How Do You Start a Healthy, Disciple-making Church?
by John Kimball, CCCC Director of Church Development
I never thought I’d start the second half of my life being a church planting pioneer. I’ve spent nearly 30 years of ministry helping existing churches to rediscover Christ’s calling and return to fruitful ministry. Now, God has led Kathryn and me on a new and exciting adventure. But the work to which we are called may not be what many people think.
Nearly 100% of the churched people we talk to about the launch of Palmwood Church demonstrate that they do not understand the mission to which we are called. What’s sad is that they also show they do not understand the mission to which they are called. The questions people ask are the evidence: “Have you bought a building?” (the number one question!), “What is your Sunday attendance?,” “When will you be able to stop working outside the church and be a full-time pastor?,” “What programs are you using to attract people to your church?,” “Do you use traditional worship or contemporary worship on Sunday mornings?” Regarding questions on the building, on at least two occasions people have actually become frustrated when I explained that we have no plans to purchase or build a building in the foreseeable future. It is not that we are against having our own space — quite the contrary — but a church facility requires a huge amount of ministry capital, which is money that will be taken away from our primary mission at this early stage.
In over two years of seeking God’s plan for this adventure and preparing our core team (from around the country), few people have asked any of us about how we will make disciples here in Central Florida. You see, most American Christians have unwittingly adopted a faulty set of metrics to measure a church’s success: Buildings/facilities, offerings, attendance figures and the like. These are good barometers as we watch for growth trends in a local church, but they are not the measurement by which Jesus would have us measure our success. Jesus told you and me to make disciples. He said growing His Church was His job!
For our Palmwood Church team, and for the congregations that are working through the CCCC’s LifeFlow Church Development process, disciple-making is the primary metric. It has always been that for Jesus — and it should still be that for us. We want to prayerfully determine the best ways to lead people from where they are (perhaps even before they receive Christ) to full Christian maturity. We want to see them living out their faith in every aspect of life, and reproducing that faith in others. When a person becomes a mature, authentic disciple of Jesus, they will attend church. When a person becomes such a disciple of Jesus, they will support His mission with their time, the talents that God has given them and with their whole tithes. The metrics the world has taught us to use will show progress, but it’s because something has been transformed systemically in that disciple.
In the CCCC, one of our guiding values is to help each of our local congregations become truly healthy, disciple-making churches. That means that every member of the church is actively growing in their own walk as a modern-day disciple of Jesus, and they are actively investing in other people (in a planned and purposeful way) to help them grow to this same level of maturity. When it comes to Palmwood Church, for example, Kathryn and I are really excited because we get to help birth a brand new faith community with this good spiritual DNA from the beginning. And here’s the point: we are not in Central Florida to plant a church; we are here to MAKE DISCIPLES. We understand that if we make disciples as Jesus commissioned us, then He will fulfill His own role to grow His church. You don’t plant a church to make disciples, but you make disciples who will ultimately be the Church.
Pastor Mike Breen has rightly said that if you focus on planting a church in America today, you will get a typical church; however, it will be unlikely to produce the kind and quality of disciples of which we speak. It might have a Christ-centered statement of faith, constitution, structure and such, but it will likely migrate toward the same institutional way of doing church that has impeded discipleship here for many generations. On the other hand, if you focus on disciple-making (which is the Great Commission), this will lead to more and better (read more mature) disciples, groups of disciples and ultimately local congregations that reflect their community and effectively invest Jesus there. In other words, if you focus on making disciples, you will always get Jesus’ Church as a result.
So my growing team (we have five more core team members joining us by this fall, and four more local folks that are beginning to get involved) and I are doing our best to reflect this guiding value of our CCCC Family. We are actively living out Palmwood Church’s mission to make disciples here in Oviedo and her surrounding communities. We’re just on the front end — and this approach will likely grow our faith family more slowly than others because of the time investment required in each disciple. But those discipled will not just learn the Bible academically; rather they will grow to be more like Jesus and have a much stronger Faith foundation as a result. We are making disciples, who will make disciples, who will make disciples…. People working with us know that this is an expectation of our church — we make disciples. How is your church doing in this regard?
Want to learn more about Palmwood Church? Please check us out on FaceBook or through our website at www.palmwoodchurch.com. Want to know how you can begin to make this priority work through the people in your congregation? Why not give us a call about Church Development at the CCCC Main Office at (651) 739-1474.
