"The pattern we see in the book of Acts for church planting is, to my knowledge, never followed anywhere"

Don,

Because of the variety of circumstances and challenges, I do see a need for flexibility. I support several men in Canada who appear to be missionary pastors. They are good and faithful men and have built conservative, separatist, Baptist works. Some have become self-supported churches who now pay their pastor’s salary. Others have not had that level of success. I have not dropped the others and don’t plan to. Nevertheless, I think a church’s first obligiation is to take care of their pastor before they give money to take care of other churches. Canada, though socialist, is not a third world country. If a missionary pastor in Canada becomes the long term pastor of a church and can raise his own support from the church he is pastoring, then that frees up missionary dollars to help new missionaries. In some areas of Canada that may not be possible just as it is difficult for an American church planter to plant a sefl-sustaining work in Utah. I have been supporting Matt Ortega in Utah for many years. He works very, very hard to build a self-sustaining work. I am sad that he was cut off by some supporting churches after five years. Utah is not Michigan. Any pastor with common sense knows that. It is not a one size fits all proposition.

[Mike Harding] In some areas of Canada that may not be possible just as it is difficult for an American church planter to plant a sefl-sustaining work in Utah. I have been supporting Matt Ortega in Utah for many years. He works very, very hard to build a self-sustaining work. I am sad that he was cut off by some supporting churches after five years. Utah is not Michigan. Any pastor with common sense knows that. It is not a one size fits all proposition.

I agree, and that, in brief, is the point I was making in the post. Each situation needs to be examined on a case by case basis.

I can speak from the perspective of one who was raised in “mormon” country, small(ish) tows (about 4000-10000) and has taken over the pastoral leadership in what was once a missionary church, but is now self-supporting. I have known both sides of the issue and it is refreshing to read Dr. Doran’s assessment. BTW, we greatly enjoyed having Dr. Doran out at a conference we hosted about 3 years ago. Don is obviously correct as well as others that there is no one size fits all approach. I followed in the footsteps of 4 church planters and “missionary pastors” who all devoted time to the church I am currently pastoring, but I did not take over after the church was self-supporting. I can tell you that those men were faithful men who wanted the church to become self-supporting, but saw the culture as being the biggest battle. Mormons who get saved rebel against the financial abuses of their former religion and tend to throw the baby out with the bath water and want nothing to do with “tithing” or giving. It takes a long time for them to understand that what they were taught was a perverted form of a Biblical principle. And they must learn it themselves through principled teaching, not campaigns and fund-drives, and stewardship Sundays and so on. Western and especially ex-mormon mentality needs to have the Biblical principle taught, re-taught, applied, retaught, exemplified, and then they will consider it for a few more years. It seems like church-membership is another one of these things that takes a long time and it is not coincidental that those two issues are used as control tactics heavily in the mormon sub-culture. But I have observed IMHO what Dr. Doran is alluding to. Because it is difficult, it easily becomes something to neglect in teaching. It wasn’t until some godly men who had been properly trained and discipled stood up and publicly declared that they believed the church was being disobedient until they supported their pastor. That was some tense times, but God’s people responded to the challenge and we became self-supporting. (not necessarily always comfortable by any stretch). It is interesting that when the church took that step of obedience (and it was by faith), God seemed to begin to bless more financially the church. For the first time in a long time, we have been functioning in the black and I believe that is a result of God’s people being obedient to Scripture.

I whole-heartedly agree with Dr. Doran’s blog post and believe that we need to be challenged with this instead of thinking always, “It won’t work for us.” We ought to shoot for self-support and independent status quickly as well as prudently. His point concerning not training up elders is spot on. I grew up out here in the West and until recently, I cannot remember much emphasis on training western young men to be the pastors. I remember getting the idea that if we were to ever grow that we would need someone to come help us. I reject that and while I am grateful for eastern brothers or southern brothers who sacrifice themselves to minister out west. Unless we are concerned about training up young men from our own sub-culture, we will pass into obscurity. The focus is indeed changing and probably needs more change from being outward focused seeking to find people to come, to being inward focused and working with those whom God has given us.

BTW, I am grateful that Matt Ortega has moved to Utah and count him as a fellow-laborer and brother in the ministry here, but even his situation is quite different. He ministers about 40 minutes south of us, and the sub-culture there is as different as night and day from our subculture just a little ways north. The closer you get to Salt Lake, the more liberal, progressive, and urban you become. The closer to Provo (which is the urban area Matt ministers in) you get, the more self-righteous, religious, mormonic, (I think I made that word up), and belligerent to the Gospel the subculture becomes. So even in Utah, there is a recognition that one size does not fit all.

My two cents from a anecdotal perspective.

PS One thing I love about Dr D. is that he challenges me to think Biblically, how can I not love that.

[Matthew J] Because it is difficult, it easily becomes something to neglect in teaching.

I would say that is the concern Dave is raising by his initial post. We need to be diligent in teaching Christian responsibility if we hope to make disciples. If we get into a rut because “that’s just the way it is out here” and sort of coast along, we’ve neglected our responsibility.

[Matthew J] I remember getting the idea that if we were to ever grow that we would need someone to come help us. I reject that and while I am grateful for eastern brothers or southern brothers who sacrifice themselves to minister out west. Unless we are concerned about training up young men from our own sub-culture, we will pass into obscurity.

That’s what I refer to as the ‘welfare mentality’ - an expectation or feeling of entitlement that ‘someone else’ needs to help us.

[Matthew J] My two cents from a anecdotal perspective.

I appreciate your testimony. I have preached in a lot of churches in Utah on deputation and have a real affinity for the challenges you face. I don’t think I ever made it to your church, but I have been up and down I-15 a few times.

I think both Dave and Don have valid points and as has been pointed out there is no one-size-fits-all model. Where we are church planting in Philly there are several other church plants that have been here for over five years and are not self-supporting, that is, there are funds coming in from the outside. Some of this is economic. Some of it is due to the paucity of believers left in many neighborhoods to constitute a solid core. The church plants that become self-sustaining earlier often have been replants with some history, contacts, and real estate. The church plants that I know which have been around for 5-10 years still rent space.

In sending church planters overseas the “one pastor who has to be full-time supported model” will continue to hinder church planting. The bar is set too high – salary, building, etc. to have a national pastor. Here is where plurality of elders model rather than single pastor model should be examined. In my experience an even bigger problem is the “we will start our own church model regardless of who is at work here because they are not as sound and separated as us.”

For several decades now I have seen men try to plant churches in other countries while ignoring what God was doing through others. A succession of missionary pastors follow, many who are not gifted for church planting, had no to little experience or training in church planting, and have little to no expectancy of having anyone else but another missionary follow them.

In Germany Baptist Mid-Missions missionaries established three churches that in the last six years have become fully indigenous. One has a full-time supported pastor. The other two have part-time supported pastors. The one with a full time pastor reached an average attendance of over 100 before calling their pastor. In W. Europe, the people are pretty wealthy. A church of over 100 can handle a full-time pastor, ragardless of how many elders are present. The average time, starting from scratch to becoming totally indigenous is ca. 15 years. In other Euorpean countries over the past 50 years, BMM missionaries have done the same thing repeatedly.

You have to have a clear goal and a good plan of how to make the church totally indigenous before the church plant begins. You have to be capable of training church leaders, or at least someone in the misssion team has to have that ability.

There are, of course lots of missionaries who, like you mentioned don’t really have a clear idea of how to get to the goal. When they run out of ideas, they convince someone else to take their place. There are also groups that enter a field in Europe with huge goals and a sure-fire method to establish churches that no one has ever tried before. Both groups usually wind up with about the same results.

my Bible college years, I thought I was going to take the conventional pastoral route. Though until my junior year, I was unsure whither I was going to be a missionary to the British Isles or have a Stateside ministry. The one goal I did have was if I went overseas my job was to work myself out of a job.

I have led in the planting of two churches here in New York State. A small group of 22 people were able to give enough to allow me to have an extremely modest imcome when we started. It was well below the poverty level. I did not seek financial support and God met our needs.

I have noticed this - when a missionary, missionary pastor, evangelist, church planter, college president, and other ministry leaders spend a lot of time asking for money, they are usually seeking for a lifestyle that is way beyond anything my wife and I have ever enjoyed. It is also a lifestyle that most pastors we know do not seek after.

I have noticed this - when a missionary, missionary pastor, evangelist, church planter, college president, and other ministry leaders spend a lot of time asking for money, they are usually seeking for a lifestyle that is way beyond anything my wife and I have ever enjoyed. It is also a lifestyle that most pastors we know do not seek after.

I’ve also found this to be true…people who are serious about planting a church usually aren’t seriously concerned with getting to a certain amount of support…they’re usually trying some kind of tentmaking approach and fundraising on the side. It’s another reason why I tend to support tentmaking ministers far more than professional men who are spending a massive amount of time fundraising in order to plant a church in the next five years or so, and it’s part of the reason why I’ve so frustrated with the current deputation system.

The problem, of course, is that some families NEED to have that certain level of support - for example, if the kids have food allergies or something and they can’t eat whatever is on sale that week. That’s where it can get dicey with discerning who is needy and who is just looking to get some cash so they can have nicer clothes.

At the end of the day, Paul’s instruction to avoid ordaining men who have a love of money is wise for so many reasons…