Jesus often confounded those who listened to him with contrarian concepts that catalyzed discovery. “The last shall be first.” “The greatest is the least.” “Leave the 99 and go find the one.” These are revolutionary, status quo shattering concepts. They challenge the very foundation of commonly held views about how the world works. When we first encounter these statements, they don’t sound right to us. Frankly, the evidence seems to suggest that most who heard Jesus didn’t really hear him…but those who had ears to hear did.

I think Jesus has been speaking some contrarian concepts into my heart lately. I’m doing my best to hear Him.

For instance, I think Jesus is saying “stop planting churches.” Now that is a very contrarian idea for the Director of the Church Multiplication Network to entertain. But, nevertheless, I think Jesus is whispering that phrase into my soul and I’m really trying to make sure I get what He is saying. Here’s what I think He means….the Kingdom advances when disciples are made, not when churches are planted. Truly revolutionary, vigorous churches are the by-product of anointed disciple making. When we plant a church instead of making disciples, we actually reverse the order of how the Kingdom works. True missional advancement starts with a disciple who makes disciples. Read back over some of my previous posts on this blog. Especially pay attention to the John Van Pay story. John actually focused on making disciples FIRST and then the church emerged out of the disciple making process.

Jesus himself did not start building His church that the gates of hell would not prevail against by planting a church! He started building His church by making disciples. Why should we try to do it any other way? It’s completely backwards to try to gather a bunch of Christians to assemble in a room, sing songs and pray together, listen to a sermon, receive a benediction and then add some sort of discipleship program on top. Yet we try to do that all the time. Many church plant plans that I see are totally focused on having a public “service” that is done with excellence surrounded by some sort of classes or small groups. Everything is focused on the “institution” of the church. Progress is measured by how many people are sitting in the pews or in a class or in a home listening to someone else talk about the Bible.

The example of Jesus is so different than that. He made disciples first. They became a community of disciples who gathered together to be strengthened and equipped to go make more disciples. It’s interesting that the gospel writers keep track of the number of disciples (12, 70, 120, etc.) and rarely mention the size of the crowd (unless it helps make a point about the magnitude of a miracle like the five loaves and two fishes). We must start asking ourselves what that sort of dynamic ministry looks like today. And then our church starting strategies must be informed by putting the making of disciples at the forefront of our plans. Healthy churches come out of healthy disciple making efforts. That’s what I think we see in the John Van Pay story.

So here’s what I’m saying now. Let’s stop planting churches and start discipling communities. When we do that, vigorous new churches will be formed out of the disciple making process and Jesus will transform our community through us! Selah….

Some of you “regulars” of the Church Planter’s Fellowship Blog have let me know that you missed us over the last few days! Thanks for letting me know you are out there reading and thinking along with me. I apologize for the “cyber-glitch” that knocked us off the “net.” I have no idea what happened, but we’re back and I’ve got great news to share.

Last week I made a presentation to the Executive Presbyters of the AG. The Executive Presbyters are leaders of leaders from across America. Some of them are district superintendents. Some are leaders of significant churches. Some are respected AG “statesmen” who are known throughout the fellowship for their wisdom and ministry effectiveness. All of them have been chosen from among their peers to assist Dr. Wood and the resident leadership team in Springfield to make sound, visionary, Godly decisions about what the Assemblies of God should collaboratively do to stay on mission with Jesus.

It’s actually become somewhat common for me to make presentations to these guys. They know that church planting is important and they have expressed great passion for doing everything in their power to move it forward. So they have invited me to appear before them on a regular basis to update them on what is happening and receive their input regarding what they’d like to see us do. In fact, last year they strongly indicated they are serious about expanding the Kingdom through planting by investing $2 million into the matching fund pool to help new churches with start up funds to optimize their opening.

But the presentation last week was different for several reasons. First, I was more prepared than I had ever been in previous presentations opportunities. The reason I was better prepared was because they had given me the necessary resources to assemble an outstanding team of diverse leaders to help me prepare to present them a plan for resourcing AG planting like never before. This team assembled in Nashville, Tennessee on February 27-28th to answer the question, “How can the Assemblies of God best leverage its assets (people, financial, organizational) to maximize our effectiveness at starting new churches everywhere in every way?” After meeting for two days, the team worked collaboratively online using a “Google” word processing document to generate a set of recommendations for the EP’s to consider. This in itself was an incredible experience. Because of the synergy created by the collaboration between this diverse group of contributors, I was better prepared than ever before to stand before the EP’s and make my case.

Second, the plan I presented was more comprehensive and visionary than any that I had previously shared. The basic content of the plan several components. 1. To locate the Church Planting “hub” of the AG in a priority position on the organizational flow chart. 2. To request start up funding for the creation of six new systems to appropriately support and catalyze planting from a national platform. 3. To develop these new systems in with a ministry plan that has three phases for generation of funding. Phase one is start up funding which we are requesting from the EP’s. Phase two is funded by investment from donors who understand the strategic value of church planting to the Mission of Christ. Phase three is a self- funded phase that is supported out of the fruit of the harvest and the value of the resources provided. The plan is to give them a ministry plan that is self-supporting down line.

The bottom line is that these visionary EP’s approved of the basic concepts of the plan pending the presentation of a business/ministry plan in June that will detail how this will all work. It is at that time, I will stand before them once again and request their significant investment in start up funds to get the ball rolling. At the end of the day, this is huge. It is positioning this movement to do something that may have never been done before. I’m not aware of a movement of the size and magnitude of the Assemblies of God that has taken the sort of visionary step that is being proposed. I’m truly optimistic that our leaders will boldly go where none have gone before. Please be praying for those who will be building the how-to of the plan over the next couple of months. The presentation will be made the first part of June. Please be praying that God will guide this process and the outcome will be the right decisions for the right time in the right way!

Last night we completed the 2008 edition of the National Prayer Summit. It was hosted by Central AG in Springfield, MO, so for the last few days we’ve enjoyed the presence of over a thousand friends from all across the nation. It was awesome. Here’s why…

1. Dr. Wood made church planters a major focus of the summit from start to finish. First, the General Council paid for the food and lodging of every church planter who attended the summit. He also encouraged districts to pay their travel expenses. Many districts did. I’m not sure about final numbers, but there were at least 100 planters represented out of the 309 church plants planted last year. Dr. Wood shared with me that he’d like to do it again next year. Not a promise, but a definite possibility.

2. The plans involved a lot of intentional interaction with the Executive Presbyters and Executive leaders. This turned out to be a tremendous blessing to everyone. I kept hearing planters say something like “these leaders are way more accessible than I thought they’d be.” And the Executives were amazed by the diversity and the miraculous nature of the stories being told by the planters.

3. A theme ran through all the stories. This cohort of planters are committed to “going” versus “attracting” as a primary strategy for reaching lost people. And they are reaching lost people. Story after story of life transformation. Very encouraging and inspiring.

4. This prayer summit had more actual prayer taking place than any previous meeting like this that I’ve ever been too. My little pet peeve about prayer summits has always been that we spend way too much time listening to people talk about prayer and not enough time actually praying. But this summit was different. Prayer happened! That means things will be changing!

5. But the content of what was said by the speakers was excellent. Jim Cymbala encouraged us to make “being with Jesus” the foundation of our life and ministry. Simple but powerful thought. Dary Northrup talked about how God spoke to him about his personal “discipline” of prayer. He shared about arriving at a point of personal frustration with the quality of his prayer life. He thought of it as a discipline and felt inadequate but didn’t know what to do about it. God spoke to him and showed him that prayer is being with God and God said to Dary, “It’s not a discipline for me to be with you. I just want to be with you.” Dary said that thought changed his whole approach to prayer. Now he just wants to be with Jesus every day and he has an ongoing conversation with the Lord and a constant awareness of God’s presence in his life. I haven’t really done justice to the whole concept in this brief summation but it impacted me and I too am enjoying being with Jesus because I want to, not because I have to…

Speaking of prayer…the next two days are important days for church planting and the Assemblies of God. I’m presenting a proposal for dramatically increasing the level of support and services we provide to planters, church planting churches and districts. Please pray with me that the Lord will guide the decision makers to do what’s right. I hope to be sharing some really exciting news in the next few months.