Beliefs Shaping Ministry

  1. Church planters must pray for God’s direction before every significant decision in life.  They must live in such intimate relationship with God that he influences who they are and how they relate to others.  By gazing at God’s glory, they are transformed into his nature (2 Cor. 3:18).
  2. Church planters who have been spiritually transformed into the image of God must carry out God’s ministry by emulating the incarnational ministry of Christ. 
  3. Church planters must plant missional churches, that is, those formed by the calling and sending of God and reflecting the redemptive reign of God in Christ.  The goal is not a crowd of spectators but a community of God.  This community is on a pilgrimage helping each other to continue as Christ's disciples and encouraging others to join them on the journey to heaven.
  4. Church planters must understand that they minister as fragile "jars of clay" formed by God for his purposes (2 Cor. 4:7). They cannot, as human instruments, create or establish the kingdom of God by their own power or strength.  They can only receive the kingdom, enter into it, and participate in it.   These terminologies illustrate the relationship between almighty, holy God and his finite, earthly emissaries.
  5. Church planters must create nurturing models to equip new Christians in their emerging fellowships to use their spiritual giftedness to minister within the body of Christ.  This equipping of God’s people for works of ministry builds up the body of Christ (Eph. 4:12).  
  6. Church planters must equip disciples to minister as spiritual friends among searchers and skeptics.  These friendships are reciprocal.  Contemporary evangelists will learn divine understandings from spiritual friendships as Peter learned from teaching Cornelius and his household.
  7. Church planters must learn that grace is received to be given. Christians have been saved to bring salvation to others.
  8. Church planters must aim not to merely plant a church but to develop a church multiplication movement in which churches plant churches who plant still more churches.