Churches That Multiply: A Bible Study on Church Planting

by Elmer L. Towns, Douglas Porter

Get your entire church involved in planting a new church.Churches that Multiply is a Bible study from the book of Acts designed to give your church a vision of how you can grow. Catch the fire for spreading the good news and put principles from Acts back into action!This Bible study takes a look how the early church spread the Gospel and compares their approach to today's methods for church growth. You'll learn from their experiences and use what works best for you, as you form a step-by-step strategy to meet the individual needs of your new church.Church members will help plant your new church as they: Receive prayer assignments, helping them get a vision and burden for a new churchLearn how to reach out to the unchurchedTake surveys to evaluate attitudes, resources, and personnel for a new church.Coordinate resources with other churches and denominational leadersResearch community plans and resources to determine where a new church should be locatedTake exploratory trips to new neighborhoods to look at potential areas for new churchesA hands-on approach to church planting that equips the most important members of the team—your church!

Genres: Leadership

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2002

About the author

Dr. Elmer Towns is a college and seminary professor, an author of popular and scholarly works (the editor of two encyclopedias), a popular seminar lecturer, and dedicated worker in Sunday school, and has developed over 20 resource packets for leadership education. He began teaching at Midwest Bible College, St. Louis, Missouri, for three years and was not satisfied with his textbooks so he began writing his own (he has published over 100 books listed in the Library of Congress, 7 listed in the Christian Booksellers Best Selling List; several becoming accepted as college textbooks. He is also the 1995 recipient of the coveted Gold Medallion Award awarded by the Christian Booksellers Association for writing the Book of the Year, i.e., The Names of the Holy Spirit.

He was President of Winnipeg Bible College for five years, leading it to receive American Accreditation and Provincial authority to offer degrees (1960-1965). He taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in greater Chicago, Illinois, in the field of Religious Education and Evangelism (1965-1971).

He is co-founder of Liberty University, with Jerry Falwell, in 1971, and was the only full-time teacher in the first year of Liberty's existence. Today, the University has over 11,400 students on campus with 39,000 in the Distance Learning Program (now Liberty University Online), and he is the Dean of the School of Religion.

Dr. Towns has given theological lectures and taught intensive seminars at over 50 theological seminaries in America and abroad. He holds visiting professorship rank in five seminaries. He has written over 2,000 reference and/or popular articles and received six honorary doctoral degrees. Four doctoral dissertations have analyzed his contribution to religious education and evangelism.

His personal education includes a B.S. from Northwestern College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a M.A. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary also in Dallas, a MRE from Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and a D.Min. from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.