COVER SECTION
SEND>> NORTH AMERICA
Why Every Church Must Plant
By Carol Pipes
Throughout the Old and New Testaments we see a clear pattern of God calling and sending His followers. He sent Abraham out of Ur and on a journey that culminated in God establishing a people who would carry His message into all the world. God sent Moses to be a temporary rescue for His chosen people. He sent Jonah to a pagan Nineveh to warn of God’s judgment.
And He sent His son, Jesus,—the ultimate message of love—to rescue and redeem the world.
Jesus continued this sending pattern with His disciples and the New Testament church.
And God wants to send you. As believers, we are a people sent by God to carry His message of love, mercy and redemption through His son Jesus Christ. This is missions at its core. God’s missionary heart beats for all people to know and worship Him. And we have the privilege and responsibility of being the ones chosen by God to take the gospel into the entire world.
The North American Mission Board’s national strategy, “Send North America,” is a response to God’s sending nature. Send North America is NAMB’s primary mechanism for moving churches and individuals into all regions of North America to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ and ultimately start churches.
WHY PLANT CHURCHES?
Simply put, church planting is a natural outcome if believers are spreading the gospel. In His Great Commission, Jesus tells us to “Go and make disciples of all nations.” And later in Acts 1:8, He commands His followers to be “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Spreading the good news of Jesus Christ is something all believers should be doing both locally and globally. New churches are an inevitable result of obedience to Christ’s command to go and tell.
Throughout the New Testament we read stories of the apostles taking the gospel to cities and planting seeds, of new believers gathering together and of God growing the church in those communities. Church planting is the primary mode of evangelism in the book of Acts. Today it’s still key to spreading the gospel to every people group, population segment or affinity group throughout the world.
Evangelizing people who’ve never heard or responded to the gospel will naturally result in the formation of new churches. It’s within the church that people grow in their relationship with Jesus, it’s how they are fed and nurtured in their spiritual journey.
ON MISSION • Summer 2011 11
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