completion

How Holistic Church

Planting Transforms
Society
The Strategy of Paul and its
Implications for Today

Session 13
Homework
 Introduction
Jesus' essential call was to plant new communities of disciples (i.e.
churches). Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New
Testament are basically calls to plant churches, not simply to share the
faith. e 'Great Commission' (Matt. 28: 18-20) is not just a call to 'make
disciples' but to 'baptize' and to ‘teach’ people to obey everything that
Christ commanded us to do. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that
baptism means incorporation into a worshipping community with
accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41-47). e only way to be truly
sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase
the number of churches. While evangelistic crusades and outreach
programs are not to be discarded, their effectiveness is far inferior to
church planting. Why? Much traditional evangelism aims to get a
‘decision’ for Christ. Experience, however, shows us that many of these
'decisions' disappear and never result in changed lives. Why? Many
decisions are not really conversions, but often only the beginning of a
journey of seeking God. Only a person who is being 'evangelized' in the
context of an on-going worshipping and shepherding community can be
sure of finally coming home into vital, and life-transforming faith. is is
why a leading missiologist like C. Peter Wagner can say, "Planting new
churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under
heaven."1

Paul’s Strategy to Transform the Roman Empire

Paul understood this reality crystal-clear. Paul's whole strategy was to
plant urban churches that cared for their communities. e greatest
missionary in history, St.Paul, had a rather simple, two-fold strategy. First,
he went into the largest city of the region (cf. Acts 16:9,12), and second,
he planted churches in each city (cf. Titus 1:5- "appoint elders in every
town"). Once Paul had done that, he could say that he had 'fully preached'
the gospel in a region and that he had 'no more work' to do there (cf.
Romans 15:19,23). Of course, more work needed to be done… but Paul
had laid the foundations that the new believers could build upon. is
means Paul had three controlling assumptions: a) that the way to most
permanently influence a country was through its chief cities; b) the way to
most permanently influence a city was to plant churches that holistically
cared for their city, and c) the way to most permanently ensure the
influence of churches in a city was to raise lay leaders and inspire members
to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom and plant new churches. Once he
had accomplished this in a city, he moved on. He knew that the rest that
needed to happen would follow.2

How effective was Paul’s strategy? Did it really work? At the end of his
life Paul saw many of his churches consumed by in-fighting. Some had
grown cold in their passion and fervor for God and his Kingdom of justice
and peace. Others were facing severe persecution, to the point of

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 extinction. Yet, the seeds he had sown bore much fruit in decades and
centuries to come

e Effects of Paul’s Strategy

To the early Christians, acceptance of Christianity meant a conversion,
and not only a “spiritual conversion” but a conversion of one’s whole
lifestyle.3 To be a Christian did not mean primarily embracing a new
doctrine. Primarily it meant living a new lifestyle.4 Everyone was a
missionary – by the simple fact that the Christian way of life, the new
community life of sisterly and brotherly love, and the proclamation of
God’s kingdom of Shalom had a challenging and contagious effect on the
environment.5 While many reasons are put forward for the growth of the
early church, two factors stand out: the first was the early church’s fervor
to plant new and reproducing communities of the kingdom; the second
was its strong and attractive social ethic.

As a result, the Christian community slowly transformed ancient Rome

over the course of 300 years. It presented an alternative community in
which a new social ethic was realized. e North African Christian
leader, Tertullian, for example, exhorted the Christian minority of his day
to be the “soul” of secular Roman culture. Pagan Rome was beset with
corruption and moral decay, but Tertullian urged the Christian community
not to retreat from that culture but to contend for it.6 e second-
century letter to Diognetus said, “As the soul is to the body, so are
Christians to their city.”7

Consequently, even while not directly addressing political questions,

Christian churches challenged the structures upon which inequalities were
based.8 Aristides, an envoy to Roman Emperor Hadrian, wrote about the
Christians of the second century: “ey love one another and they never
fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them.
If they have something they give freely to the man who has nothing; if
they see a stranger they take him home and are happy as though he were a
real brother; they don't consider themselves brothers in the usual sense,
but brothers instead through the Spirit in God. When one of their poor
dies, they provide for his burial according to their abilities; and if they hear
that any of them is imprisoned or oppressed for confessing the Messiah,
all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible to free him, they
deliver him. And if someone among them is poor and in need, but they
don’t have enough to give, they fast two or three days in order to supply
the needy with necessary food.”9 While it would have been unwise for the
Christians to try and engage directly in the state political system of the
first three centuries AD, it is clear that they had a significant impact
simply by living as exemplary citizens wherever they were.10 In
Alexandria, women rounded up destitute babies and orphans and cared for
them. Christians in the Egyptian cities knocked on poor people’s doors

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 and offered to move in to nurse the sick, deliberately exposing themselves
to illness. Unlike their pagan neighbors, they readily ransomed their
friends from barbarian captors, and when plague hit, they tended their
sufferers whereas all others abandoned the sick at the first symptoms.11
Indeed, Christianity’s concern with the interests and concerns of the
marginalized classes within and without the Roman Empire was the
principal characteristic of Christianity in those centuries.12

Not astonishingly, as this movement to change society swept across the

Roman Empire, Rome became deeply threatened by these Christian
alternative communities; communities who gave allegiance to an Emperor
other than Caesar while claiming to have found a way of life superior to
that of Rome. is is the only explanation that truly makes sense out of
Rome’s episodic persecution of the church for over two centuries. Yet,
even in trying to extinguish the Christian movement, many Romans
remained impressed at its power. Roman governor Plinius Secundus, for
instance, wrote in his Epistles X96 that Christians were people who loved
the truth at any cost. Although he was ordered to torture and execute
them for refusing to curse Jesus, he was continually amazed and impressed
with their firm commitments "not to do any wicked deeds, never to
commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a
trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up."

e result eventually was the transformation of Roman society into a

Christianized society within the course of 300 years. e pressures of a
minority religion whose social practice challenged its foundations, made
the Roman civilization crumble under the weight of its own decadence.
God used the message carried by the tiny, persecuted, oppressed, rejected,
reviled group of disciples to change the Roman Empire.13 By the time
Constantine was crowned Emperor in 312, between 10-25 percent of the
Roman Empire was Christian. And Christianity had brought about
significant social justice and social reform. It is an exciting study to see the
impact of the second and third century churches on changing the social
culture of Rome, particularly in terms of justice and social welfare.

Even when the emperor Julian of Rome, in the fourth century, tried to
reverse the empire’s embrace of Christianity and to restore the pagan
(Hellenistic and Roman) charities and cults, Julian labelled the disciples of
Jesus as “impious” in the same breath that he grudgingly gave respect to
the ways they cared for the poor. In a letter to his own high priest in
Galatia in 362, Julian admonished his priests to match the virtues of
Christians, even if their “moral character” is “pretended”. “I think that
when the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the priests,
the impious Galileans observed this and devoted themselves to
benevolence… e impious Galileans support not only their poor but ours
as well; everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.”14

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 In short, Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.
is historical evidence, then, suggests that Paul’s strategy (and that of the
other disciples and apostles) was indeed successful.

Implications for Today

If we want to see our cities and communities transformed, it seems thus,
that a key strategy is to plant churches that care for their communities and
are themselves driven to plant new churches with similar characteristics.
Apart from the historical evidence we have seen above, why would this be
the case?

1. New churches best reach the unchurched--period. Dozens of church

growth studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most
of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of people who are not
attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10-15 years of
age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other
congregations. is means that the average new congregation will
bring 6-8 times more new people into the life of the Body of Christ
than an older congregation of the same size. So though established
congregations provide many things that newer churches often cannot,
older churches in general will never be able to match the effectiveness
of new bodies in reaching people for the kingdom.15
2. New congregations, in general, are forced to focus on the needs of its
non-members, simply in order to get off the ground. So many of its
leaders have come very recently from the ranks of the un-churched,
that the congregation is far more sensitive to the concerns of the non-
believer. Also, in the first two years of our Christian walk, we have far
more close, face-to-face relationships with non-Christians than we do
later. us a congregation filled with people fresh from the ranks of
the un-churched will have the power and real concern to invite and
attract many more non-believers into the events and life of the church
than will the members of the typical established church, which have
become more disassociated from the real issues of their non-Christians
neighbors.16

is doesn’t mean that older churches should be closed down, and that we
all should roll up our sleeves and start new churches. Older churches have
their rightful place, particularly since they have a stability and steadiness
that many people thrive on and need. In fact, a good number of non-
Christians will only be reached by churches with long roots in the
community and the trappings of stability and respectability.17

Nonetheless, if we desire to transform society, we need to think in terms of

church planting. e good news is that older churches who catch a vision
for church planting and birth new congregations, benefit themselves in the

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 long run. Often the excitement and new leaders and new ministries and
additional members and income 'washes back' into the mother church in
various ways and strengthens and renews it. ough there is some pain in
seeing good friends and some leaders go away to form a new church, the
mother church usually experiences a surge of high self-esteem and an
influx of new enthusiastic leaders and members. Yet, the existing church,
since it will inevitably loose good leaders to new church plants, will have
to ask itself a crucial question: "Are we going to rejoice in the 80% - the
new people that the kingdom has gained through this new church, or are
we going to bemoan and resent the three families we lost to it?" In other
words, our attitude to new church development is a test of whether our
mindset is geared to our own institutional turf, or to the overall health and
prosperity of the kingdom of God in the city. Any church that is more
upset by their own small losses rather than the kingdoms large gains is
betraying its narrow interests. Yet, as we have seen, the benefits of new
church planting to older congregations is very great, even if that may not
be obvious initially.

Simply planting new churches by itself won’t transform society, however.

It all depends on what kind of churches we plant and to what ends. If we
want to see our society and communities transformed, the types of
churches we have to plant need to have two key characteristics:

1. ey need to be churches who have embraced the holistic mission

God has charged the church to fulfill. Like the early church, they need
to actively care for their communities and its members in an integral
way that tangibly shows the love of God. What’s more, they need to
understand that church planting is not an end in itself, but a means to
advance God’s Kingdom of justice and peace. e growth of the
Kingdom and God’s glory is the end of our purpose and mission; not
the growth of the church!
2. ey need to be horse churches, not mule churches. What do we
mean by that? Mules, being hybrids, are sterile, infertile, incapable of
reproduction. Horses can reproduce. Mule churches result from
church planting patterns which are not reproducible. is can be in
terms of who plants the church, how they do the work of church
planting, what resources are utilized, what type of church they plant,
etc. If we plant mule churches, the job will not ever be finished. at’s
why we need to plant horse churches. Let's look at an example in
church planting to make the difference between mule and horse
churches clear. Let's say that you wanted to see 15% of
Chimalhuacan’s (a large slum community outside Mexico City) one-
million strong population actively involved in a church that cared for
its community. at would require approximately 7,000 additional
churches with an average membership size of 15-20 people. If you
could recruit and fund fifty church planting teams which would plant

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 one mule church every year it would still take 140 years if the
population never grew. If those same teams would plant horse
churches which would reproduce annually then the job could be
finished in a mere eleven years with nearly 1,000 churches to spare.

In summary, then, planting holistic churches that plant more holistic

churches is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the
number of believers in a city, one of the best ways to renew the whole
Body of Christ, and a crucial way to transform our society by caring for
our communities in an integral way. e evidence for this statement is
strong – Biblically, sociologically, and historically.

reflection questions
Write your answers and thoughts to these questions into your Application
Journal and be prepared to share your findings in the next class session.

What questions or challenges do you have in response to the ideas

presented in this article?
What is your take regarding the article’s stance, that church planting is
a much more effective strategy to advance God’s Kingdom and
transform society than are evangelistic campaigns or purely social
service-oriented initiatives? What about holistic church planting
makes it a more complete community transformation strategy?
How would you respond to the following argument? --- “While Paul’s
strategy of holistic church planting may, to some extent, have been
successful in his time, that success was soon transformed into failure as
the emergent church of the 4th century and onward no longer identified
itself as an alternative community over against the empire, but soon
positioned itself as the church of the empire, blessing the empire’s every
advance and exploits. So why bother and seek to change our cities via
holistic church planting, if in the end, the Church becomes as corrupted
as the structures it once sought to change?”
How would you formulate a strategy to advance holistic church
planting in your community/city?

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 application journal:

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 endnotes
1 Tim Keller, W hy Plant Churches, article online available at http://
www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/why%20plant%202%2011%20TLeaders.pdf
2 Tim Keller, W hy Plant Churches, article online available at http://

www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/why%20plant%202%2011%20TLeaders.pdf
3 Eduardo Hoornaert, e Memory of the Christian People, 81
4 Eduardo Hoornaert, e Memory of the Christian People, 165
5 Eduardo Hoornaert, e Memory of the Christian People, 76
6 online available at http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/1999/04/08/end-times-and-

christian-responsibility/
7 Ray Bakke, e Urban Christian, 83
8 Melba Padilla Maggay, Transforming Society, 153
9 quoted in Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid, Complete Evangelism, 17
10 Graham Gordon, What If You God Involved?, 84
11 Philip Yancey, e Jesus I Never Knew, 156
12 Eduardo Hoornaert, e Memory of the Christian People, 121
13 Bob Moffit, If Jesus Were Mayor, 36
14 quoted in Mark Lewis Taylor, e Executed God, 132-133
15 Tim Keller, Why Plant Churches, article online available at http://

www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/why%20plant%202%2011%20TLeaders.pdf
16 Tim Keller, Why Plant Churches, article online available at http://

www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/why%20plant%202%2011%20TLeaders.pdf
17 Tim Keller, Why Plant Churches, article online available at http://

www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/why%20plant%202%2011%20TLeaders.pdf

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