Steps to planting a church in Taiping
17/05/2010 9:00 am <>
Three key steps in planting a church are 1) Getting the gospel out to the unreached, 2) Bringing unbelievers to God's word 3) Giving new believers the chance to serve and grow. The results are in God's hands. These may seem fairly obvious but it is amazing how often one or more of these steps is neglected.
1) Getting the gospel out to the unreached: So much of what is labeled as evangelism is just an attempt to bring non-Christians into some sort of church meeting. Since last October the OMF team in Taiping has been taking seriously the great commission call to "GO" and every Sunday have been preaching evangelistic messages in the open-air in a Taiping park while inviting passers by to sit and drink tea. Mr Shi sat down every week to drink tea and chat and listen to the bible messages. Team members witnessed to him and prayed with him and recently he prayed to receive Christ as his Lord.
2) Bringing unbelievers to God's word: Some people will never volunteer to attend a group Bible study or sit through a long church service. How can they ever come to read God's word in the Bible? For some months Tim McCracken, a member of the Taiping team, has spent Saturday evenings at the home of Mr Tiu, chatting, eating snacks and each week looking closely at a small portion of God’s word. Recently Mr Tiu responded to one of the Bible Studies by saying he wanted to become a Christian.
3) Giving new believers a chance to serve and grow: So often Churches wait until a person has been a Christian for many years before involving them in ministry. Mr Chen was baptised just a few weeks ago but even before that he was showing signs of wanting to be involved in ministry. The problem was he had many strange ideas that he had picked up from interacting with Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses. In planning one of our Sunday outreaches the Taiping team leader, Robb Branch, challenged Mr Chen to give his testimony in the Park. The next Sunday he stood up in public to give his first ever open air talk.
The common factor with each of these men is that they would be very unlikely to hear about Christ or seek to study His word or serve Him in a traditional church. The willingness of the missionaries to go where they were, spend time to build relationships and challenge them was key. Ultimately though the fruit was brought about by God at work in each of their lives. Will these three men grow in Christ to become mature believers and potential church leaders? That again is in God's hands but pray for the Taiping team as they seek to reach out to many more unreached men and women in the Taiping area.
David Eastwood - Taichung
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