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International Church Planting Should Be In Our DNA

We believe God has called us, the Summit Church, to plant 1000 churches in 40 years. We believe that many, if not most, will be overseas. Currently, we have plants in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Africa. We insist that every domestic church we plant incorporate into its DNA, from the beginning, international church planting.

I have been told by some that a new church should wait until it establishes itself, grows to a healthy size, and has planted a few domestic churches before it engages in international church planting. I do not agree with this at all. God has clearly told us, from the beginning, to go to all the nations. We talk about "finding God's will," but it's not lost! God's will is for every believer to be involved, in some way, in seeing his fame known in all the earth.

International church planting, just like church planting in general, needs to be part of a church's DNA from the beginning. After all, it was part of the original Great Commission. For more on this, check out John Piper's classic, Let the Nations Be Glad! It is, I believe, his best book!

On a practical note, one of the things we did at the Summit recently, that really got everyone totally jacked up, was to trace the history of church planting "from Jerusalem to RDU." Doing so showed our congregation that we are part of a church planting movement larger than ourselves! To see what that would look like, I put it in script form here.

A Day With Dr. Don:

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International Church Planting Series: Click | View Series

Planting Churches Fulfills the Great Commission

In Acts, God's means of changing the world is through the planting of churches. It is no coincidence that right after God gave his apostles the Great Commission in Acts 1:8, the first thing he did was to plant a church (Acts 2:42-47). The church was to be the operational means of fulfilling the Great Commission.

When a local church was placed in a community, the gospel would be preached from house to house and in the streets, and the generosity, joy, and worship of a local body of believers caused "great fear and awe" to be on everyone, favor to be had with the community, and God to "add to the number daily those that were being saved." Thus, everywhere the apostles went, they planted churches. They didn't simply do preaching, miracle crusades, or community ministry. They planted churches that would do preaching, perform miracles, and serve the community. As Tim Keller said, the apostles' strategy was very simple: go to the most strategic cities in the world and plant churches. The church is the one institution of the New Testament.

To the Ends of the Earth

What we sometimes overlook is that the scope of God's commission, from the beginning, was to "the ends of the earth." When God sent the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, the apostles spoke in tongues of every language, a clear sign that the gospel should go to every people of every nation on earth. This gospel was not to be centralized in one city or one culture. God would be glorified by his gospel taking root in every culture.

However in Acts 2-7, despite God's clear command and signs to go to all the nations, the apostles do not budge from Jerusalem. So in Acts 8:1, God sent persecution on the church, and believers scattered throughout the region. The parallel language of Acts 1:8 and 8:1 is not coincidental. If the apostles weren't going to obey God's commission to go to the world, God would make them. In a truly bizarre move, God even beams one of the apostles, Star Trek style, into a place where he can engage a foreigner with the gospel.

On one hand it is refreshing to me that the apostles were not too dissimilar to us, preferring to stay in their own city and culture, and to build a megachurch there. On the other hand, it is a little alarming that God is so determined for his people to plant churches internationally that he will bust them up if he has to and beam a few of them overseas if they won't obey. While the beaming sounds kind of cool, the busting up does not. So we have decided, from the beginning, to plant churches internationally.

To be continued

Pastor Mark:

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