More than 600 pastors, evangelists, and lay persons attended SEEDS 2001, A Church Planting Conference, held at Andrews University last July. The delegates came from across North America and 12 other countries. They came to study, pray, and share how to "Plant a Church . . . Reap a Harvest." The conference featured inspiring devotionals, challenging sermons, in-depth analysis, and some 170 break-out seminars in English and Spanish led by 80 presenters, them selves church planters, specialists in various cultural missions, evangelists or church administrators.
In the "re:church" module, participants learned ways to reach people of today's pluralistic, nonauthoritarian, secular, experience-oriented society. In groups they discussed practical ways to initiate conversation, build relationships, and develop interest. Then they went out to interact with people in the community, and returned to tell what they had discovered during these excursions.
Developing a church planting movement, as envisioned by SEEDS, requires a strong infrastructure with several basic components:
- An active, ministering laity, equipped and empowered by the pastors
- A continued emphasis on growing healthy churches, both church plants and mother churches
- A belief that healthy churches reproduce themselves (A church plant is not the end of a process, but it must grow, mature, and then plant another church.)
- A contextual understanding involving worldview-based surrounding cultures, languages, nationalities, and age groups
- A commitment to the mission— not our mission, but God's mission—to reach lost people and draw them to Him. Churches are not planted just to increase our domain, tithe base, or power. They are planted to increase God's kingdom!
SEEDS does not advocate a particular style of church, nor does it have a single target audience. It is as broad as the assignments God gives to His modern-day disciples. Church plants can be conventional or cell churches; traditional, liturgical, or contemporary churches; ethnic, multi-cultural, or cross-culturally ministering churches . . . each kind of church has its value and place in the ministry line-up.
Church plants are not simply buildings to house people. Church plants are people gathering to worship God, and moving into a community and work place to share the gospel. Church plants can begin with a family unit, a Bible study series, a small group or a single cell... even a lunch group at work or a women's baby-sitting group. A church plant can also begin with a mother church or district sending out a core group, or with a series of evangelistic meetings sponsored by a group of churches for the purpose of developing a new church.
Is SEEDS a kind of pastor's meeting? Yes ... and No. It's a ministers' meeting that includes all of us! In fact, SEEDS is a meeting for ministry teams—pastors, their lay leaders, and ministry coordinators—to learn, dream, and develop plans. It is a place for conference presidents and their teams to network with their counterparts and plan strategies that will support and encourage these people who will return home full of enthusiasm.
Is church planting intended to replace public evangelistic efforts? Definitely not! Instead, church planting re-joins the evangelistic team . . . the lifestyle, relationship building, and need-oriented evangelism. It connects with educational, literature, visitation, and Bible work evangelism, including public seminars and preaching evangelism. Church planting is a vehicle to bring the other methods of evangelism to an unentered city or people group.
So what is the key to success in church planting? Don Schneider, North American Division President, said it in his keynote address: "Whatever challenge we are facing in whatever mission God has given us, we are not big enough to meet it. But God can handle it and bring victory and success ... and He will, if we will depend on Him."
