The Missions Church

I got started as an independent Baptist in a missions church. The first Sunday I attended church, shortly after I became a believer, was the second Sunday of the church's existence. Cornerstone Baptist Church, all approximately ten people in it, was a missions church sent out of Bible Baptist Church in Selah, WA. I quickly learned that independent Baptists practice this principle of "churches make churches." In other words, the authority to begin a new church is not in a man, but in the local church. To preserve the integrity of doctrine, a church authorizes a man to

• Plant a church
• Evangelize a community and
• Baptize those who are converted
   

I also learned that most young preachers want to free their fledgling missions church from her sending authority as quickly as possible. I used to think that was because we were aggressive servants of the Lord. I have come to believe it is more because our sin nature does not like authority over us. Any authority; even the authority of a sending church. We view it as a sort of necessary evil. We would condemn a man for planting a church without this sending church, exclaiming his "church" as no real church at all. But we will shed our own selves from the shackles of this mother church at the first possible moment.

I propose that this needs to be addressed and changed. Some ministries would be better off as missions ministries, possibly indefinitely. Depending upon circumstances, it could be that they should be missions ministries permanently.

Consider what would qualify a church as indigenous:
Some would say it is the ability to support their own pastor.
I have seen this qualification cited a number of times but often neglected by men who will organize as independent living off of mission support from dozens of churches.

Some would say it is having a pastor and deacons.
But pastors sometimes move. Sometimes they move after only a brief time. Deacons, the biblical mandate for deacons only happens when church is of sufficient size that the pastor can care for the daily ministry by himself. Deacons are never seen in the Bible as leaders but as servants. The very fact that someone suggests a church isn't well organized until they have deacons suggests they have an unbiblical view of the office.

I have personally suggested that a church is not ready to be organized until it has ten faithful and tithing families.

I took the idea from the Jewish practice for their synagogues. However I have also seen this practice manipulated by getting friends and family to move to the town in order to get the ten and get out from under the sending church. (Frequently they still want money from the sending church, just no subjection to it.)

I want to suggest a different tact, I want to suggest that,

A church is ready to be indigenous when it is capable of keeping the course over generations.

• When the church has members who are longstanding citizens of the area in which the church is planted and who are convinced and committed to the doctrine and practice the church planter was sent to propagate,
• When there is a plan in place and agreed upon by members of that church to keep the church on course at the untimely demise of the current pastor (whether by death, departure or depravity),
• When those who are spokesmen in the church when the pastor isn't looking are as committed to the doctrines and practice of the sending church as the church planter claims to be

then the sending church may well consider organizing the missions church as an indigenous work.

By the way I would also propose that organization should always be upon the suggestion of the sending church and not the church planter.

The sin nature of the church planter will always be to get free of authority and that should never be the motive of independence.

This plan could only work with a shift in the current practice of using a sending church as a formality rather than a functioning relationship. The sending church ought not to be a preacher's friend from Bible College days or some big and well known church in the fellowship, but a vital part of the church planter's spiritual life, the best case scenario would be the church where he was saved and baptized and brought up in the faith.

I know there are problems with this plan too; many of them the result of pastors of potential sending churches not being stable enough themselves to stay in one place and be mentors to younger men in the faith. However we would be stepping in the right direction if we began addressing these subjects with both the young would be church planter and the more mature potential sending church pastor.

Only Church

I have a friend who is struggling in his work today and it is because, though his work is a ministry, it is a ministry that is necessarily outside of a local church and thus requires an organization other than a local church in which to function. Such organizations exist and in some cases, with good reason and I believe a degree of justification:

• Many missions fields are closed to those who are not a part of an agency
• Colleges, in order to provide a well rounded education, need teachers whose experience is beyond one local church (even those churches who have college ministries use pastors from other churches or at the very least, recruit students from other churches)
• Preachers need some means of fellowship among each other for encouragement, support and perhaps a work larger than themselves

But here is the problem and here is where my friend's trouble comes in, invariably these non church organizations begin applying Biblical mandates that have only Scriptural authority to the church upon those who are a part of their organization. They assume that what is true for the church is true for their organization too. They begin thinking of themselves as God thinks of His church. They begin making expectations of those who are in their organization that only their local church ought to expect.

And very frequently (and I think the worse thing about them is that ) these expectations create a conflict for their associates between their local church and the organization. The organization demands loyalty to it even above their local church. The non church organization begins to, in effect, usurp authority over that person's local church.

I do not believe the problem is answered in those ministries that are under the authority of a local church large enough to house a nationwide or worldwide effort because in every case, those ministries usurp authority over those smaller churches that cooperate with them, in effect creating something worse than a para church organization; an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The answer is a call to arms. the answer is a reminder that we are soldiers and our enemy is our own flesh. The answer is to constantly and continually mortify the tendency of self to demand loyalty to anything other than that thing God has created, which is the independent, local (and I am convinced) Baptist Church.

To expect and demand a Christian's loyalty to anything other is to pressure them into idolatry.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields