Church Plant­ing Reflections

by Pastor-Missionary David Cox
Pas­tor of Fun­da­men­tal Bap­tist Church
Mex­ico City, Mexico

Sec­tion: Main Issues. Sec­tions: Main Issues, Goals, Prob­lems, Hot Issues, Pastor.

This sec­tion is about the prin­ci­ple issues in plant­ing a local New Tes­ta­ment church. These are the issues that make or break a church. Every church no mat­ter under what­ever sit­u­a­tion it finds itself MUST con­tend with these issues or find itself find­ing seri­ous prob­lems that will never be resolved with return­ing to these fun­da­men­tal dynam­ics of a church.

Main Issues

1. Get­ting Peo­ple Really Saved. (05/20/2005)
2. Get­ting Peo­ple to Faith­fully Come, Inte­grate, and Par­tic­i­pate. (08/30/2006)
3. Get­ting Peo­ple to Sac­ri­fice. (under con­struc­tion)
4. Get­ting Peo­ple to Under­stand the Bible and Study the Bible (08/30/2006)
5. Get­ting Peo­ple to Love one another. (08/02/2007)
6. Get­ting Peo­ple to Think and Be Evan­ge­lis­tic. (under con­struc­tion)
7. Get­ting Peo­ple to Develop a World Mis­sions View. (under con­struc­tion)
8. Get­ting a Church to Grow
9. The most impor­tant pri­or­i­ties and emphases (under con­struc­tion) <- work­ing on this now
10. Churches look­ing for a new pastor

Sec­tion: Goals. Sec­tions: Main Issues, Goals, Prob­lems, Hot Issues, Pastor.

This sec­tion is about the goals of churches, and specif­i­cally church plants. There is no dif­fer­ence between a church and a church plant in my mind. What starts a church is the same issues, forces, and fac­tors that keep a good church work­ing right. Every church no mat­ter under what­ever sit­u­a­tion it finds itself MUST con­tend with these goals also. Some churches have erred from the faith on some of these goals, and they have dis­tinct prob­lems because of this.

Goals

1. What is the Work of God? (07/11/05)
2. Bod­ies, Build­ings, and Bucks, or Focus­ing on Faith­ful­ness and Ser­vice. (under con­struc­tion)
3. Size Mat­ters, but not in the way you think. (under con­struc­tion)
4. Meth­ods Mat­ter, Doing God’s work in God’s way. (under con­struc­tion)
Problems-11 Con­sol­i­da­tion ver­sus inde­pen­dence (07/04/05)
Problems-12 Why we refuse to charge for sal­va­tion and Chris­t­ian min­istry (07/04/05)
Issues-11 Where should our mis­sion dol­lars go to? (07/04/05)
5. Indige­nous Char­ac­ter of the New Tes­ta­ment Church. (under con­struc­tion)
6. Mak­ing of a man of God. (under con­struc­tion)
7. Dis­cern­ing between a good (bib­li­cal) and bad church
What are the Marks of a Bib­li­cal Church? (under con­struc­tion)
What are the Marks of an Unbib­li­cal Church?
Get­ting out of a Bad Church
Before Join­ing a Church
8. What is the min­istry of over­sight? (under con­struc­tion)
9. Church Growth and Attri­tion (05/09/08) NEW
10. Devel­op­ing Spir­i­tu­ally Mature Chris­tians (Chris­t­ian Per­fec­tion) (09/03/07)

Sec­tion: Secrets of Real Salvation.

It seems that most Chris­tians and pas­tors under­stand the basics of sal­va­tion, or they would not be even saved. But as I study the Scrip­tures, I find that there are dis­turb­ing pas­sages that make me really think about whether I per­son­ally have fully grasp the “bare essen­tially” to really be saved. This sec­tion goes through these issues which have verses link­ing them as essen­tial to sal­va­tion. While we can­not “add to sal­va­tion” to make some work or show a require­ment for sal­va­tion, appar­ently God sees true sal­va­tion as encom­pass­ing a whole lot of things. This sec­tion tries to make sense of these things, help­ing us as pas­tors under­stand why some really good “Chris­tians” turn from God and fol­low the devil. The rea­son being some­thing we left off in the essen­tial teach­ing and con­cepts of sal­va­tion. Once a pas­tor under­stands how these issues are at the heart of the plan of sal­va­tion, it will help him deal with them in his peo­ple through teach­ing, coun­sel­ing, and sermons.

1. Sal­va­tion by Grace through Faith, and not of Works. PLEASE READ THIS ONE FIRST!!!!
2. Repen­tance: Our Dis­po­si­tion towards Sin.
3. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Christ: No Shame towards our Sav­ior.
4. Suf­fer­ing as a Nec­es­sary Part of Sal­va­tion.
5. Incor­po­ra­tion into the Body of Christ: Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Com­mu­nity of Faith.
6. Love, Lived as Received.
7. The Impor­tance of For­give­ness in the Christian’s Make-up
8. Love the Truth: Our Dis­po­si­tion towards Truth and against Error.
9. Renounc­ing Pos­ses­sions and Riches as the Idol and Goal of our Lives.
10. Spir­i­tual Fruit as a Neces­sity for Sal­va­tion.
11. Holi­ness as the Evi­dence of Salvation.

Sec­tion: Prob­lems. Sec­tions: Main Issues, Goals, Prob­lems, Hot Issues, Pastor.

Here we deal with spe­cific prob­lems that seem to plague churches. These are not uni­ver­sal issues like the above two sec­tions. Rather these are things that one church may have prob­lems with at one time in their his­tory, and later have no prob­lem with them, or they may seem to never have prob­lems with these things. In any sit­u­a­tion, the smart pas­tor will address these prob­lems any­way so as to keep his church “healthy”, and keep these “dis­eases” out of his people’s lives, and out of his church.

Prob­lems

1. Deal­ing with Con­flict: Within the Indi­vid­ual Fam­i­lies. (under con­struc­tion)
2. Deal­ing with Con­flict: Within the Mem­ber­ship. (under con­struc­tion)
3. Deal­ing with Con­flict: Between the Mem­ber­ship and the Lead­er­ship. (under con­struc­tion)
4. Sin and Church Dis­ci­pline. (under con­struc­tion)
5. Iden­ti­fy­ing and Reject­ing Cul­tic Activ­ity within the Local Church. (under con­struc­tion)
6. Iden­ti­fy­ing and Remov­ing the False Prophet. (under con­struc­tion)
7. Iden­ti­fy­ing and Cor­rect­ing the False Doc­trine. (under con­struc­tion)
8. Lay­ing the Ground Rules: Sound Prin­ci­ples of Hermeneu­tics and Inter­pre­ta­tion. (under con­struc­tion)
9. Homilet­ics: Deal­ing with Preach­ers who can­not Preach. (under con­struc­tion)
10. For those who reject the Local Church (05/31/2005)
11. Con­sol­i­da­tion ver­sus Inde­pen­dence (07/04/05)
12. Why we refuse to charge for sal­va­tion and Chris­t­ian min­istry (07/04/05)
13. What is NOT a Church? (under con­struc­tion) <- work­ing on this now
14. Uni­ver­sal Church Ver­sus Local Church (07/11/05)
15. My Views towards Spe­cific Chris­t­ian Min­istries (07/11/05)
16. Ques­tions for Fund Rais­ers when they come knock­ing (under con­struc­tion) <- par­tial work­ing on this now
17. Deal­ing with Excuses Peo­ple Give for not Com­ing to Church (under con­struc­tion) <- par­tial work­ing on this now
18. Deal­ing with Con­flict: Helper Experts that Come to Cor­rect (09/03/07) NEW
19. Chris­t­ian Can­ni­bal­ism: Ten­dency to auto-destruction

Sec­tion: Hot Issues. Sec­tions: Main Issues, Goals, Prob­lems, Hot Issues, Pastor.

In this sec­tion I expand upon the prob­lems above. Some prob­lems come, we deal with them, and go on with life (whether we treated the prob­lem cor­rectly or not). But these are some land mines that when they go off, the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem is more than nor­mal. Life will never be the same after these prob­lems if they are not answered bib­li­cally. The entire sub­se­quent life and his­tory of the church will be ill affected if these issues are not answered, dealt with, and a bib­li­cal posi­tion found and imposed on the church. These are cross roads that a wrong choice leads us to destruc­tion, a dead end street, or seri­ous prob­lems that destroy our stand­ing before God.

Hot Issues

1. Refus­ing to rec­og­nize the Author­ity of Scrip­ture. (under con­struc­tion)
2. Con­fu­sion and Prob­lems with Bible Ver­sions. (under con­struc­tion)
3. Rejec­tion of Prin­ci­ples of Holi­ness and Sep­a­ra­tion. (under con­struc­tion)
4. Refusal of Accept­ing God’s Pat­tern of the Local Church as the Method of God. (under con­struc­tion)
5. Deal­ing with Num­ber Coun­ters and Spir­i­tual Pride. (under con­struc­tion)
6. Deal­ing with Empire Builders, Influ­ence Ped­dlers, and Spir­i­tual Pride. (under con­struc­tion)
7. Calvin­ism and death of mis­sion­ary zeal. (under con­struc­tion)
8. Women Preach­ers and Lead­ers. (under con­struc­tion)
9. Tongues Speak­ing. (09/05/07) NEW
10. Bap­tism of the Holy Spirit (under con­struc­tion)
11. Pros­per­ity Gospel (Health and Wealth Gospel). (under con­struc­tion)
12. Where should Mis­sion Dol­lars go to? (07/04/05)
13. Rec­og­niz­ing the Mixed (Wheat-Tare) Nature of the Church and Deal­ing with it (07/12/05)
14. Is Church Mem­ber­ship Nec­es­sary? (under con­struc­tion)
15. Home Bible Stud­ies (par­tially com­plete) NEW
16. Mod­ern Youth Min­istries (under con­struc­tion)
17. Pas­toral Coun­sel­ing — How to Do it Right (under con­struc­tion)
18. Min­is­te­r­ial Stress and Burnout (deal­ing with stress and burnout)

Addi­tional Stud­ies and Help Pages

DCox — Time­line of Tongues (under con­struc­tion)
DCox — Kun­dalini & Tongues (09/05/07) NEW

The above are links to stud­ies on each topic. Below is a gen­eral introduction.

What are we doing?

First our pri­or­ity is to do the work of God. When we begin to real­ize all the garbage and junk that peo­ple are doing today in the name of “min­istry” or “God’s work”, it should dis­gust the true believer. There is some­thing wrong out there, and many times this same thing is wrong in our churches. With­out a recog­ni­tion of some­thing being wrong and out of place, we will never fix it.

How do we fix it?

Every­body has a new idea, a new method, a new pro­gram. We need no more of these. These things are mostly what is wrong with Chris­tian­ity today, not what is right with it. Very sim­ply, the only way to fix what is wrong is to return to God. We must under­stand clearly what God has said (and has not said) and we must focus on obey­ing explic­itly what God has com­manded us, and doing it exactly how God has com­manded us to do it.

There are two key points here that we must posit and always uphold. (1) The only way to change any­thing is through spir­i­tual bat­tle with God’s word. (2) The pas­tor is respon­si­ble to fix what­ever is wrong in his church (Hebrews 13:17).

Pas­tor to pas­tors (from a pastor’s heart to those in the ministry)

Sec­tion: Churches look­ing for a new pastor

1. Pre­lim­i­nar­ies: Why there is no pas­tor? Why no bless­ing? Prob­lems?
2. What type of church gov­ern­ment is bib­li­cal? Where does the pas­tor “fit in”?
3. What is the church’s prin­ci­pal goal, pri­or­ity, and objec­tive?
4. What is the pastor’s job?
5. What are the require­ments for pas­tor?
6. Form­ing a Pul­pit Com­mit­tee. Guide­lines and Helps.
7. Can­di­date ques­tion­naires, inter­views, pre­sen­ta­tions, and hos­pi­tal­ity.
8. Remu­ner­a­tion of the pas­tor.
9. Lim­its, free­doms, oblig­a­tions, and pastor-church rela­tion­ships.
10. Des­ti­tu­tion of Pas­tors.
11. An Alter­na­tive Bib­li­cal Plan.

Addi­tional Stud­ies on Pastor-Churches

DCox — Bib­li­cal Proof for the Office and Min­istry of Pas­tor (Oct 17, 2007)