Multiplying Churches: Exploring God’s Mission Strategy

by Steve Timmis

the Holy Spirit creates missionaries. As soon as He calls someone into the kingdom, as soon He regenerates

someone with the life of Jesus, He has create...

The gospel is not merely something to be declared – although it certainly is that. It is also something to be demonstrated. And that happens in churches as they are planted.

We should be looking to plant new churches in diverse contexts so that the gospel word might produce more gospel fruit.

Church planting is not simply starting a new congregation. Church planting is not beginning a new meeting. Church planting is not opening up a new building. Church planting is the work of filling and subduing. It is the work of pushing back the thorns and thistles of Satan’s tyranny. It is a glorious task to which God has called us. God in the gospel is inviting us to participate with Him to fill the earth and subdue it. As we go out to make disciples of every nation we are extending Eden, creating Edens all over the world. We are establishing places where God rules and where God walks in mercy. It is for this that we were made. This is what the first Adam forfeited. This is what the Second Adam has gloriously secured. And this is how it has always been in the kingdom of God.

The Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are all church planters.

At the end of chapter 12, Luke records the gruesome expiry of Herod. Then he includes another summary statement, a reminder in Acts 12:24 that the word of God increased and multiplied. Luke deliberately juxtaposes these two events. Herod dies because of his blasphemy and arrogance, but the word of God increases. A ruler dies, but the kingdom of God extends. The fame of Jesus keeps on getting more famous. Then this spontaneously-planted

That is because, as the Holy Spirit gathers people who are all missionaries, you have a missionary church. And a missionary church plants churches. The Spirit is a church-planting Spirit. Church planting is the preferred divine method of evangelism, of kingdom expansion, of fruit-bearing, of discipleship-making, of men and women being rescued from darkness to light.

was profoundly effective. In 1555 there were just five underground Protestant churches in France. Four years later in 1559 that number had grown to more than one hundred. By 1562, a further three years later, it was estimated that there were over 2,000 churches in France preaching the gospel with an excess of one million people in attendance. Calvin did not just plant churches. He planted mega-churches that in turn planted more churches! True church history is a history of church planting. Calvin said:

Seeing that God has given us such a treasure and so inestimable

a thing as his word we must employ ourselves to it as much as we can that it may be kept safe and sound and not perish. And let every man be sure to lock it securely in his own heart. But it is not enough to have an eye for his own salvation, but ...

From the beginning God has had this end in view. God started something that He intended to end in this New Creation.

There is not a one-size-fits-all role of church planter.

If you are walking in righteousness to be applauded or approved by others it is a false, weak righteousness.

but rather to plant a church which has in its DNA a desire from the beginning to multiply new churches out of itself. So our goal is not a church planted but a church planting – a church planting more

16 when he says God ‘was pleased to reveal his Son to me’.

God’s love allows us to die to ourselves so that we no longer live for ourselves.

In fact, as believers convinced of God’s love for us, we should be the most free. As recipients of grace, rescued by the love of God, we are compelled simply by love.

experience the love of Christ. The gospel creates empathy in our souls towards those who are lost. Do not ever be surprised that lost people behave as unregenerate, lost people!

There are no hard places for the Lord. He knows nothing of closed countries, nor anything of revival-resistant regions.

Church planting is a ministry of reconciliation. We proclaim the message that God is no longer holding the trespasses of the world against those who will repent and put their faith in Christ. We have been entrusted with this message of good news. We are gathering people reconciled to God by the gospel into a community of reconciliation.

This will require a type of humility among the leaders of leaders that I have found to be rare. For it is in our weaknesses that the gospel is often seen most clearly.

because the authors have tapped into our desire to be given a simple way to master something that, otherwise, might take a long time.

but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.

God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. For

This is why when he passes on the baton of ministry to Timothy he urged him to prioritise the proclamation of the word. ‘Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.’

Whatever you are doing, without God’s word your new church has nothing distinctive to offer the community into which you plant.

In his book on the church Edmund Clowney says: ‘The church is the community of the word, the word that reveals the plan and purpose of God.’

The growth of the church is the growth of the word.

God’s design is that His people gather to humbly listen to a man who stands in His place, to deliver His message, and through that event His Spirit works in power to bring His chosen purposes to pass.

willingness to suffer is an essential mark of any authentic gospel minister.

by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.’

Our manner is the fruit of our mind-set.

who tests our hearts. Practically speaking, if you are not committed to pleasing God then you will be a puppet to the opinions of others.

Try to create as much distance between you and the bank account as possible.

When your pride is the motivator then your mind-set is wrong and your integrity is shot.

Often church planters are talked about as entrepreneurs or as ‘natural’ or ‘strong’ leaders. But these can be beautiful euphemisms for being heavy-handed, harsh, tough, stubborn. This is not Paul’s image of the natural or strong leader. He says: ‘We were gentle among you.’

This costly love cannot just be switched on in a moment. It is the fruit of God’s Spirit. Therefore we need to ask God to give it to us. We need to wrestle in prayer, asking that He would grow in our hearts this sort of love which enables us to be this sort of leader.

‘Perhaps the most important thing that I’ve learned is the absolute centrality of loving the people God gives us to serve.’ 4 He then went on: ‘That’s more important than anything else. That’s

The child is simply stunned. He doesn’t know whether to cry, or to shout or to fall down or to run he was so happy. The fuses of love are so overloaded they almost blow out. The sub-conscious doubts that he wasn’t even thinking about at the time, but that do pop up every now and then, are gone and in their place is utter and indestructible assurance so that you know, that you know, that you know that God is real, that Jesus lives, that you are loved and that to be saved is the greatest thing in the world. And when you walk down the street you can scarcely contain yourself and

you want to cry out, ‘My Father loves me, My Father loves me, oh what a great Father I have, what a Father, what a Father.’ 1

That is what it means to be clothed with power from on high.

And we are being sanctified not when we look strong and have it all together, but when we cry out to God because we feel in desperate need of His help or when we cry out, ‘Not again! Please Lord, forgive me and help me.’

What is God’s plan for the purpose and power which the Spirit gives to us? It is that ‘you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem’. In Acts 2 we begin to see this happen as Peter preaches the most non-seeker-friendly sermon in the history

When the gospel is preached, some will really love the message and some will hate it. There are those who receive it gladly and there are those who seek to destroy it.

was applauded for selling his land and giving the money to the apostles. So, when they sold land, they claimed to give all the proceeds to the church while in fact keeping some for themselves. That might not look too insidious. But the point is not that the church demanded all their money. Nor is it even that they lied to the church. Peter’s accusation is that they lied to the Holy Spirit.

We have tried to build so that if the Holy Spirit says, ‘Send your best teacher and your most courageous miracle worker somewhere

This lion needs to be caged, not ignored. The matter of race and reconciliation is that serious.

Where policies and regulations fall short, the gospel prospers.

celebrate our diversity. ‘Transcultural’ is a term I first heard from Léonce Crump Jr and his team at Renovation Church in Atlanta, U.S.A. They’ve done much to shape my vision and apply it to a South African context.