessed, nor have we been a part of, conversion-based church planting. In Germany, we‘re seeing pockets of hope.

In Berlin, Marcus Rose and his organization, Hope Germany , have planted hundreds of conversion-based mini-churches, mostly in urban areas similar to the city’s demographics. Marcus and his co-workers frequent bars and night clubs, share the gospel with patrons and see some of them come to faith in Christ.

What they do next is brilliant. Rather than take new Christians out of their context (bars and clubs) and relocate them to another place, Marcus and his friends keep them where they found them. New mini-churches are birthed in solidly secular environments, and new believers are shepherded to grow up in Christ in those environments. Now, many of their new churches have more not-yet-Christians in them than followers of Jesus .

By God’s awesome grace, my wife Jan and I saw conversion happen in the church we planted in Mannheim about 40 miles outside of Frankfurt. In seven years, the church has experienced a 60 percent conversion rate! Evangelism was always in our prayers, on our lips, guiding our steps. And the Lord blessed abundantly.

Conversion-based church plants are abundant in the Global South — and the same is possible in the West.

Conversion-based church plants are abundant in the Global South — and the same is possible in the West.

To find models of conversion-based church planting, we travel to Africa , Asia and South America. We get on airplanes, submerge ourselves in a different culture and observe many great movements of God on other continents.

But I’m convinced that we can experience here in the West what we‘re so sorely lacking. What would keep your church and churches in your town or city from becoming the next case study of conversion-based church planting? We need to become the case study our society needs. Let’s show others that conversion-based church planting is indeed possible, even where we live!

This article is based on the new eBook, Shift: The Road to Level 5 Church Planting Multiplication , by Dietrich Schindler. Get your copy today !

By Suzanne Pearson 08 Mar, 2024
Through God-ordained partnerships and creative connections, TEAM worker Keith Moore sees the global Church advancing in amazing ways. In the global missions landscape, a phrase that comes up often is “from everywhere, to everywhere.” God is calling His global Church in literal new directions, as He raises up cross-cultural workers to be sent from places that were once on the receiving end of missions work. We call this movement “polycentric sending.” TEAM workers Dawn and Keith Moore have seen first-hand this transition taking place. Their story involves the unlikely but beautiful intersection of Charlotte, North Carolina; Tegucigalpa, Honduras; and Memphis, Tennessee...and beyond. The Path to Honduras Keith and Dawn joined TEAM in 1991 and served as church planters for nine years in Bogota, Colombia. After safety concerns precipitated their return to the States in 1999, they knew they wanted to continue serving in Latin America. The Moores felt called to Honduras but wanted to connect with a strong missional church to help send them. The Lord orchestrated a collaboration with Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. “Some people asked, ‘Why Honduras? Missionaries have been there for 100 years. It’s already reached,’” Keith says. “But there’s a whole section of Latin America that had not been reached - the upper crust.” Keith goes on to explain that he and Dawn felt called to reach college-educated professionals in Honduras – a ministry vision that resonated with the missional goals of Bellevue Baptist. Impact and Growth With the support of this new church partnership as well as another sending church in Birmingham, Alabama, the Moores embarked on their next adventure. Keith and Dawn started Impacto Honduras Church from scratch, and in less than 20 years, the church grew into four locations with 1600 total members. The Moores and other TEAM workers also created a “Bible school” type training program to help professionals who feel a call to ministry to make that transition. Throughout this period of explosive growth, church partnerships played an integral role. “It’s such a different vision when you have a church that says, ‘OK, this is our deal, we want to make this happen,’” Keith explains. “They helped us with everything. They took away every single obstacle to growth. Every time we needed something, they were there.” In 2017, the Moores once again found themselves on the verge of another decision. Was it time to leave Honduras? “I had no desire to leave,” Keith recalls. “People were coming to Christ every week! It was just so amazing.” However, back in the U.S., Keith and Dawn’s parents were in their 80s and would soon be in need of more care. “We realized that either we would leave in a crisis, or we would leave strategically,” says Keith. The couple began to implement a careful succession plan. By the time they left, the four churches were established with strong, Honduran leadership ready to carry on the work of the Gospel.
By Suzanne Pearson 23 Feb, 2024
Justin Burkholder, pictured here with his wife Jenny and their daughters Isabella, Olivia, and Zoey, has recently been named as TEAM’s next International Director. On February 19, 2024, with much excitement and gratitude to the Lord, TEAM announced that Justin Burkholder will become our organization’s new International Director, effective July 1, 2024. Justin, who is currently TEAM’s Executive Director of Global Ministry, will assume his new role upon the retirement of the current International Director, Dave Hall. ( Read the full press release here. ) We sat down recently with Justin to learn a little more about his background, his family, and the journey that has led him to TEAM. Q: Tell us a little bit about your “origin story” - Where did you grow up? What was your family like? A: I grew up in Mexico City as a missionary kid. My parents were focused on church planting. We were very close as a family. Both of my parents are still alive, and my dad serves as a pastor in southern Florida. I have one brother who is a pastor in Wisconsin, and the most special individual in my family is my sister, Amber. She was born with a very severe case of cerebral palsy and is entirely dependent on my mother...who is extraordinary! The three most impactful forces that have shaped who I am (outside of God’s grace) are growing up in Mexico, having parents who loved and planted churches, and sharing life with someone with a severe disability. My parents belonged at the time to a church and denomination that came with quite a bit of legalism and performance-oriented Christianity. Grace was a challenging concept to grasp. While I had an awareness of my sin and need for redemption, it wasn’t until I attended Moody Bible Institute that I began to grasp the fullness of God’s grace and His delight in His children. I have continued learning and trusting in the Gospel through formal education, like completing my M.Div., and through spiritual practices in community. Learning the Gospel and believing the Gospel has been a daily exercise. The Gospel is as beautiful and multi-faceted as a diamond! At an individual level, it is simple enough for us to live convinced that “Jesus loves me, this I know.” At a corporate level, it becomes the foundation that forms and informs our life as a spiritual family. At a cosmic level, it is redemption that reaches as far as the curse is found. It is hard to even grasp the multiplicity of goodness found in the Good News. Q: Share a little bit about your family life now. What does a typical day look like in the Burkholder household? A: My wife Jenny is my high-school sweetheart! She brings joy and kindness wherever she goes. She’s the best listener I’ve ever met, and we love spending time together. We have three daughters. Isabella is ten, Olivia is seven, and Zoey is four. Each of the girls is unique and has taught us a lot in our process of following Jesus together. We like to go out on walks and go to the park together. Once a month I try to get some alone time with each of my daughters which usually includes bowling or trampolines. A typical day in the Burkholder house starts around 5:00am. Because of traffic here in Guatemala City, we have to leave early for school. After school, the girls come home to different activities - sometimes swimming class, sometimes piano lessons. Four or five nights a week we have dinner together where we usually talk about our high and low moments of the day. On weekends, we enjoy time together, playing outside, or watching sports together. Go Cubs and Go Buckeyes! Q: What are your interests and hobbies? If you have the day off, what are you likely to be up to? A: I enjoy physical activity, running, strength-training and following sports. I also love music and, truth be told, am a bit snobby about my taste in music! I also am a very curious person and love reading just about anything that passes through my hands. A day off is usually an opportunity for time with family. Jenny and I like to cook something interesting together on our days off. Often there is time for some reading and watching some type of athletic event. Q: How did God lead you to TEAM? A: My wife and I were working in the Chicago suburbs. I was a youth pastor and she was a Spanish teacher. When we got married, we had already sensed God’s direction to serve cross-culturally, but it was a matter of discerning when and where. There was a driving desire in me to see a church deeply love the Scriptures and at the same time, be deeply engaged in loving and serving their city and the most vulnerable among them. As God directed our paths, we visited a variety of places and made some friends in Guatemala who opened up the path for us to serve here. While we were exploring, we knew that the International Director of an organization called TEAM happened to go to our church, so I decided I should probably invite him out for breakfast - his name was Charlie Davis. Charlie was extremely thoughtful, passionate about disciple-making, and very gracious in creating space for us as we stepped into this endeavor. Charlie connected me with Steve Dresselhaus, a fellow TEAM global worker who was at that time serving as the Senior Director for the Americas. I cannot express the debt that I owe Steve. He walked closely with me in the transition, encouraged courageous thinking about the church and her role in society, and blasted open the doors for us to serve in Guatemala. After meeting Steve, we spent some days praying about joining TEAM. One thing I will never forget – one night during the process, I found myself wide awake in the middle of the night. A peace like I have seldom experienced passed over me confirming that we should join TEAM. There is no doubt in my mind that God tied all of these pieces together to bring us into the TEAM family and community. Q: What roles have you held in TEAM? What have been the milestones in those roles? A: The most important role I have held in TEAM is that of a global worker. God in His grace has allowed us to help plant two churches here in Guatemala, serve in leadership development, counseling, and discipleship. Our greatest joy has been found walking with those who are learning to follow Christ more deeply. I served as the Ministry Area Leader in Guatemala from 2016 to 2019. We helped to establish and lead this ministry area as it grew from just four global workers to over 15. I then served as Senior Director for Mexico and Central America from 2019 to 2021, Regional Executive Director for the Americas in 2021 and 2022, and then transitioned to the role of Executive Director of Global Ministry which I’ll continue in until the end of June. Q: What do you love most about being a part of TEAM? Why TEAM rather than other organizations or job opportunities? A: The TEAM community is full of people who have faithfully served God’s mission and have given up a lot to do so. It is a privilege to know many of our global workers and be counted among them. I am also fascinated by the fact that TEAM has existed now for more than 130 years! There is something to be said about the resilience and faithfulness of an organization that has continued to impact the world for so long. The rest of our conversation with Justin will be coming soon on blog! We’ll hear more about how God called Justin to the role of International Director, and what Justin sees for the next chapter in TEAM’s work in the global Church.
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