God’s Way to Plant Churches, Call an Evangelist

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits:

'When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.' – Acts 14:23

Most of us know that around 4000 churches annually in the U.S. are closing their doors and becoming restaurants, museums, Hindu temples, or Muslim mosques.[1] Why is this happening? Briefly put, the church is not sticking to the humbling, simple, and narrow gospel of Jesus Christ which alone can save people (2 Kings 5:1-14). Failing churches have lost their way. What are we to do? We must plant new churches, but how shall we go about doing that?

Many denominations today do something like the following. They look for a fast growing part of town, find a core group of people from another church who live in this fast growing part of town, and call a church planter who is responsible for raising around $400,000 over three years in order to fund the church plant. If the church plant is not self-supporting by that time then the Presbytery “pulls the plug,” and moves on to another place or another church planter. My experience over the years has been that rarely do these new church plants grow through conversion. Most of the growth is transfer growth. People like the preacher, the programs, the music, or their friends go there and it is now the cool place to be.

Here’s my question—how did the apostles plant churches? What is God’s way of doing so? Clearly, God raised up evangelists and sent them to areas where there were no churches. They preached the gospel, often in the midst of terrible persecution and rejection, and God was pleased by the convicting and regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, to grant forgiveness of sins to people.

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