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The Baptist Faith & Message (pdf)
The Biblical Basis of Church Planting
Church planting was the primary method that the early church followed as it pursued the fulfillment of the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20). In Matthew 28, the church was charged to make disciples of all peoples, baptize them in His Name, and teach them. As Baptists, we believe these things should be done in the context of a local church. Following the pattern of Acts 1:8, the Bible records that the Apostles planted churches in Jerusalem (Acts 1-7), in Judea and Samaria (Acts 8-12), and in the rest of the world (Acts 13-28).
The church at Antioch (Acts 13:3) is our Biblical model for a church that witnessed to the world through the starting of new churches. This church sent out missionaries to plant churches and so it was able to expose the whole known world to the Gospel.
The Apostle Paul is our Biblical model for a church planting missionary. Everywhere Paul was led by the Spirit he planted churches, first among the Jews (Acts 13:5 & 14:1), and then also among the Gentiles (Acts 13:44-47). Paul’s practice was to evangelize lost people in a particular place, form a congregation, and then train indigenous leaders to future develop the new church (see Acts 14:21-23 and 2 Tim 2:2).
On Mars Hill (Acts 17:22) Paul also modeled the need to contextualize our evangelism so that we can reach “all peoples”. The kind of church that was needed to reach secular Greeks and Romans was very different than the kind needed to reach traditionalist Jews. In this way, Paul fulfilled Jesus’ words, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
