Note: What follows is adapted from a paper submitted as part of my education under the Antioch School. The requirement for the paper was that I design "a set of guidelines for establishing local churches anywhere according to an advanced biblical understanding of Paul’s concept of establishing local churches, including instructions for 'house order' of local churches."
If our work is to be establishing churches, then we need to know how to establish churches in a way that is flexible enough to fit into contexts as widely different as first-century Jerusalem and modern New York, rigid enough to do the work Christ has intended for the church without straying from His intended model, and drawn from scripture as the normative expectations Christ and the apostles had for the church. The process we see Paul implement time and again essentially falls into three stages: assemble a body, impart solid teaching, and entrust to established leaders. This article will explore a definition and the necessary elements of each step.
We see more of this work in Acts than in Paul’s letters, largely because Paul was often writing letters to bodies he’d already assembled. There is limited exception to this, in that Paul occasionally gives instructions to his recipients on how to identify people who should not be in the body and thereby performs work related to, but not actually within, the assembly stage. Throughout Acts, however, we see the initial practice in more detail. Jesus assembles His followers and gives them instruction to wait as a body for the work He has for them to commence.(1) In response to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, those who believe are baptized into the body and begin sharing their lives with one another. Paul consistently goes to a gathering place (usually a synagogue), delivers the gospel message, and then sets apart those who believe into a new body.
Even when we see individuals become Christians, they do so in community. Cornelius and the Philippian jailer are both saved alongside their households, Apollos is familiar enough to the church of Ephesus after his conversion that they were willing to send a letter vouching for him when he traveled to Corinth in the very next verse. We tend to focus on Paul’s miraculous encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, but his conversion was not complete at that point; the Holy Spirit doesn’t descend on Paul, a repeated sign for the moment of true conversion in Acts, until Ananias comes to welcome Paul into the church body. There is, in fact, only one exception in all of Acts: the Ethiopian eunuch is not immediately brought into a local church body when he is baptized by Philip. Church history tells us that he brought the gospel back to his own country and a community of faith was immediately formed there, but we have no record of this in scripture. The oddity of this event is, itself, indicative of how the alternative is the accepted norm throughout scripture. I am of the belief that every valid(2) denomination and theological movement within Christianity is really good at highlighting at least one, but not more than a small handful, of truly important elements of the faith that other denominations or theological movements overlook or undervalue, and that we would benefit greatly by more deeply considering these pockets of truth we can learn best from outside our own traditions. Sometimes they become so absorbed by this truth that they let something else wither entirely or develop a wrong understanding of a related concept out of misplaced focus, but the foundation they are using for this is still worth understanding. This is one area that I would argue the Roman Catholic Church has us at a theological disadvantage: there really is no salvation outside of the church. The See has, in some times and in some ways, taken this to a questionable place, but the proper solution cannot be the rugged individualistic salvation we have accepted so long in Baptistic, Pentecostal, and other related environments. We are not, I would argue, saved as individuals; rather, we the church are saved together.(3) Upon adoption as children of God, we are brought into communion with the rest of His children. We are members of the body, indeed, we cannot be outside of the body of Christ without being apart from Christ. Salvation inherently gives us a body to which we belong, and our growth must happen within the context of that body. There are few places where this is more apparent than in a church plant. I have been a member of four church planting teams, one of which I led, and these have produced some of my closest relationships to date. The scope of the work, when faced with a small band of Christians, pushes people in a distinct way. I have heard much about how church planting work tests one’s faith and missional focus, quickly weeding out anyone not prepared for the work and any aspects of our lives that interfere with the work, and this is all true; but I have heard significantly less about how it connects the people involved. My wife and I have grown considerably in our relationship through the ups and downs of church planting. When we were working in Greenfield with one other couple, we became family. Our kids were constantly together and began to act like siblings, the mother of that family is still my wife’s best friend; a divorce and seven years later, and we make a trip to New Jersey every year to see her and her husband and the kids even when we don’t have the means to visit my biological family the next state over. We all grew together, we invested in one another, we hurt for one another, we rejoiced together, and although no lasting church was established in Greenfield from that work, I believe we have displayed the kingdom of God more accurately alongside them than we have in many churches with longstanding buildings and budgets. We have another family with a similar level of connection, and that grew out of working together on a church planting team in Fitchburg. The mistake we make too often is conflating the importance of unity with the styles we use in our gatherings. We are commanded not to forsake the assembly; we are nowhere commanded to sit facing a stage and listen to a half hour lecture. I don’t have much against our modern practice of gathered worship—other than the strict rigidity with which we practice it—but this structure is not essential and is, at times, detrimental to that which is essential. That is, getting everyone together at a specific time on Sunday morning, singing a set constant number of songs, praying at scheduled intervals, listening to a sermon, and receiving a benediction is not a bad model in and of itself, but our insistence on it as “what church looks like” diverts our attention from how the church is actually intended to function. It’s easy to view our unity as defined by how many of us are sitting in the same room at the same time hearing the same message, but that isn’t where the unity of the body is practiced, and having the room become too large makes it impossible to practice any real unity. The body, in order to look like the church as established by Christ, must be grounded on intimate relationship guided by solid teaching under the authority of established leaders. The guidelines for proper assembly, then, are that the body is gathered in an environment that facilitates and encourages intimate relationships, the body invests in the spiritual growth and practice of spiritual gifts by all members, the body puts structure as secondary to purpose, and the body is prepared to send out members to establish a new assembly before it grows too large to accomplish the previous guidelines. There are a few concrete ideas that arise from this—such as the need to have some offline connections and relationships and gatherings, the need to guide spiritual formation in the proper way of Christ, and the need to send out church plants rather than growing too large for deep community—but much of the practice of this will be contextual and must be flexible to be applied correctly in different environments and with different people. If the purpose of the church involves the healthy growth of Christ’s body, both by multiplication and by maturity, as this blog has argued it does, then the structures that accomplish that purpose must be curated to the place and time and people to which it ministers.(4) These guidelines direct the boundaries of that flexibility, but must remain broad.
The assembled body must be built upon and maintained by the truth of who Christ is and to what He has called us. The way we ensure this is through deep, consistent, and accurate teaching, delivered by some number of established leaders who are faithful to the truth of scripture. This teaching is broadly concerned with a right understanding of God, a right understanding of our relationship to God, and a right understanding of our relationships among ourselves.
A right understanding of God is the basis of all theology, and is concerned with the nature and works of God in all matters. Every other teaching flows from this; everything about the church is defined by who God is and what He has done and is actively doing and will yet do. Here is covered such topics as the nature of the Trinity,(5) the person of Christ, the work of salvation, and God’s ultimate victory at the end of the age. This topic is vast, and must be constantly revisited and expanded upon in order that its application in the other topics is held to the standard of truth. A right understanding of our relationship to God is focused on who God is to us and who we are to Him. This topic tells us about our need for salvation, how our salvation has changed our standing before God, and how we are to grow in the new life to which God has called us. Here we see how submission to God is imaged in our submission to church leadership and the submission of wives to husbands and children to parents, how the mission of Christ has been handed to the church and therefore what goals the church must seek to achieve, and what it means to become children of God and heirs of His promise, among others. This teaching must be delivered frequently to ensure the church is aligned with its role in God’s plan, but it must also be a source of guidance for all the church does as a body and how the church invests in individuals. The first topic tells us what God we serve; this topic tells us how we, as a body, best serve Him, and must be always on our mind and in our teaching to ensure we approach our mission properly.
A right understanding of our relationships among ourselves guides our understanding of life within the family of God. This topic is about how we engage with one another, what authority and submission look like in daily practice, and how to live out the love that Christ has poured out so lavishly on us. Here we get into the nuts and bolts of the house order, describing the terms of our submission to authority within the church and within the home, detailing the practice of the nested dualities I covered in a previous post, applying the calls in scripture to view others above ourselves and love our neighbors as ourselves. This teaching is almost always an application of one of the other topics, but is important and must be included whenever application is being delivered. Our assembled body must be guided on how to be an assembled body, and this topic concerns itself with that more than any other.
When I was planting in Greenfield, I mapped out a sermon series that lasted one year as our very first study. Essentially, it worked through the Old Testament and sought to understand its themes through the lens of Christ, beginning with creation and ending, at the beginning of Advent, with Christ as the culmination of all the other things we’d discussed. The aim of this study was multifaceted; it revealed how the work of God and the heart of Christ was present throughout all scripture, it focused our attention on Christ in all matters, and it trained us to see Christ as the focus of every story and every theme throughout the Old Testament. The idea was that new people coming into the church would learn who God is through His dealings with mankind, and established Christians would be reminded of the role of Christ in redemptive history and the application of the Bible’s lessons. That the church would begin rooted in this understanding and what it means for us. I was not able to finish the series before the church folded, but have kept the basic outline just in case I have opportunity to explore it again. Because this is the nature of the guidelines for imparting solid teaching; that established leaders point to God through His word to reveal His nature, call the body to live in light of our role in His purposes, and guide the body to daily lives reflecting the truth and glory of God among us. That teaching plan I started to put into practice was aimed at these very objectives, but obviously it is not the only way to apply these guidelines. The objective is simple: teach often, teach faithfully, and apply the teaching to every aspect of the life of the church and the lives of its members.
Paul, having bound a body together and delivered the word of God faithfully to them, identified those who were gifted and growing in maturity in such a way that they could be trusted to continue the work after he was gone. These were drawn from the body itself and placed into the role of leadership, held to a higher standard to ensure they were fit for the duty, and taught the functions of a leader to properly guide the body. These people were expected to teach faithfully, to protect the body from false teaching, to maintain the house order of the church body, to carry out the work of church discipline, to identify and train new leaders, and to send out parts of the body to establish new bodies as appropriate.
Paul details the means for selecting these leaders in his letters to Timothy and Titus, but their work is constantly visible in all his letters. The leaders were the ones expected to impart the teaching Paul was including in his letters, they were the ones being called to oversee any acts of discipline Paul called for, and they were responsible for the daily application of the principles Paul explained. Peter directly addressed his letters to the leaders themselves because of these responsibilities. In the house order, the leaders were those who held the honor of leading and directing the church, and the responsibility to do so in a manner that glorifies God and serves His purposes. The leaders are those who impart the teaching, who guard the body, who constantly refocus the body on Christ to ensure He is the foundation of the body’s work and unity. The guidelines, then, are that the church has leaders in place who have been properly identified by an established church body and trained in service to Christ, who maintain the standards of leadership described by Paul, who are treated as authoritative by the body, who are able to teach and willing to correct, and who are able and willing to identify and train new leaders. These leaders should be placed within the biblical duality of elders and deacons, with the office of elder reserved for men. There must be a plurality of leadership; one man’s mistakes cannot be given enough power to damn the mission of the entire body.
The guidelines which must shape all churches in all places and times, then, are the broad ideas illustrated through these areas of concern. That the church must be an assembled body living in deep relationship that glorifies God, taught faithfully on the nature of God and the work He is doing in and through that body, under the authority of established leaders who center the body on the truth of God and guard it against distraction and alternative purposes. Establishing a church is the process of putting all these guidelines into place and fulfilling them, leading to the spiritual maturity of the body and its members. Our flexibility within them is necessary to engage with where God has us and who He has put into the body, and we should try to mold our systems to our context rather than being ruled by the systems we’ve inherited. But these guidelines are to be respected both as a direction to aim and as boundaries to what we cannot do; the body of Christ can no more tolerate a lack of leadership or the presence of bad leadership than our mortal bodies can tolerate cancer. We can bend within the principles described by Paul, but cannot break or try to escape them.
Footnotes
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Note: The following is adapted from a paper I wrote as part of my education through the Antioch School. The objective of the assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed a biblical understanding of Paul’s definition of a local church, including how a gathering of believers becomes a local church." The title of ‘church’ is not a concept taken lightly by Paul, or for that matter by his student Luke in his description of church establishment in Acts. There are, in fact, only three ways in which either author ever uses the term we translate as ‘church’ to describe a body of believers as an institutional reality: conceptually, as the universal church, and as established local churches. Each of these three tell us something about the Pauline definition for the church, but for our purposes in this article the most attention will be paid to the third.
There are few instances of this usage, but it bears mention because of how it impacts our understanding of Paul’s view of local churches. Some key examples come from 1 Timothy, in which Paul uses some form of ἐκκλησία three times1, two of which are relevant here. These are 3:5 and 5:16, in which Paul is describing the behavior of individuals and how that behavior impacts a church, rather than highlighting a specific existing church. This is, after all, what a conceptual usage of ‘church’ means: that the author is using the term ‘church’ in reference to a theoretical church body that is being used as an example, rather than discussing an actual church that exists at the time of the writing. In the case of 1 Timothy, the theoretical church could best be described as the church that Timothy was actively establishing in Ephesus, a future restored state of the church in Ephesus which was, at that time, dealing with some significant theological and practical issues. But the point here is that, although the believers in Ephesus had already gone through the establishment process, they were now entertaining false theology and practices that necessitated a Pauline delegate to put them back on track and establish the proper order Paul had entrusted to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. In its present state, Paul never describes the body in Ephesus as a church in his letters to Timothy2; but this will be explored more later. Paul is using the term for a condition in which the church is operating well, but he isn’t using it for the body at that time. He has a goal in mind for Ephesus to reach, and it is the body having achieved that place that he refers to as a church. This indicates some awareness that a local body must be at a certain level of maturity, or at least have certain traits in place, in order to be properly called a church; but it is an incomplete argument if left to stand on this point alone.
The uses of ἐκκλησία in Ephesians, on the other hand, are exclusively about the church as a non-local body. He is describing the church as the general body of Christ in the world, and then applying that image to his expectations for the local church in Ephesus. In 1:22 and 5:23 the church is the body over which Christ is the head; in 3:10, 3:21, 5:24, and 5:32 the church is the display of Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world; and in 5:25, 5:27, and 5:29 the church is the body for which Christ gives of Himself. These uses do not show Paul directly defining the local church, but they do show him applying the expectations of the universal church to the local church. From these uses, then, we learn that Paul expected the local church to follow Christ as its head, display Christ’s wisdom, glory, and authority in the world, and to operate with the knowledge that Christ has purchased it with His blood. These are broad ideas, but the application of them defines the parameters for Paul’s expectation of local churches. A local church is not part of the universal church, and therefore not a church at all, if it doesn’t apply these broad principles to its structure and life.
As noted above concerning 1 Timothy, Paul avoids calling the church in Ephesus a church in the letter. He continues that trend throughout his letters; he tells Titus to “appoint elders in every city” in Titus 1:5 (NASB) rather than in every church, he never refers to the church in Rome as a church in their epistle but does refer to two other established churches (and, in Romans 16:23, probably the universal church) as such. As noted above, he never uses the term ‘church’ to describe the local church to which he is writing in Ephesians. But he does refer to other churches, such as those at Corinth, Colossae, Philippi, and Thessalonika, as churches within their epistles. Likewise, in Luke’s descriptions in Acts, a church is only ever called a church after it has been established. The closest thing to an exception in Acts is 14:23, when Luke suddenly switches from calling the bodies in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch (Pisidia) as ‘disciples’ to ‘churches’ in the same sentence in which he states that Paul had appointed elders there. This is the crux, then. Paul would leave cities prematurely for a small assortment of reasons, but he never leaves a church when he does so. He gathers disciples early, but only after ensuring they have the word and mission in hand and have elders over them does he call them a church. That is, there is a clear point at which a group of gathered believers transitions from being a collection of disciples to being a church, and that point always has certain traits in place. This runs the danger of being an argument from silence, however, so let’s shift gears and look at it from a different angle. This is, after all, the general idea Schaeffer is driving toward in “Form and Freedom in the Church” as presented in our reading. Schaeffer lists eight norms that must define a local church in order to be a church, and while he seems to argue for norms that are unnecessary within his list, the foundation of the list is solid: that there are criteria Paul used to determine the churchness of a body, if you will, and that we should be using the same criteria in our understanding of the church today. The points that Schaeffer hits on well cannot be adequately discussed without separating them from those he does not, so allow a brief aside for that division to be drawn. Schaeffer’s eight norms are that a church is made up of Christians, that they meet together in a special way on the first day of the week, that there are elders responsible for leading the church, that there are deacons responsible for the material aspects of the church, that the church takes discipline seriously, that there are specific qualifications for elders and deacons, that there is “a place for form on a wider basis than the local church,3” and that baptism and the Lord’s supper are practiced. We can see the validity of each of these by comparing them to the text and to the broad principles laid out in the discussion of the Universal Church above. That the church is composed of Christians is at best alluded to in scripture, and indeed Schaeffer himself does not point to any specific passage as making that point, but it is a clear requirement in light of the understanding that the church operates with Christ as the head and that the church is the body for which Christ died; that is, in order for the local church to meet those criteria inherited from the universal church, the members of the local church must be Christians. There is no such logical connection, however, between the universal church criteria and Schaeffer’s statement that the church must meet in a special way on the first day of the week, and even the two passages he presents as supporting this claim do not actually speak to that claim at all; therefore this criteria will not be treated as valid here. Three of his criteria can be composed into one assertion without losing any of its power of assessment. That the church has elders, that the church has deacons, and that there are specific requirements for those offices are all essentially pointing to one claim: that the church is only a church if it has leadership in place in accordance with the Bible’s definitions for elders and deacons. This leads directly to the claim that the church must take discipline seriously, as Paul urges churches multiple times in his epistles and which must be in place for the leadership so established to have any real authority in the operations of the church. What remains are the sacraments, which are generally assumed to be happening by Paul (although he occasionally sees need to clarify how they are to be happening) but draw directly from the giving of Christ for the body and the display of the glory of Christ, without even exploring the fact that Christ commanded them and they therefore point to His headship and authority; and the place for form beyond the local church. This one, we must be careful about. Applied in a way that says churches must be in network would rule out the church in Jerusalem as a true church until other churches were founded, but ignored entirely would rule out the discussion of the universal church as a means of assessment entirely. The Bible does not handle the issue in either manner, so neither should we. Therefore it will stay, but will not be discussed except to say that, for our purposes here, it has been sufficiently addressed in the section on the universal church. The points that remain, then, are that the church is a collection of Christians that administers the sacraments as handed down by Christ under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with the power to discipline members. By what criteria do the leaders discipline members? By the advancement of the gospel, the headship of Christ, the display of the glory of Christ, and to the standard of a body for which Christ gave Himself to establish a spotless bride. And indeed, Paul never describes a church as a church unless he knows for certain that it meets this definition. Ephesus was called a church when it did so, but was not called a church when it was no longer displaying the glory of Christ and had adopted teachings that showed them to be outside of the headship of Christ. Galatians and Romans, two epistles written to ensure the church had the basic teachings of Christianity down to bodies that may not have had elders in place to guide and discipline based on those teachings, do not refer to those bodies as churches. Titus was sent to cities, and not to churches, to appoint elders. In every instance in which Paul or Luke describe a body as a church, it is an established church; that is, it is a church that meets the definition from the previous paragraph. In every place where Paul worked, he worked toward the aim of bringing a group of disciples to the place where they met that definition, even returning to hostile territory to ensure he didn’t leave the disciples with an incomplete job. Even when a great opportunity to establish a new church came his way, he turned aside from that opportunity to focus on finishing the work of establishment elsewhere. Paul sends Titus to finish work he could not finish himself, out of a desire to see that the work was fully and properly finished. Paul never considered his work complete in a place until a church was established by the criteria thus far described; and neither should we. If this is the goal Paul had in establishing churches, if the definition of a completed work was a body that could be rightly called a church because it was composed of Christians practicing the sacraments under the authority of Biblically-defined leaders with power to discipline the body under the headship of Christ and for His glory, then we cannot bandy the word around for anything less. This is Paul’s definition of an established local church, and it must also be ours. 1A fourth use of ‘church’ is added in some modern translations, in 3:7, which could also be argued as a conceptual usage. I will not participate in that argument at this time, however, since Paul didn’t use or avoid the term in that phrase and therefore it does not help us much with Paul’s intended use of the term.
2Or, indeed, in his letter to the Ephesians themselves. 3Page 66 Note: This is adapted from a paper I submitted as part of my education through the Antioch School. The objective of the paper was to demonstrate that I had "developed a basic biblical understanding of Paul’s concept of establishing local churches, while discerning the difference between what Paul understood to be normative for all churches in every culture and generation and what he intended to be merely cultural for his time and situation." Where the book of Acts covers the broad strokes of Paul’s concept of establishing churches, it is in his epistles that the goals and approaches of Paul are more fully fleshed out and understood. Paul in Acts is traveling around the northern Mediterranean, identifying places where the Holy Spirit is drawing him and a place exists where he can proclaim the gospel, bringing converts into community, establishing leaders among them, and then commending the young church to the hands of those leaders as he sets off to do the same elsewhere. We have snapshots of occasional details on how he does these things, but only snapshots of occasional details. In the Pauline epistles, the apostle actively walks churches at different stages of development through his expectations for them, problems they need to address, and next steps in their growth. We can identify the process by which Paul sought to establish churches by grouping his letters into three major categories, and then exploring what general concerns he has in writing to each category of church. These categories align both with the time period in which he wrote them, and the stage of development the target churches were experiencing. The first category would be his early letters, written to the young churches in Galatia, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Rome. The second category are his prison epistles, written to the churches in Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae; the latter receiving a general letter to the body as well as being the home church of Philemon. Finally, we have the personal letters to Timothy and Titus.
Paul’s early letters focus on preserving the centrality of the gospel in the establishing of the church. He reminds these churches of the core of the gospel and its immediate implications for the Christian, calls them to turn away from worldly behaviors and concerns, and addresses ideologies that are attempting to undermine the gospel in the church. Paul is concerned in these books with the foundation upon which the church is being built, and the worldly systems that attempt to compromise that foundation. Galatians 5:1 summarizes this concern well when Paul writes that “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (NASB2020). It is his concern at this stage of the church’s establishment that it stand and build firmly on the truth of the gospel without allowing that truth to be watered down with falsehoods. Toward this end, he reminds these churches about the work of Christ and the righteousness they enjoy through faith. He discusses the limits and purposes of the Law and reminds them of the pervasive nature of sin. He explains the hope of resurrection and assures the Thessalonians that they have not yet missed the end of the age. He introduces the nature of spiritual gifts and the functions they serve in unifying the body and advancing the mission of the church. He explains the way the church as a community should view its members and be seen by the world. He warns about false teachings that would lead the body astray. All of these things are foundational; they describe the essential nature of the church and its members and give them a way forward into maturity, and they help guide the church away from paths that will interfere with their maturity. Reed states that the gospel “transforms our whole lives and beings;” it is in the early letters that Paul details what that gospel, and therefore what that transformation, must look like in the church1.
Paul’s prison letters focus on the practice of life as a body in the established church and the role of the church in the unfolding plan of God. These letters deal heavily with relationships within the church and the importance of continuing to grow in a manner worthy of the calling they have received. In Colossians, he urges the church, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude” while in Philippians he says, “Brothers and sisters, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us” (Colossians 2:6-7, Philippians 3:17, NASB2020). These churches have solid foundations, and his attention with them is drawn to the way they live and grow. Philemon is an excellent example of Paul’s concerns in this body of letters. While dealing with a situation specific to one individual within the church and mostly speaking as though to one individual, Paul nevertheless writes the letter to Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and “the church in your house” (1:2b, NASB2020). He is concerned not only with Philemon’s handling of the situation with Onesimus, but the church’s understanding of their relationships to one another. He talks to Philemon, and the three churches in this category, as partners in his work; reminding them of their contributions so far and his investment in them, reporting what has been done beyond their locations, and inviting them to act in a mature manner rather than directing their actions like he does in the early letters. The basic family-like structure of the churches is generally assumed, and Paul builds on this by using that structure to explain the church more fully. Take for instance Paul’s household instructions at the end of Ephesians 5 into the beginning of Ephesians 6. While we get a great deal of information from this passage about the roles of individuals within the family, and ought to apply those roles accordingly, Paul reminds us that he is primarily “speaking with reference to Christ and the church” in 5:32 (NASB2020). Here Paul does not need to define the gospel that unifies the church, but to showcase how the church is to operate using imagery they can understand and apply. He is concerned throughout with how the church views itself, how it partners with him and one another in the work of establishing people and churches, and the way the church lives as mature bodies.
In the final set of Paul’s letters, the focus turns to the reproduction of established churches through a process of maturing leaders. These letters deal heavily with identifying and preparing leaders, removing false teachings from the body, and ensuring that the mission of the church continues through future generations. His attention is toward leaders and the impact they have on the body, as highlighted when Paul says, “Pay close attention to yourself and to the teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1 Timothy 4:16, NASB2020). Much of his text in these letters deals with the administrative areas of the church. He is passing on his knowledge, his model, and ultimately his very work as an establisher of churches to Timothy and Titus. He gives criteria for leaders and discusses how the church should engage with them. He identifies false teachings and gives instruction on how to root it out and cast it aside. He invites them into the same work—and the same sufferings—that he himself walks in. He offers encouragement and reminds them of fellow workers they can lean on. He warns about troubles the churches will face and points them back to the source of their salvation and maturity. His language in these letters goes beyond partnership into inheritance, as a father reminding his sons of the proper care of their estate.
Each category of Pauline epistles, then, addresses specific periods of a church’s establishment. More than that, however, they work together as a whole to show what the process of establishment itself looks like. There are bits specific to the environment in which the letters were written; the concern about the circumcision party exists because of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism at the time, which has changed, and dictates about the behavior of slaves only find direct footing in a culture that has slavery. But the principles Paul is drawing out by these specific circumstances, and by the groups of letters collectively, are universal in scope. Paul applies them across the board to every church with which he interacts, and hands instruction off to Timothy and Titus to continue applying and handing down these principles. These principles show a defined understanding of the establishment of a church. Paul has expectations for each church based on its level of maturity, guiding them to the next phase of establishment. He talks to all of them as though they are on the same road, directing the less mature churches in the direction of the more mature churches and speaking to the more mature as if they have already passed through the same place as the less mature. And this approach is expected to be normative, as Paul hands it off to Timothy and Titus and urges them to continue handing it to later generations. Paul’s approach to the churches, all of the churches, is not unlike my approach to the rabbits we raise. The church is given the immediate support and nourishment and protection it needs in the form of the truth and its implications, just as the kits are kept secure from predators and the environment while maintaining access to their mother’s milk. As they churches begin to grow and take on a life of their own, they are examined for spot or blemish and guided in the way they should live, just as we inspect and care for and train the rabbits as they leave the nest. And as the church grows to maturity, it is left to operate without constant external guidance and encouraged to reproduce, just as those rabbits which prove themselves suitable are given their own space and opportunity to breed. There is a set life path that Paul sees the churches on, and it is by comparing their state to this life path that he sees what involvement they require from him. In learning from Paul how he sees that life path and approaches the churches, we can learn how to gauge the maturity of churches today and know which letters to best apply to their situation. 1 Jeff Reed, “Paul’s Concept of Establishing Churches,” 1991. 12.
What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "designed a set of guidelines that could be used for a mission program anywhere that is aligned with an advanced understanding of biblical keys, including the role of local churches networking with other churches and mission agencies/apostolic teams as taught in Acts." Formatting note: As last week, I have chosen to leave this in bullet format partly because it seems to work for the objective and partly because I am currently plagued by the same recurring headaches that made me write it as bullet points in the first place.
What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "designed a model to use as a guide in planting and establishing churches today from the core elements of Paul's strategy used on his missionary journeys, including local churches and mission agencies/apostolic teams." Formatting Note: Due to headaches, I was not able to convert my thoughts into an article or paper format, and instead turned in a bullet list of major points I felt such a paper would need to cover. I have elected to leave it in this form when posting it here because I kind of like how it works. All scripture passages are NASB unless otherwise noted.
1 Michael Griffiths, Who Really Sends The Missionary? Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1974. 12.
2 Ibid., 13. 3 Missionary, 19-20. Griffiths is specifically justifying the responsibility of the local church in supporting missionaries through finances and prayer, but it is not a stretch from his point to include responsibility to prepare those same missionaries, especially if the missionary is viewed through the understanding here quoted. 4 Howard Snyder, “The Form of the Church” in The Community Of The King Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1977. 159. 5 Ibid., 167-168. 6 Peyton Jones and Ed Stetzer, Church Plantology: The Art And Science Of Planting Churches Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2021. 368. 7 Ibid., 369. 8 “Form,” 143. 9 This part almost sounds self-explanatory because you can’t make a church without gathering some disciples but then you run across a handful of church plants that recruit almost entirely from other churches and haven’t baptized anyone and you start to realize it really isn’t that clear to some people and you get so annoyed about it that years later you have to be reminded that this thought would be better served in the footnotes than the body of the paper. What follows was originally a paper completed as part of my studies through the Antioch School. The objective of this assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed a biblical definition for missionary and missionary work as taught in Acts." In defining the Great Commission as a church-based endeavor rather than an individual mandate, and further describing the church as the direct authority in the work of carrying the mission of the Great Commission, and clarifying that the nature of that work is to establish churches, the natural conclusion is that the work of a missionary is fundamentally to work under the authority of the local church in establishing a new local church in a new local setting. That this is the model we see of missionary work in Acts further cements this understanding. The book of Acts follows a select few missionaries; it largely focuses on the missionary team that included Paul, whether that was with Barnabas and Mark on the first missionary journey or Paul, Silas, Luke, and Timothy by the time the second missionary journey reached Europe. Beyond this, there is a brief aside about the work of Apollos in Acts 18:24-28, and little else. However, that aside does indicate that the means we see Paul utilizing were treated as normative during that period. Apollos arrives on the scene with skill at speaking, an understanding of scripture (v. 24), established instruction, and a partial grasp on the truth of Christ (v. 25). He is identified by leaders in the church as a potential leader, given further training (v. 26), then commissioned and sent out by a church body (v. 27). When he arrived, he was able to use his gifts and training to help the church that was already active in that area (v. 27-28). We later learn in 1 Corinthians that Apollos goes on to have a significant impact on the early church, to where some misguided believers were grouping themselves by whether they were reached by Paul, Peter, or Apollos (See 1 Corinthians 1:12, 3:4, and 3:22). It is helpful to consider this story, as it is the main example we have in Acts of what missionary preparation and sending looked like when it did not directly include Paul. It is easy enough, if all we talk about is Paul’s work, to put his work in one category and our own in another; the case of Apollos contradicts this tendency. That Apollos follows the same basic missionary path as Paul, despite neither meeting Paul nor being sent out by the same church that sent Paul, indicates that the model we see from Paul was expected to be the model used by others as well. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that it is the model we also are expected to use. Hesselgrave reaches this same conclusion, and defines the model, when he states that “there is explicit teaching in the Epistles which directs us to carry on the same activities in a similar way—namely, to go where people are, preach the gospel, gain converts, gather them into churches, instruct them in the faith, choose leaders, and commend believers to the grace of God.”1 Priscilla and Aquila are part of the church in Ephesus and have been identified elsewhere in scripture as leaders. These leaders find Apollos, instruct him in the faith, identify him as a leader, then send him where people are to preach the gospel, gain converts, and commend believers to the grace of God. Thus, as Paul is sent out by the church in Antioch, Apollos is sent out by the church in Ephesus. Given this relationship to the church in Ephesus and the description that “he greatly helped those who had believed through grace,” we can conclude that he operated under the authority of at least one established local church in his work (Acts 18:27, NASB). We get very little information in Acts on what Apollos actually did while he was in the field, aside from refuting arguments against Jesus as the Christ and helping the church in Achaia, but given Paul’s description that “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth,” it appears Paul believed Apollos was participating in the same process of establishing churches that Paul himself was (1 Corinthians 3:6, NASB). Thus, we have Apollos either described as, or hinted at being, someone who was trained by the local church, identified as a leader, and sent out by the local church to establish local churches in a different setting, just as Paul does throughout the lengthy descriptions of his work. That which was displayed by Paul and was handed down to Apollos has also been handed to us. The modern missionary has the same job description and model to follow as Paul and Apollos had, as we serve the same God on the same mission using the same means—the church—as them. 1 David J Hesselgrave, “Church-Planting Strategy—The Pauline Cycle” in Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000. 46.
What follows is adapted from an assignment I completed as part of my study of Acts for the Antioch School. This assignment was to demonstrate that I had "developed convictions on the role of the local church in missions today." Churches have a number of functions, many of which are specifically local. It is within the local context that a church baptizes believers, interacts with its community, carries out discipleship, practices communion, participates in regular corporate worship, and invests in the lives of one another. If, however, we are to understand the church as being the vehicle for the Great Commission to carry the gospel of Christ to all the world, then there needs to be some means by which the local church functions on a global stage. Now, no local church body can carry out the fullness of its mission on a global scale—people from Malaysia simply will not attend a communion service in Iowa on a regular basis—so how is the global function of the local church related to the local function? Historically, the primary means by which the local church extends its mission to the global stage has been by sending out individuals who have a working partnership with the local church and operate in a different, frequently overseas, local context. A working partnership is more than simply sending money, however, and requires that the church actually participate in global work on a fairly regular basis. One way local churches have addressed this need in recent years has been short-term mission trips. Short term missions, however, are a fairly new phenomenon in American Christianity. Bob Garrett, then-professor of missions at Dallas Baptist University, wrote in 2008 that “in the 1960s and into the 1970s most denominational mission boards and missionary sending agencies were still sending out exclusively career personnel” and went on to explain that the rise of short term missions was not only unexpected, but actively opposed by some.1 That it is now one of the primary activities of many American churches is a significant shift; and not necessarily one that has been handled well. As Brian Howell noted in an interview, I am not for the narrative that has typically driven these trips: ‘We are going because there’s this tremendous need out there that we have to meet. And there’s this burden that we have as the wealthy country to go and do something in another place.’ I support transforming this narrative so that it becomes, ‘How can we connect with what God is doing in other parts of the world? How can we learn to be good partners with Christians already in these places? How can we participate in what the church is already doing in these countries in effective ways?2Short term trips are not inherently wrong, but they, and all aspects of church missions, must be determined in light of the local church’s role in missions. The above quote suggests that we have lost sight of that role, and in doing so, have lost sight of how we are to carry out that role. Or, as Hesselgrave put it, “to allow any understanding of mission to obscure the proclamatory, sacramental, and didactic responsibility of the church is to put the knife to the heart of the Christian mission.”3 If these are the responsibility of the local church, and the means by which the church is to engage in mission in other environments, then the means the local church must use center on the establishment of a local church within the new environment. The role of the church is, then, to reproduce churches and equip those churches to be missionally active. This is not to say that other work cannot be part of this model. Short-term mission trips, service ministries abroad, and long-distance tools such as radio ministries and websites can all serve the mission of the church if they are carried out with the mission always serving as the focus. Griffiths warns that other approaches and organizations, good as they may be at achieving good purposes, must never cause us to “lose sight of the fact that such organizations are only auxiliary, ancillary, secondary and supplementary to the chief task of missions, which is to plant new churches” (emphasis original).4 This is, after all, the example we see in Acts. The church in Antioch was established by faithful people who came from the church in Jerusalem, with the short-term assistance of leaders sent by Jerusalem and the long-term work of Barnabas. This church then sent Barnabas and Saul out into the field, where they established churches while remaining in contact with, and under the authority of, the church in Antioch. The role of the local church in missions, then, is to focus its energies and resources toward the establishment of a new local church, using whatever tools are suitable for the context and can be used faithfully, by making and gathering together disciples who will continue to engage in and pass along the church’s mission, under the authority of the local church, in accordance with the Great Commission. 1 Bob Garrett, “Towards Best Practice in Short Term Missions,” Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry 5, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 103, Accessed January 24, 2019, http://www.galaxie.com/article/jbtm05-1-10.
2 Jeff Haanan and Brian M. Howell, “Better Partners: How Can Short-Term Mission Best Advance God's Mission?” Christianity Today, January-February 2013, 79. http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A315069366/ PPRP?u=vol_b43nbc&sid=PPRP&xid=b20c0ba8 (Accessed January 12, 2019). 3 David J Hesselgrave, “The Heart of Christian Mission” in Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000. 22. 4 Michael Griffiths, “What Do Missionaries Do?” in What On Earth Are You Doing?: Jesus' Call To World Mission InterVarsity Press, 1983. 39. There were five breakout session options at the summit on Saturday, and I took the one on church planting. This was led by Paul Gordon, pastor of Terra Nova Church in North Adams, MA. This is of particular interest to me for a number of reasons, not least of which was the impact it had on me as addressed earlier this week. The session was basically broken up into three parts. The first addressed some of the particular issues with small place church planting, the second went into practical notes on doing that work, and the third was a question and answer time. I took no notes on that last section so it will not be addressed here.
Church plants are nearly always high-risk ventures. There's usually very few resources available at the onset, and what resources are available frequently fall into a short window of support. There are only so many people willing to invest their time in joining the core planting team, and the average is that half of whatever people sign on to a given team will not last. Church plants in cities are often assumed to be well on their way to being self-sustaining within five years, and commitments from supporters reflect this expectation. Small town, rural, and other unstrategic locations for church plants get even less than that. There are fewer agencies, churches, and individuals willing to take the risk to invest in a church that might never grow beyond 20-50 people simply because of location, and the few that are willing to give may still hold to their 3-5 year expectations for a plant that may take a decade or more to get to the same level of financial stability. The reasons for this longer timeframe vary, of course, by location. I had already had discussions with a pastor about how some urban (but still considered unstrategic) contexts take longer simply because they're slow to trust, while churches in rural areas may grow incredibly quickly among the people nearby but only have ten households in a close radius. For this reason, small-place church plants require a certain degree of creativity that may exceed that demanded of large-place church planters. With less money, fewer people, fewer places to meet, and presented with an unrealistic timeline, the work is marked in a big way by how a planter sees the opportunities that exist and acts on them with the limitations they have. But, ultimately, it comes down to the work of God; beginning with the work in calling the planter.
Gordon's central thesis was that a church planter, indeed any Christian doing the work handed down to us, is called first and foremost to a place and the people in it. The church plant isn't the primary objective, it's a means of reaching the objective. In the end, the goal is to make disciples among the people to whom we are called; church planting is one tool among many available to us in the work.
One bit that came up during conversation was the frequency with which church planters appear to be focused on fulfilling the goals and requirements of their sending agencies more than dealing with the specific needs of their context. This concern may or may not be as common of a problem as it was being presented by the man who asked about it, but I can't deny that there is a degree to which this model of being called to a place first runs against what I've been taught in other church planting programs. The contrary view, that a church planter is called to the occupation first, is more obvious in some places than others. The most overt was the flagship class for my church planting minor, where choosing a town or neighborhood came a few steps into the process of preparing to plant a church. Get called to church planting, then find somewhere to do it. I've had some reservations about this approach for some time, though I've rarely had need to state as much or even really clarify it for myself. I must admit there's a certain degree of reality to it, after all, my wife and I believe we're being called to be involved in church planting, and each place we've ended up from that point onward has had some degree of consideration about what that call might look like where we are. In that way, the call to be church planters came before a few towns we've lived in, but I think the point is in how we think about it more so than chronological order. If we make the practice of church planting our primary focus, we invest in the church plant more than we invest in the lives of the people around us. A plant that leads to the creation of an established church surely must include some investment in the community, if only to get people in the door, but where we put our focus is where we will put our hearts and I believe God loves the people we are called to serve far more than He loves the idea of having a hip new congregation. We need to be willing to let go of the plant if it means more people will come to Christ and God will receive more glory. We need to be willing to not even start a plant if there is another avenue available that God would prefer us to take. When we enter the community with the primary objective of planting a church before we invest in the community and learn what God would see done there, we run the risk of leaning on our own understanding and ideas to get the results we think are best. I've been guilty of it. I think what Gordon articulated is something we need to hear more often: we are called to a place and the people in it, for the glory of God, first. And if God wants to plant a new church, then we should eagerly do so, in accordance with His design for it and the needs and unique traits of that community. But if we come in with our detailed plan for starting a new church in a town where we know nothing but the stats we downloaded from a community profile, we need to seriously ask whether what we're doing is our idea, or God's. The first session was delivered by Stephen Witmer, pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship and author of A Big Gospel in Small Places, and focused on why small places warrant care and attention. Which isn't an entirely unreasonable question to ask. As addressed in the previous post, there are good reasons so many resources are spent on places that will have a big impact on a lot of lost people very quickly. Fulfillment of the Great Commission requires that the gospel spread fast enough to reach the world, and with the size of the world's population and the rate of its growth we need to step up that effort some. Being strategic and looking for the places with the fastest growth and largest reach helps ensure as many people as possible hear the gospel as quickly as possible. The problem is when we only put resources into those places. Because the fact is, if the gospel is going to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible, someone needs to be going into the places between the strategic launch points. Whether they go from the hub cities, or from neighboring communities, or rise up from within, the farm towns and small places will need to have someone going to them. The model that relies on pouring resources into hub cities cannot then remain in hub cities or its entire justification breaks down. If these are points chosen for their ability to expand then they must expand into the places that were not chosen. If we're focusing on Boston for its ability to impact places like Townsend and Sturbridge, at some point we need to be sending people and resources to Townsend and Sturbridge. That's the point. Which is fine as a logical and logistical explanation for why there must be investment both in large and small places, but Witmer, as befitting a speaker at a conference for ministers, focused instead on scriptural reasons.
The primary thrust of the argument Witmer presented is not that the hub city model of church planting is wrong or that it relies on expansion, or even that it fails in some way. The argument was firmly rooted in the claim that ministry in small places is, itself, an expression of certain truths about the gospel that simply are not represented by ministry in large places. Where large-place ministry showcases the universal reach of the gospel in its scope, immediacy and power in its rate of expansion, and the wisdom of the gospel through its careful consideration of method, small-place ministry shows how the gospel is also small, slow, and unstrategic. One of the condemnations of the gospel message I have actually received in my life is that if an all-powerful and all-wise God wanted the world to know the truth of Himself and His message, He should have had the foresight to deliver it somewhere other than a backwater corner of an ancient empire. And I've heard the counterargument that Galilee and Judea actually sit on fairly important trade routes and would therefore have some strategic value to the spread of such a message, but Witmer would appear to argue that the atheist has noticed something about the gospel that we are too quick to dismiss: that Galilee really is a backwater corner of the Roman Empire and really should raise some questions about its utility in a global mission. Perhaps the answer is that the gospel isn't, at its core, utilitarian. Small Is that not what we see in the life of Jesus Christ, anyway? We take for granted that Mary and Joseph were of the line of David, so He fulfills that prophesy, but have we just been assuming that David had no descendants at that time in a more noble position who could have raised the Son of God in some degree of pomp and splendor? Why pick the great-grandchildren that live in a dusty little town doing menial trade work? Why make arrangements for this child to be born in a stable away from the hub city of the region? They run off to Egypt and make no impression on the people there worth recording, then return to Nazareth where Jesus lives in obscurity until His mission begins in earnest and He spends most of that mission wandering around places where crowds could find nothing to eat. He consistently whittled down the number of people following Him, to the point that despite having a massive following at various times and whole cities that wanted to declare Him king and appearing after His death to hundreds of people at once, only 120 are still hanging around waiting for His promise to be fulfilled at Pentecost. How often we consider a church of 120 people to be too small to notice! Witmer notes that the Kingdom begins very small in scripture, and that God consistently shows concern for what is small. The small places like Bethlehem, the smallest son of Jesse, the smallest bit of faith, the jots and tittles of the Law. In ministering to the small places, we are continuing the work that God has always had for these locations. Slow "The gospel gives us permission to have slow ministries." One thing that strikes me is that, while we do have moments of explosive growth in the church in Acts, the way in which we read the book can sometimes make us think it was always like that. One story right after another, with Paul being saved outside of Damascus and then going out and beginning to preach and going home where he's pulled by Barnabas to Antioch and then turned around and sent on their first missionary journey. But we know from his other writings that Paul spent at least 12 years coming to understand the gospel with which he had been entrusted before the vast majority of that even happened. How often we try to rush things to fit our timetable, this idealized version of the story in our heads, when God intends to take the time to make sure it's done right. Witmer repeatedly noted that we should "want revival more and need it less." By wanting it more he wasn't saying we don't desire it hard enough; rather, the point was that we too often treat the big explosive moments as the whole picture and judge ourselves and others by whether or not these experiences are happening. But our validation shouldn't come from how quickly we outgrow our buildings or double our baptisms. These things are great, and we should value them and seek after them, but we cannot treat them as the whole picture of God's work. We should want to see everyone we've ever met come to church and make a profession of faith this Sunday; but when we consider ourselves a failure for having any less, we lose sight of the fact that our entire role is to be faithful in the task. Faithfulness is always marked more by time and consistency than by results. Unstrategic According to worldly wisdom, the gospel is a mess. Sending your own son to die on behalf of people who hate him in order to win some of them over is a terrible strategy by any human standard. Having all of the work in establishing your religion happen in a place that has no strategic, economic, or cultural importance just seems like poor planning. Pouring yourself out into the lives of a handful of illiterate fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot while turning away scribes and people ready to install a new king almost sounds like planning to fail. But this is the foundation of our faith. The gospel, and the ways it gets worked out, isn't always going to seem like it makes sense or that it's aimed at making the biggest impact in the fastest way possible. The nature of the gospel actively stops us from thinking that we can only justify the use of resources on the best available options. It gives us permission to focus and really spend time and effort on people who can bring nothing big or new to the table. In fact, it basically requires us to do so. To do anything else not only fails to showcase the way God has consistently worked across the centuries, but also kind of suggests that we think we're big enough deals to have warranted His attention. We misrepresent God and ourselves and only encourage heightened egos if we act like the gospel only belongs to the strategic few.
The last thought I have in my notes from Witmer were his words, that "if you are viewing your people as a stepping stone to somewhere bigger and better, you cannot be loving your people." Is this not what it call comes down to? If we will not love the handful who gather in the small church an hour outside of anywhere, how can we think we deserve to be shepherds over the thousands that gather under a dome in the city?
On Saturday, October 19, I attended the Central/Western Massachusetts event for Small Town Summits. As I've started to do with sermons and other studies, I wanted to blog through my processing of the things I saw and heard there. While not officially part of this series of posts, I did also blog about some pretty personal struggling I have had that were addressed by God through the event. Before I do posts on specifics, though, I wanted to paint the big picture of the day and explain what Small Town Summits is.
I've been involved in church planting, in some capacity or another, since 2008. In that time, in my experience, the focus has been on strategic placement of new churches or revitalization efforts. If you want to get a sending network involved or a church to give money or a team to come together, you've had to sell them on how big the impact of that church could have. Talk about the millions of people that live and work and pass through the city. Talk about the colleges that bring in large numbers of students from around the world and then send them back out, hopefully (with your church's help) carrying the gospel with them. In a pinch, you can sell the town's impact to its smaller neighbors and role as a hub of commuters that work in the bigger, more important city. There's good reason for targeting these locations, and Small Town Summits explained at the event that they recognize their importance. The problem being raised, however, is that there are millions in America, billions around the world, who do not live in nice strategic locations, and our laser focus on making a big impact has left far too many of these people without a gospel witness and so many small town pastors feeling like they have no support.
The instinct is to read the description of small places and assume they're rural, but it was explained that that isn't always true. While a great many rural communities would qualify, so can cities and regions within cities. The best definition for their target communities would seem to be a negative one; if the community cannot be described as a hub of culture, economy, influence, government, or education, and would therefore be overlooked by strategy-focused church planting efforts, they want to be there. The summits are designed to be affordable and easy to access, hosting them across New England. Their next listed event is a Bible Training for Women in March 2020.
The summit was a great time. I met people who came from southern Vermont, the Berkshires, the Worcester area, and southeastern Massachusetts. I was able to meet the new pastor of a small church I preached at during their pastoral search and get some updates on how they're doing and exchange information. I made a lot of connections and had some great conversations and picked up some ideas that we may be able to adapt in our church. I got to catch up with some friends I haven't seen in a while who came in for the event. As will be discussed in the following posts about each session, we basically had two main speakers and they both did a great job of presenting the importance of small place ministry and some practical concerns that arise in that context. The worship was very good and, while I had only heard one song before, any confusion on my part was my own fault for forgetting to listen to the tracks I was emailed in advance. The food was great and the hour given for lunch gave us plenty of time to meet the people sitting around us. The brevity of the event does mean that there were a small number of topics that could be handled well, but the ample time to make connections with people serving across the region should prove to make up for that over time for anyone who wants to put in a little effort to do so. All in all, I feel it was a day very well spent, I was personally impacted in a big way by the summit, and I look forward to pursuing some of these new relationships and attending more summits in the future. If you are in New England, I encourage you to go to their website and try to attend an event near you as soon as it becomes available.
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Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation
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