What We Get Wrong About Church Planting

Justin Burkholder • Oct 23, 2018

Church planting has become cool again. Networks like City to City and Acts 29 are growing exponentially. There are church planting conferences and boot camps, and church planting books being written. Even This American Life , a famous podcast, did an episode about church planting.

As a church planter in Guatemala , it’s exciting to see my personal passion receive so much attention. And yet, there are still some key misconceptions lingering about church planting.

Maybe you remember the children’s rhyme: Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, see all the people.

From childhood, we learn to associate church with the building. We learn that the people are inside the church. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that we often reduce church planting down to renting a building and starting a church service.

However, that mindset inevitably causes us to call things churches that aren’t — and there will be genuine churches that we won’t recognize.

So what does it really mean to plant a church?

Getting Our Terms Straight

Before we can define what it means to plant a church, we have to understand what a church is. Maybe that seems obvious, but bear with me.

A church is the local community (family) of believers in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, gathered and empowered by the Spirit, to participate in the Father’s mission on Earth. This means the church is not the building or even the Sunday service. It’s the people in the building at the Sunday service.

We sometimes slide into the error of believing that everything related to our mission has to happen within the building. So, instead of sharing our faith with our neighbor, we just invite them to church so our pastor can talk with them. We assume that only professional ministers can evangelize.

Instead of studying our Bible together and encouraging each other in our faith, we depend on Sunday sermons to be sufficient for our growth. We assume that only professional ministers can study the Bible.

However, when we realize that we are the church, sent into the world, we can all participate in God’s mission at all times — even if we’re not in the building.

Our church in Guatemala refers to our building as the bodega , the warehouse. The warehouse is where our church gathers. Understanding that the church is the community of believers gives us greater clarity when discussing church planting.

Harvesting the Church

If the church isn’t the building or weekly service, then church planting must begin long before either is established. It’s often a process that continues into the life of the church and may eventually include getting a building or starting a Sunday service.

In its simplest form, church planting is bringing together the fruit of evangelism.

Church planting begins with sharing the Gospel with people who have not heard it or believed in it. As people believe in the Gospel, they gather together to form a new family of disciples of Jesus Christ.

In the beginning, they may come together for a Bible study in someone’s living room. They may gather to eat meals, play soccer together, encourage one another in times of difficulty, share their faith with other friends who are not believers. Essentially, the point is to create spaces where they can continue to disciple these new believers in Christ.

This bringing together of the fruit of evangelism will eventually lead to a weekly service where they begin worshipping together as a faith community. However, it is important that the weekly service not replace these other expressions of biblical community.

In this sense, “church planting” is a bit of a misnomer. What we are actually planting is the Gospel and what we are harvesting is the church. Church planting occurs as we share the Gospel with others and bring them together with the goal of doing the things that a local church should do.

What a Church Does After It’s Planted

This new family of believers in the Gospel begins to practice the things that a church does. What this church does can be summarized with two words gather and scatter.

Every church gathers under godly leaders, under the teaching of God’s Word, for the sacraments and for mutual encouragement. Every church then scatters to make more disciples, do good deeds and engage the culture around them.

Every Sunday our church fills the bodega. We sing together, study God’s Word together and often break bread together. Then we leave the bodega and scatter into Guatemala City.

Throughout our week, we meet in smaller groups we call missional communities to encourage one another. We share the Gospel with others, serve the needs of our neighbor and engage the culture at large.

Our prayer is that we will get to plant other churches as we send people to different parts of the city to share the Gospel and gather its fruit.

Every Church’s Purpose

This is church planting in its simplest form. It’s bringing together a new family of believers who gather and scatter.

This means church planting may look very different from culture to culture . Churches may be small in some cultures and big in others. Some may have buildings, while others do not. Some gather on Sundays, while others meet during the week. Some sing with a loud band, while others have a few people leading without instruments.

In the end, the way a church gathers and scatters will look different from culture to culture. But they all have something in common: They bring together new believers and scatter them to bring Christ to their communities.

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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