Church planting: is the old method best?

Church planting can sometimes seem like a relatively new phenomenon, but whether it is or not depends on what you mean by church planting. 

A good friend and mentor of mine – who has planted two churches in France – believes that when Paul instructed Timothy to ‘do the work of an evangelist’ (2 Tim. 4:5), he was instructing him to plant churches. To evangelise – to make disciples of all nations (Mat 28:19) – is to see churches started. Church planting, in this sense of the term, is as old as the early church.

In fact, throughout the centuries, something akin to what we understand as church planting has been the primary vehicle of Christian mission. For over a millennium prior to the Reformation, in order to extend the Christian faith into new places, the church had sent out and established monastic communities. These monastic communities were centres of discipleship that served as evangelistic bases (which, to me, sounds like a very good tagline for a contemporary church plant!), and they played a big part in Christianity extending throughout the UK and Ireland in the fifth century. Later, when the Reformation began to gather pace, the Reformers no longer had access to the central resources that enabled this monastic church-planting programme. Missiologists lament the effect this had on early Protestant mission.