Too often, we see the church as an end in itself rather than a means to a Kingdom end.

Reproducing Churches Without Reproducing Believers

by Tim Keener

This may not come as a surprise to someone with more horticultural experience than I, but recently I discovered an interesting fact about kiwi plants. Kiwi plants are either male or female, and it requires two plants to produce fruit, a male and a female. Of course, you can grow a single kiwi vine for landscaping or foliage, but without a mate, it is simply sterile.

Like planting kiwis, we can also plant individual churches without them necessarily being reproductive. As one Spanish pastor recently told me while sitting in a café in Madrid, “We cannot expect our churches to reproduce if believers are not reproducing themselves.”

How do we plant sterile churches? By missing the essential difference between growth and reproduction. We can get caught up growing in many ways—attendance, giving, new programs, and even new churches being planted. Sadly, we can do it all without reaching unbelievers (reaching mainly the churched), without equipping them to reproduce (the inability to share and argue their faith), and without giving churches the structure they need to reproduce (by reinforcing patterns of behavior that are not conducive to reproduction).

But, why would we plant sterile churches? Too often, we see the church to be more of an end in itself rather than a means to a Kingdom end. This frequently involves being preoccupied with traditions and forms that we culturally identify as “church,” and yet losing focus on the function of the church, which is to be a redemptive vehicle of change in the world.

When we see the church as a part of a larger Kingdom picture, I believe it changes the way we do church planting. The priority of expanding the Kingdom and sharing the gospel message naturally steers us, and the church is poised for reproduction—of both believers and of communities of faith.

 

About the Writer: Tim Keener recently became the regional director for Free Will Baptist Missions in Europe. To read more about Free Will Baptist Missions, visit www.fwbgo.com.