Introduction

Jim Montgomery, the founder of a church planting movement called DAWN, told about a meeting with Donald McGavran, the founder of the church growth movement. Montgomery writes:

During the last months of Mary McGavran’s illness, my wife Lyn would frequently spend time with her. Donald McGavran would be there, too, disregarding his own painful cancer while taking care of his beloved Mary. Lyn said to Donald McGavran, “You can be sure Jim and I will continue our commitment to church growth after you’re gone,’ McGavran snapped back, ‘Don’t call it church growth anymore, call it church multiplication! The only way we will get the job of the Great Commission done is to plant a church in every community in the world (note 1)

Somewhere along the way, the church growth movement became associated with growing one church as large as possible. Donald McGavran perceived that problem and gave church growth a richer meaning: church multiplication.

Church multiplication is biblical. Jesus Christ Himself revealed a multiplication strategy when He raised up men and women who were willing to scatter and spread the seeds of faith all over the Roman Empire. They were willing to die for their beliefs in the face of incredible odds. These Christ followers planted churches to make new disciples and spread the faith.

To plant a church in every nation of the world requires a simple, reproducible strategy. It’s not about growing a few churches larger and larger. Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, in their book The Starfish and the Spider, point out that growing companies have a simple strategy that possesses the DNA of reproduction. If you cut off a starfish’s leg, it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Decentralized, simple church planting operates like the starfish. It can grow and multiply any place in the world. It’s not dependent on councils, committees, buildings, or money. Simple church planting offers the exciting possibility of new churches springing up everywhere. And indeed this is exactly what’s happening all over the world.

In North America, there’s been a flood of books promoting a simple understanding of the church of Jesus Christ. Neil Cole’s book, Organic Church; George Barna’s Revolution; and Thom Rainer’s Simple Church all point to a yearning in the church today for simple structures that multiply. The question that various authors are trying to answer is, “How can we have a church planting movement in the twenty-first century?”

Church planting has been my life for the last twenty-five years. I started a church in downtown Long Beach, California from my home in 1983. In 1984, I listened to David Cho speak at Fuller Seminary. I was so impressed that I bought both his entire tape series and his new book and began to teach my leaders about the home group system. The church did grow and continues its ministry in downtown Long Beach to this day; as I look back, however, I now realize that God was primarily teaching me about simpler, more reproducible church planting strategies.

In 1994, four years into my first term as a missionary in Ecuador, we planted a church in Quito, Ecuador (along with a national lead pastor and another missionary couple). We took 150 people from the mother church, along with ten home groups. The church grew quickly and within six years had 280 cells and 1300 worshippers. My main role was guiding the small group infrastructure.

In September 2003, as a family we started a church in my home in Moreno Valley, CA called Wellspring. We multiplied the first home group many times and eventually gathered those groups together for celebration. I was the lead pastor for the first four and a half years. In

June 2008, I became the church planting pastor of Wellspring, having turned the lead pastor role over to Eric Glover. Our goal from the beginning was to keep the church simple and reproducible—and for it to eventually become a church planting movement.

Church planting is not easy. Someone has said that it’s like drinking from a fire hose—fast and furious. Throughout this book I hope to share the pain, struggles, and breakthroughs of my own church planting journey. More importantly, we’ll look at biblical and practical principles that will help you, the church planter, lay a strong foundation to start simple, reproducible churches.

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Endnotes

1. Quoted in Bob Fitts Sr., Saturation Church Planting: Multiplying Congregations through House Churches, self published, 1993, p. 12.