“Reformation is a return to the sound doctrine of the Bible. Revival is the practice of that sound doctrine under the power of the Holy Spirit” (Francis Schaffer)
We in SCP are often misunderstood. The fault is undoubtedly partly ours. For, the name Saturation Church planting, implies church planting. Over the years it has become abundantly clear to me that our own growing understanding of our call and the movement of the world in regards to what remains of the global evangelization task, requires greater clarity on our behalf.
Schaffer’s quote above captures the essence, in short, of what I see as the global task of SCP in our day. We are still very committed to church planting. Hopefully, planting that multiples across a people and a place. However, living as we do in a day when confessing Christians now number globally in the billions, our task has matured.
The important distinction to our continued commitment to church planting is predicated upon at least two important things.
One, Biblical church planting is the result of an evangelization process. In distinction to so much of what goes on today, especially in the US. We de would not advocate the mere attempt to plant a new church just because a denomination believed that such and such a place needed their kind of denomination or doctrine Nor, that a larger church thought they had the secret to growth, and wanted to expand their brand.
Research shows that all such efforts result in simply moving people from one “church” building to another. And, over time, the reduction of the overall number of people attending church. The evangelization of a place doesn’t just happen because someone plants a church. Indeed, if we take a historical goal of 1 church for every 1.000 people, then America already has enough churches.
Maybe not all the right “kind” of churches. But, just planting another one has no impact on the reduction of the lostness of a place, nor the growing righteousness of those who confess to be followers of Jesus. The church has become a very human organization. And, who needs more of those kinds of churches. The “new” churches have in actuality replicated the existing churches, simply with more lights, smoke and “attraction.” You can find more thoughts along this line in my book: “Church as God designed it.”
This leads to our second distinction. Church planting should not be another program. It should come from an understanding of the nature of the church as it is so clearly described in the Bible. You can find what I mean by this in my book, “Renovation: a survey of the Divine Design in the life of the church.”
So, in every nation where we work, we begin with assessing the present state of the church. Simply calling leadership to plant churches too often results in two kinds of churches. First, churches who are simply a collection of people. Mostly, people who came from another church. Second, because the leadership that plants these churches has little Biblical understanding of what they are doing, they often don’t survive long.The death rate of new church plants is a significant concern. For more on my thoughts on teaching on leadership, see: “Alone at the top.”
So, when we talk about SCP today, here is what we mean.
- Our motivation is the Missio Dei, our God is on a mission. That mission dominates time in order that the eternity of Genesis 1 and 2 would someday be fully restored.
- Our convictions rise from the inspiration of Scripture, the finished work of the Son of God, the sending of the Father of the Church into the world with this good news, and the empowerment by the Holy Spirit of the Church with everything we need to fulfill our calling.
- Our strategy follows the movement of the Spirit in the world and the nature of the church as it is clearly found in Scripture. Inspiring Christians and existing congregations everywhere to daily declare the Gospel in life and word, organize new congregations in every small geography, and teach these congregations to repeat their part of the task in the peoples and places around them.
- Our method is both indigenous and contextual. We ask God to lead us to people who are willing and capable to take active responsibility for the full evangelization of their places, and inspire others near to them to do the same. We move most effectively only when such wiling and capable people are identified, envisioned, and, trained in our convictions. They are most effective when they can inspire others to build contextually relevant strategies to carry out the divine nature of the church as God designed it and the Spirit empowers it.
- We give continuous reflection to the best strategies to carry this out without damaging Holy Spirit inspired indigenous responsibility.
- Because the task is global, we should be globally organized as an apostolic team. Global in composition and global in view.
