Finding Organic Church

A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities

Frank Viola

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780781403528
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

From the bestselling author of Reimagining Church comes an essential guide that provides practical, effective tools for finding vibrant Christian communities.Driven by a passion for the body of Christ, Frank Viola has written some of today's most authoritative and celebrated works on the growing home, organic, and missional church movements. Now Viola shares practical keys to a healthy and successful church plant.Viola contends that many congregations today are struggling to survive, not because of bad planning, but poor planting. He presents an essential guide for starting and nourishing organic churches in any culture. Drawing from both Scripture and a wealth of experience, Viola offers real-world tools, insights, and practical suggestions so churches won't just grow, but thrive.

PART ONE

PLANTING THE SEED—BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES FOR CHURCH PLANTING

CHAPTER 1

THE DIVINE PATTERN OF CHURCH FORMATION

We must return to the beginning, to the “genesis” of the church, to see what He said and did then. It is there we find the highest expression of His will. Acts is the “genesis” of the church’s history, and the church in the time of Paul is the “genesis” of the Spirit’s work. Conditions in the church today are vastly different from what they were then, but these present conditions could never be our example, or our authoritative guide; we must return to the “beginning.” Only what God has set forth as our example in the beginning is the eternal will of God.

—Watchman Nee

Over the last fifty years, there have been nearly one hundred books written on the subject of church planting. Some of these books have the subject nailed down to a fine science. But what is surprising is that few of them discuss the ways in which churches were planted in the beginning.

To my mind, it’s a profound mistake to ignore what we find in the book of Acts concerning the manner in which Christian communities were birthed in the first century. As Watchman Nee writes,

Never let us regard these early chapters of Acts as inapplicable today. Like the book of Genesis, the Acts of the Apostles reveals the beginnings of God’s ways, and what He did then sets a pattern for His work always.[1]

The New Testament presents four ways in which churches were planted in century one. These ways weren’t cultural fads or the nifty ideas of intelligent mortals. I believe they originated with God Himself.

The Jerusalem Model

The first way occurred in the city of Jerusalem. Twelve apostles planted one church by the preaching of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:14—8:3). After a period of time, the church multiplied by “transplantation” or “migration.”[2]

Because this approach began first in Jerusalem, we’ll call it the Jerusalem Model. According to the New Testament narrative, after four years, the seeds of the Jerusalem church were scattered and transplanted all throughout Palestine.[3] Because of persecution, the believers in Jerusalem relocated to other locales, shared their faith, and churches sprang up as a result (Acts 8:1–8; 11:19–21). For a time, the twelve apostles remained in the city.[4]

One of the outstanding characteristics of the Jerusalem dispersion is that all the Christians in Jerusalem had experienced organic church life before they relocated to form new churches. In other words, they brought to other regions their experience of Christ and the church. This is a vital point as we will later see.

Significantly, the newly transplanted churches in Palestine received the help of the apostles—even though they were not directly planted by them. The Twelve circulated to the new church plants, watering the seeds and pulling up weeds (Acts 9:32—11:30). While the apostles helped establish and encourage these new churches, they did not live in them, nor did they control their affairs.

The Antioch Model

The classic way in which churches were planted in the first century began in Antioch of Syria. This model of church planting is most clearly seen in Acts 13:1—20:38. Here we discover that Paul and his coworkers were sent out from Antioch to establish churches in South Galatia, Greece, and Asia Minor. This way of planting churches can be called the Antioch Model. It can also be called “fresh seed planting.”[5]

(Incidentally, Paul’s journeys are best described as “church planting trips” or “apostolic journeys.” The popular term missionary journey was created in the nineteenth century and is a poor fit with the nature and goal of Paul’s ministry.[6] More on that later.)

The Antioch Model can be described thusly: An apostle walks bare-handed into a city to preach Jesus Christ. He does not preach the “Four Spiritual Laws,” the “Romans road,” the “plan of salvation,” or Christian theology. Nor does he preach himself (2 Cor. 4:5). Instead, he preaches a Person—Jesus Christ.[7]

New converts are made as a result of the preaching of Christ. Some of them may be religious people who have a relationship with God already (the Jews). Others have never met God (the Gentiles).

After leading people into a genuine encounter with God in Christ, the apostle shows the young church how to live by the indwelling life of its newly found Lord. He discloses to the believers the eternal purpose of God, and this becomes the church’s consuming vision. (Note that God’s eternal purpose—His grand mission—is God-centered, not human-centered.) In short, the apostle imparts into the spirits of the believing community the same “heavenly vision” that he himself has received (Acts 26:13; Gal. 1:15–16).

The apostle also passes on to the new church the apostolic tradition that originated with Jesus (1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6). He unfolds the unsearchable riches of Christ, His greatness, and His all-sufficiency to the hearts of God’s people (Eph. 3:8). This is what it means to build a church on Jesus Christ as the only foundation (Matt. 7:24ff.; 16:16–18; 1 Cor. 3:11; Eph. 2:20). Having the Lord Jesus Christ as the foundation means that the church learns to wholly depend upon, rest in, and live by Christ.

The gospel that the first-century apostles preached was one of Christ’s lordship and God’s pure and unfailing grace in Him. Paul of Tarsus, for example, did not forge people together with rules, religious duty, or legalism. Instead, he preached a gospel of grace so high and so powerful that it kicked down the gates of hell—setting the Jew free from religious duty and the Gentile free from immorality. His was a double-b...