So You Wanna Be a Church Planter…

April 22, 2009 – 4:08 pm

Scott Thomas at Acts 29, a church planting network, offers a few church planter guidelines.

Scott’s Intro:

Every young man that considers church planting asks the question, Am I a Church Planter? It is the question I asked myself many years ago. It is the question we ask every man who submits himself to our Acts 29 assessment process to be a lead planter in our network. Many times he is depending on our assessment process to confirm his calling.

When we assess church planters in Acts 29, the top five negative conditions identified are in order, Theology, Vision, Family, Calling and Character.

The pushback that I receive about doing assessments is that they are not consistent with Scripture. People become very volatile over this issue. I see the church in Jerusalem and Antioch identifying, equipping and sending men to plant churches.

A lot of churches do not have a theologically-based vision for church planting and lack insight into what a church planter looks like. Other churches that are interested in church planting have an intuitive sense of a church planter prospect but have not articulated it and thus may not recognize a man that would make a great church planter. Every church leader should be able to spot a church planter and then send him to plant as soon as he is ready. The problem I am seeing is that we are so desperate for good men that we are not sending them into the field. We take warriors and make them into administrative clerks.

While not politically correct, Acts 29 teaches that this office of an elder and pastor is reserved for males. God is a God of order and balance. He has established order within the family (Gen. 3:16; 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:22-33; Col. 3:18-21) and the church (1 Tim. 2:11-14; 1 Cor. 11:8-9). Even within the Trinity there is an order; a hierarchy. The Father sent the Son (John 6:38) and both the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26). Jesus said, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 6:38). It is clear that God is a God of order and structure.

Read the entire post.

You can also view Scott’s PowerPoint notes.