[0:00] These sessions were recorded at the Church Planned Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church. It is our desire that you'll be able to learn from these great speakers as they talk about the topic of church planting.
[0:15] And what's next? Well, I think we've got a couple guys that are going to take up the questions. If you guys have some questions, they passed out little pamphlets. And where are my guys at?
[0:27] They get the baskets back there. Yeah, hustle up, guys. Thank you, Mark. Pastor of the church taking it up.
[0:37] Way to go. Servant. He's the greatest of all right there. Mark Coffey, guys. Brother Gardner is going to ask these questions. And here's your chance to bring them in here. All right.
[0:54] My first question is, did y'all name the church that started in Ladysmith Vision? I don't know. I wasn't there. I think they did. I think they did.
[1:04] I think it was called Vision. That's a copyrighted name. And I just thought I would. We got in trouble for using World Vision. And so. All right. So you copyrighted that name? No, we didn't.
[1:16] Church. We copyrighted the word church. There you go. That's good. Y'all can use fellowship. Okay. All right. What would you suggest to Vision Baptist Church right here about how we would go about starting other churches?
[1:29] Did I understand correctly that on Sunday night I would take a bunch of people and go to another community? So would you give us that? Me and Brother Roberts need to do that and Brother Lawrence. Right. You know, I don't know anything about the Atlanta area.
[1:41] I do believe that there are places here in the Atlanta area that need a good, strong, fundamental Baptist church like Vision. All right. I don't think there's any question. With the growth that you have here, with the people moving the way they are, there could be some in the inner city, you know, and those things, God has to put on your heart a burden for an area to plant a church.
[2:04] So, but I believe your question is, so if you do that and you have a get acquainted meeting, do you take your people on Sunday night? And my response when I pastored was yes.
[2:15] Normally the reproducing, we ask the reproducing church to take their people on Sunday night. What we have now, for example, in Canada or in Ladysmith or in any other community, we get a reproducing church and then we have helping churches.
[2:32] Okay. So we have the pastor of the reproducing church who has friends that are interested in helping, but they don't want the responsibility. It's like aunt and uncles.
[2:43] They don't want the responsibility of the birth, but they want to be there and join, you know, join in on the fun. And we always ask them to bring a gift like money, you know, to pay for the thing. And we can talk about that. But normally on Sunday night, we ask the reproducing church to bring their people.
[3:00] Now, does that mean they have to bring them all? No. I never canceled a service at my church. Never did. My assistant would preach there. I'd go preach at the new church. Some churches, some pastors say, oh, we're just going to cancel our service, have everybody go.
[3:13] Okay. That's your decision, pastor. You're the pastor. You make this. All I do is give recommendations. I never tell a pastor what he's going to do. I say, pastor, here's what we've learned.
[3:25] Here's what we, from our experience, here's what we think is the best. You have to make a decision. Why? Because churches start churches, not church planners, not our ministry. So therefore, all I do is work with the pastor and I'll say, pastor, here's what we recommend.
[3:39] Now, the reason we start on Sunday night is this. Because the contemporary churches don't have service. And there are people sitting in their church that say, what happened to the King James Bible?
[3:52] What happened to our Sunday night service? But they're still loyal to their church on Sunday morning. Okay. But if their church didn't have service on Sunday night, they're going to come. We have more visitors on Sunday night than any other night of the Get Acquainted meeting.
[4:05] We normally start on a Sunday night and go through Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how many churches we have to help us. And then each of the other night, other churches, the helping churches, bring their people. And basically, their responsibilities are ushers, nursery workers, refreshments, greeters, music, all those things.
[4:23] And the only thing we want the pastor of the new church to do is be interested in visitors who walk through the door. His focus is on them. And so we don't have him preach the meeting. We have him focusing on these people who walk through the door from that area, just getting to know them.
[4:39] And then everything in that meeting is twofold in that meeting. One is to demonstrate the kind of church we're starting through the preaching, the music, the invitation.
[4:50] I'll get up, or now my staff's doing a lot of it. I'll get up and say, you know, look, that's not the kind of choir you're going to have next Sunday, but that's the kind of choir you'll have one day. See? To show them where we're going. Because he can't do that the first Sunday.
[5:02] He's not going to have a choir. All right? Or I remember the week after Columbine, we were in Burnaby, British Columbia, starting a church. And three teenage girls got up to sing, and it was out of this world.
[5:13] And before they sat down, they were right over here. I'll never forget. I said, hey, girls, remain standing a minute. I want to ask you a question. Are you members of the Trenchcoat Mafia? Everybody laughed, you know, because they were so different.
[5:24] And they got embarrassed and said, oh, no, you know. I said, folks, look, it's obvious they're not. They're not like the kids out there on the street. That didn't happen by accident.
[5:36] It's because their parents decided to get those kids in a church, like this church, to help them turn them out right. What was I doing? Establishing credibility and direction of this church.
[5:47] And so all the visitors there say, oh, if we come here, our kids can turn out like that. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do. Show them where we're going with that. All right? The other thing we do is we'll get up and say, you know, we love Brother Smith.
[6:01] Boy, he's going to make a great preacher. He's a great pastor. He loves his family. He can't get up and say that. Can you imagine a preacher going to say, folks, let me tell you now, I love my family. You know, that's like a guy calling his car lot Honest Joe's car lot.
[6:15] I mean, I'm not going to buy a car from a guy who has to declare he's honest. You know, I'm not going to do that. So we try to establish his credibility. So but the responsibility for this meeting falls upon the reproducing church.
[6:30] But then there are other churches of help. Does that help answer your question? Except for one other thing I had. You said I understood a while ago that there was a month where your church was gone every night for a month.
[6:42] So I got the feeling that I'd be out at another church 15 nights in a month. So I was. Can you explain that to us? I was willing to see that's something we probably should. I'm too old to handle that.
[6:53] We probably shouldn't have done that. I mean, in fact, after after the meeting, this was 1990. So it was a lot of years ago. 20 some years ago. So I was much, much younger at that time.
[7:04] And after the meeting, the next Sunday after that meeting, I was sitting at my desk in my office getting ready to preach on Sunday morning. And my jaw locked. Shut. I could only open my mouth about this much.
[7:17] And I got up to preach that morning and teach. And I told my folks. And they just thought that was the funniest thing. They said, yeah, great, you know. But I could get enough to preach. I just, it was tough to eat.
[7:27] I couldn't get it. But anyway, if I turn it this way, it would open. And I turn it back and it would lock. And so I went to the dentist the next day. And he said, have you been under a lot of stress lately? I said, well, we have been to church every night for a whole month.
[7:39] So, you know. But what we did, we were starting two churches. I would never recommend that to anybody again. But we, and we held two 13-day meetings.
[7:51] I don't think I'd do that either. But it was something we did and it worked. But it did take a lot of effort and a lot of work.
[8:03] But it's, planting a church is not something that should be taken lightly. But, and it shouldn't be something where you have a lot of other things on your plate.
[8:14] For example, I'll recommend to a church, if you're building a building, don't plant a church that year. You know. I mean, just don't do that. I think there's a follow-up back here.
[8:28] If you have a general rule, and I know it depends on the distance of the population of the area, or the rule of this other area, is there a general rule of about distance from the church? That's a, repeat the question.
[8:40] Okay, I will. Not only time-wise, but mileage-wise. Because you're out in the country, that's not an issue. Can you expand on that? I think, I think you're, there is no general rule.
[8:55] That's, that's correct. There is. Here it is. Here's what the rule of thumb is. Remember, we're an organism reproducing another organism. Here you have an apple tree.
[9:07] Where's the best place for an apple tree to reproduce another apple tree? Right on the outer edge. If you get too close, all the moisture is sucked up by that, roots of that tree.
[9:19] That's why apple trees don't grow right under it. They're out, out, naturally. I'm talking about naturally. The best place for a church to reproduce another church is at the outer edge of their ministry.
[9:30] That's different in every situation. So, and, and, and, uh, on mission fields, it's much closer. It could be a mile they can plant another church because of the population center.
[9:41] And so a lot of that determines on how, what your population growth is. A lot of it is determined by, um, like out in Montana, people drive 60 miles to go to church.
[9:52] Okay, so it's where is the edge of your ministry where people are unwilling to come to your ministry on Sunday night and Wednesday night, but they'll drive in on Sunday morning to go to church because that's the only place to go.
[10:05] You follow what I'm saying? Does that answer your question? So it's, it's out on that edge, the edge of your ministry, and that changes in every situation. Is there ever a time where there's another church in the area?
[10:19] But you, um, and you went ahead and started, or you weren't sure? I mean, you're talking about Atlanta. There's a church everywhere. Right. So the question, basically, is there ever a time where there's another church in the area?
[10:32] And there are. We make it a policy of contacting that church. We want to know what they believe. And the, the greater threat is not to the existing church.
[10:45] The greater threat is to the new church. Okay. Because the moisture, again, gets sucked up by that, by that church that believes like we believe. I mean, most people want to go to a church that has padded pews, all the programs, rather than going to meeting in the Lions Club on hard chairs.
[11:03] Right. So the, the issue is not for that church. The issue is for that new pastor to go into an area that already has a good established church.
[11:15] And I think I deal with that in one, in one of my, but it's, that it's critical for this new church to be in an area that is, that doesn't have the, the moisture sucked up by another ministry.
[11:29] Okay. Thank you. That can even be true. You got to be careful, even if you have a contemporary church as well. So you want to be careful. But most of the times that doesn't stop us because if we're King James and if there's no, if there's no church in an area, we were in Belleville, Ontario, for example.
[11:48] And, you know, this is Canada and Canada's still, it's, it's tough up there. We went into an area. The nearest independent Baptist church was two hours. I'm telling you, there were people coming out of the woodwork for that church because there was nothing like it anywhere close.
[12:03] When you get an area like that, you can start a church pretty quick. Okay. Next. People are watching from Bolivia, Peru, Portugal, China, Burkina Faso, and the United Kingdom.
[12:15] And so here's a question because the United Kingdom tends to be a little tight. Some of it's been hard for our guys. And so you said you have a ministry there and I'd like to know what you've seen accomplished.
[12:27] Well, the ministry that we, we were in Scotland is in Turroth, which is in northern Scotland. And God blessed there in a great way.
[12:40] We, we basically did it the same way. The problem there was having a number of churches to help us. We didn't have a lot of churches that could help us. We had to draw guys from a little more distance.
[12:50] The pastor that went in there started early. What I mean by that is he went in, started a Bible study, knocked on a lot of doors, put a small group of people together so that when we had the Get Acquainted meeting, we had some folks already gathered together.
[13:05] And that really made a difference by having some people that established that credibility. But we did bring some churches in. It's, it's difficult in, in those places.
[13:16] Now, in Guatemala, we were there. Where's the brother that was in Guatemala with us? Back here. And you indicated that you followed this, this plan and it pretty well, worked well there in planting a church.
[13:30] Had a hundred, had a hundred each night during the Get Acquainted meetings. And then 74, I think the first night, first Sunday of the church. In Kenya, they had 264 their first service.
[13:41] 15 saved, 15 baptized, I think it was. No, 15 saved, three baptized that day. And a guy that had been there 30 years came to it. He was a BBF missionary.
[13:52] He came to it. He said, you know, I've never expected anything like this. And it made all the difference in the world in how they've been planting churches from that point on. I think it will work. In the United Kingdom, we did do one in Enfield two years ago that's doing very well.
[14:09] Same kind of program. About how many attend? I mean, is it over 100 or? No, no. I think in Enfield, I think we're looking at maybe 30 or 40.
[14:20] But he started with nothing. And this is a suburb of London. And they're doing pretty well. What about a missionary in a country far from his home church who is basically by themselves who will help him?
[14:31] It's time to pioneer a church. You've got to get out there and do it. I don't see any problem with having a reproducing church be here and getting out there, pioneering a church.
[14:44] I believe God will bless that. And then you take that church and reproduce churches out of that church. But you've got to start somewhere. And I believe God honors it. I believe God did that in Pickle Lake.
[14:55] Look, Pickle Lake, there is no way in the world that we should have been able to start a strong, fundamental, independent Baptist church in Pickle Lake. Now, today, there are 300 people that live in Pickle Lake.
[15:06] The church runs about 50. All right. Now, that was started in 1978. So how many years ago? That's 30-some years ago. The church is still going. That should never have happened.
[15:19] Only God could do that. Only God could do that. All right. And the reason that – and it was a pioneer work. We go to Fort Francis and struggle because I believe there were churches that we could have used to help us do it.
[15:32] We didn't do it, didn't understand it all, and we struggled there when it could have been done differently. Should there be a church planning – should there be church planning funds or should that just be a part of the faith promise or are they the same?
[15:47] That's a good question. Churches do it different ways. I think it ought to be a part of the faith promise. This is missions. Churches. And our pastor at home, my pastor, who has planted – we have planted, I don't know, 15, 16 churches in the last 20 years.
[16:05] When we have a Get Acquainted meeting, when we have a church plant, it's all covered. And he uses his faith promise money for that. Pastor friend of mine, Jim Towsley, he set up a third – 25% of his budget for church planting and uses that to support guys and then also to plant the churches as well.
[16:28] I definitely think it ought to be a part of the – and it's something you have to teach your people. And it's easy to do when you first of all teach your people that they are church planters, that their church – your church has a church planting ministry, and you're going to be involved in church planting and so on.
[16:45] It's easy then to put that money aside through that and get them to give. If you were a pastor, would you start another church if you did not have a man to pastor? Would you pastor two churches at once?
[17:01] When I pastored, I never had a man to pastor the new church. The first one – how do I tell this story and make it short?
[17:15] Probably can't. When I went to Winnipeg, I got there in December of 1987, and our first church plant was October of 1988.
[17:26] So what's that? Ten months later, we were going to plant our first church. The man who is now my pastor said, well, I have a boy that's just finished college. You know, he can come up and pastor this church for you.
[17:38] I said, okay. Well, the reason I accepted that is because every pastor I talked to said this will never work. You don't plant churches this way. I told him how I wanted to do it, and they said, well, it'll never work.
[17:50] And so I really didn't have much to lose. And so I said to Brother Pennell, I said, okay, send him up. And so he came up. He was a graduate of a school that didn't have a great academic education.
[18:01] And he was 23. He was supposed to get married, didn't get married. It really didn't matter because this wasn't supposed to work anyway. You know? So we began during the summer to put together the Get Acquainted meetings and go down and hold these special meetings.
[18:16] And another fellow came up from the States who had raised his support. He was going to be with us a year and then go to Brandon to start a church there. And so as we got into this, the first night, I'll never forget, never forget driving down there to Winkler.
[18:32] And I said, Lord, what have I done? What if nobody comes? I mean, what are my people going to say? And I'll never forget. I said, you know, look, Lord, if this doesn't work, I'm going to blame you.
[18:44] I'm going to get the blame for this. I'm going to tell them straight up, you caused this because you told me to do it. And we got down there, and I think there were two families that night. Our people drove down.
[18:55] We had a good service. And the next night, I mean, they must have gone and told people, I don't know what happened, but there were just dozens of people there the next night. And it was a Mennonite community.
[19:05] And they were saying, you know, our church used to use a King James, and our church used to give an invitation. I'll never forget, the first night one of our people said, amen, they went like this. You know, but more about the end of the week, they would come to the altar and so on.
[19:18] And the third or fourth night, we had a blizzard. It was late October. We had a blizzard in Manitoba. They closed the roads. I'd gone down in the afternoon, and Brother Sullivan, who was going to Brandon, he went down with me.
[19:31] And I called the church and said, look, I don't want anybody coming. And I believe it was 17 of our people got around roadblocks and drove down 70 miles down in those conditions to get down to the meeting that night.
[19:43] But 19 people came from the community. And on the way home, I said to Mike, I said, Mike, because we never told anybody we were going to start a church.
[19:55] We didn't tell them we were going to start a church. And I said to Mike, I said, Mike, we're going to start a church here. And I said, but you're going to have to pastor it because this other guy was lazy.
[20:07] He could never have done it. He thought he was going to pastor that church. And I had to tell him he wasn't. So I took him out to eat. And I said to him, I said, Doug, we're going to start a church, but you're not going to pastor it.
[20:19] Mike is going to pastor it. Now, Mike had raised his support to go to Brandon. But he was willing to follow my leadership as a pastor. And the last night of the meeting, I got up and I said a couple of announcements.
[20:31] One, I'm not preaching tonight. And my people said, amen. I don't know why. I said, Brother Sullivan is going to be preaching tonight. And I said, the reason is because we're going to start a church like our church.
[20:42] And he's going to be the pastor of that church. And I said, now, if you're interested, you ask us for a card. We've never done this. We know what to do. I said, you ask us for a card. It'll be six weeks before we can have the first service.
[20:53] We'll keep you informed. We know many of you go to other churches. We're just saying, look, if you're interested, you just fill out a card. We'll keep you informed, let you know when the services will be held.
[21:04] We don't know yet because Brother Sullivan's got to give notice up in Winnipeg to get moved. Six weeks later, they had their first service. It was, I think it was December the 11th.
[21:14] They had 45 people in that service. Today, Brother Sullivan and I are still, he's still there. They run about 600, 700, have their own Bible college.
[21:25] I have a mission board, the only mission board in Canada, and is the largest independent Baptist church in Canada. And I, you know, God gave us the right man for that.
[21:39] Now, after I got finished, a man called and said to me, well, you start a church in our town like you did in Winkler. And I said, well, your town's kind of small, 700.
[21:51] And so we started a church in February of 1989. The first one started in 1988 in October. The meeting's December, the first service. In February of 89, we started our second church, 40 degree below zero weather.
[22:09] It was a horrible week to do it, but it was the week God gave us. And we drove 90 miles from Winnipeg down there. People came. We started a church within this town of about 700 with about 25 folks.
[22:22] My assistant, we didn't have a pastor. My assistant went down and preached on Sundays, and Mike came up and did the midweek service on his off night. And then in May, we got a pastor for that church.
[22:33] And so I learned a lesson there, pastor. I said, I'm not going to start a church without a pastor. Got to have a pastor for the new church. So from that point on, my goal was to have a pastor.
[22:44] Then in 1990, this evangelist talked me into starting these two churches on the same Sunday. And stupid, oh, dumb me, I listened to him. And we decided in June of 1990, we'd hold two 13-day meetings and start two churches on July 15th.
[23:04] And so the first thing I did was start praying that God would give me preachers. I got these two men, one of them, every time I talked to him, every time I talked to him, there were these caution lights that would go off.
[23:16] I mean, and I just kept moving forward. I'm going to plant a church. I'm going to plant a church. April the 25th, we're starting the meetings in June.
[23:28] April the 25th, he calls and says, Earl, I'm not coming. This is my first friend in Canada. He said, I'm not coming. I said, John, you can't do this to me. He said, well, you know, I just don't believe it's God's will for me to come pastor that church.
[23:41] I said, you know what? You're right. It's not God's will for you to come and you're not coming. I went to my people. It was a Wednesday. I went to my people on Wednesday night. And I said, folks, we have to pray that God gives us a preacher by Friday at 3.30.
[24:03] Or we can't start this church. We're not a pastor. Three o'clock on Friday, my wife called me. And she said, honey, I got a letter that you need before your meeting at 3.30.
[24:15] It said this. It said, dear brother Jessup, my name is Rob Carlson. You probably don't remember me. I met you in 1985. This is 1990. In Barrie, Ontario. That's where we live now in our home church.
[24:26] He said, you were preaching at the soul winning conference. And you were preaching about starting independent Baptist churches. He said, I just finished college and come home. And he said, I came to you after the service and said, one of these days, that's what I'd like to do.
[24:38] I said, Rob, let me know. And I'll do what I can to help. He said, I wonder if that time has now come. He said, my pastor and I have been talking for about two months. And he said, he thinks I'm ready to pastor a church. And I'm writing to you to see if there's a door with that, which I could go to pastor a church.
[24:54] I called his pastor, got permission to talk to him. Called Rob. And he, on their 15th anniversary, gave their $1 million to mission.
[25:12] I had the wrong guy. But God had the right guy. And I went back to our people on Sunday.
[25:23] And I said, here's what God did. It wasn't hard to get them to go to church every night for four weeks. Because they had a God they saw do something.
[25:35] Not that they read about. They had a God of reality, not a God of theory. And they said, if God will do that, then this, we can surely do this.
[25:45] Now, I say all that to say this. I believe there ought to be a pastor for the church in place when you start a new church. But by the same token, there is nothing that replaces stepping out by faith and trusting God and saying, I am going to do something to get this done.
[26:07] And watch God do what we cannot do. I think that's about the best answer I can give. How much of a difference is there between starting a church and relaunching a very sick and dying church?
[26:23] Especially when I'm not in the pastoral role. It's easier to give birth and raise the dead. I don't know if there's any other way of saying that. We've helped some churches that are dying.
[26:34] We've done that. But there are some we would not help. There are issues in some churches that really there's no use spending our money.
[26:45] There are times when we will not get involved in a church plant. And I will say to the pastor, I'm sorry, but from my experience, what is about to take place is not going to work. And we can't afford to use the resources that we have to help you.
[27:01] And I just think it's easier to give birth than raise the dead sometimes. And I feel for churches like that. But sometimes there's nothing you can do.
[27:12] I don't know. How do you motivate those that live 20 to 30 minutes away from the first church to go to the new church plant? Often the new church plant isn't as developed or as exciting as the main church.
[27:23] You don't. I was in Indianapolis. The pastor said to me, we want to start a church up in Westfield. 10 minutes from his church.
[27:36] 10 minutes from his church. And I said, okay. So we began working on it. He said, I have 40 families. This is a church about 1,200.
[27:47] He said, I have 40 families that live in that area. He said, I'm going to get them together and tell them I want them to go to the new church. And I said, pastor, would you listen to some advice that I could give you?
[27:57] And I said, look, maybe that's not the best thing to do. Maybe the best thing to do, and I've learned this from another church planting experience that eventually died because it didn't happen.
[28:13] The pastor didn't do what he should have done. But I said, maybe it would be better for you to go to your whole church family and say to your whole church family, look, we're going to plant a church up in Westfield. I want you to begin praying.
[28:25] And I want you to pray and ask God what he wants you to do. And I want you to know if God wants you to go, you have my blessing to go. If God wants you to stay here, you have my blessing to stay here.
[28:37] If God wants you to go and come back, you have my blessing. And if God wants you to go and never come back, you have my blessing. I want you to do what God wants you to do. She said, okay, I'll do that.
[28:48] So he did that. He went to his church. He had eight families that came to him and went up to the new church plant. Four were closer to where the new church plant was.
[29:01] Four were closer to his church. All right? These eight families went up there. Their first Sunday offering was $5,000. I mean, we had a great meeting.
[29:12] It was in May the week before the Indianapolis 500. And we had a good meeting, not as good a meeting as we could have had if we'd had it earlier, away from the 500, a little bit late May, and other things were going on.
[29:29] But it didn't affect the church. It didn't affect the church. On their first anniversary, they bought a charismatic building that would seat 300, had 120 parking places, put $100,000 down on it, got it for a song.
[29:45] They just went wild with their missions. And so the pastor and I met, and he was telling me about this, and he said, you know, the people who went up there, they were just sitting here. They were doing hardly anything.
[29:57] But up there, there were the ushers, the music, the Sunday school teachers. They're leading the services. I said, preacher, the reason is because they're pioneers. They wanted that challenge.
[30:11] The others didn't want that challenge. They liked the padded pews. But if you had asked them to go, they would have gone, but they wouldn't have stayed, and they wouldn't have come back here. They'd have gone somewhere else because they didn't want to disappoint you.
[30:24] But those families, they built a strong church. So the best way to do that is don't force those people to go to the new church. That may not be for them, but at least there's a place they can get their friends to go, you see.
[30:39] At least there's a church in town. And also the churches can work together. If it's 20 minutes away or whatever, you can work together with programs such as youth and special meetings and even mission conferences and those kind of things.
[30:52] You can work together with the two churches and make it very profitable that way as well. Not very many more. How do laymen start churches? Laymen don't start churches.
[31:03] Churches start churches. Okay. But you did say, I don't know who wrote the question, but you did say that the apostles stayed in Jerusalem.
[31:13] They did. Okay. That's not the only challenging question. Believe me, I know what's coming. That's great. Okay. Churches start churches.
[31:25] Laymen are used through the local church. It's the local church that starts the church, but it's the laymen that get out there and did the legwork. Now, who did the baptizing out there?
[31:38] I believe it was these men from Acts chapter 6. We have the example of Philip who baptized. I believe these people went out and evangelized.
[31:49] They got people saved and they baptized them. When they baptized them, I believe they were placed into that ministry. They were placed into that church that was started. I believe they started a church in those communities.
[32:02] We find that you can take the example in Acts chapter 9, the church at Damascus. It was laymen that went out there, but remember the leadership in Jerusalem also went out there in chapter 8 into Samaria.
[32:20] So it's churches that start churches, but the laymen were doing the work, the legwork out there to get the churches started. It's always the responsibility of the church to do it. Does that answer that question or does it need to be amplified on?
[32:34] I could be glad it amplified on. Is that okay? I think that did it. That do it? All right. This is my particular question about what you're saying. In the Southeast, churches fight a lot.
[32:45] They get offended about church members moving, but the churches may not be reaching out, may not be doing much for missions, and we might want to start churches.
[32:57] So how do you handle that problem? Maybe in Canada, there's like Brother Lawrence's question is, no matter where we go here, there will be a church running 10 or 20 or 30.
[33:08] That it's not going to do anything. Well, I've never been one that really got too upset with making somebody mad.
[33:19] I don't know. I don't know. What? But I realize you're going to face that. But the sad fact is, the majority of your churches today have become social clubs of 10 and 20 and 30 and 40 people that really have no desire to reach their community.
[33:37] You're just going to have to ignore those people and go on to do the job. Don't be unkind. Simply say to them, look, we're going to put a church out here that is going to reach people.
[33:49] Now, if you're going to just put a church out there for the sake of putting another church out there, forget it. They've got enough of those. But I'm talking about a church that's got some life, some youth.
[34:01] It's like most of those churches that you're talking about are churches that are quite old. They're older churches. And I'm telling you, man, us old people, we're hard to get along with.
[34:11] I don't want my grandchildren around very much. They've got too much life for me. Just leave me alone, man. And that's the way our churches get. We get old. We get catankerous.
[34:22] We get just leave us alone. And these young churches, I love being in young churches. Man, it's exciting. People say, yeah, man, I've got to tell this person about the Lord.
[34:32] You're not going to believe it. They come to church with me. You know, excited about it all. Young churches are great to be around. And we need them. We need them. I don't know how to answer that question.
[34:43] I know the southeast is a tough area with that. But I'm telling you, some of these churches need to be replaced. Need to be replaced. Is that okay?
[34:53] I mean, I don't know. If you want to follow up on that, I don't know. So what about us putting up video screens in different areas and just broadcasting? Hang on. Hang on before you go there.
[35:04] That's a whole different deal. You're talking about going to these churches. You had mentioned earlier about it's easier to give birth than is raise the dead. I'm going to fight with you.
[35:14] Hang on. Hang on. But I think, I don't know who wrote that question. I've got an idea. But here's a thought. Maybe not necessarily much the church as, say, the facilities of the church.
[35:27] I mean, there's a handful. There's four. There's five. But there's a church property there. You're going to plant some of these churches. Why not use that facility? It's an opportunity. If we get it, get it.
[35:39] But I tell you what, don't compromise to get it. Yeah, okay. Yeah. We're getting facilities like that. There are more and more coming available all the time. And it's something we need to be watching for.
[35:51] I know Brother Chapel out at West Coast, out Lancaster, has done a good bit of that as well. So you're not shy away from those already established facilities and communities?
[36:03] No, no. But if you get their facility, what you should do is this. If there's a church that says, look, we want you to come in. Take, okay, you go in and you say to them, no problem.
[36:14] We'll come in. Take your facility. You will become members of our church. No, we won't. Okay, then forget it. Okay. They become members of your church. Pastor's the leader. Then he takes that property.
[36:26] He doesn't sell it. Some guys would say, okay, let's sell it and put that money in this place. But you take that property. You remodel the property. Maybe let it sit for six months or whatever.
[36:37] And then go back in there and then really reproduce a church and put a church, different name. Go in there and hit it. And then those people, and some of them will get in there and sit there and say, man, this is great.
[36:50] I love it. They won't do anything. But you know there are people there that will do something. We can get the facilities. We can get them. Does that help? Yes, sir. Then you go in and throw your screens out like I want to do. Yeah, can we throw up Brother Lawrence's screens all around the city of Atlanta?
[37:06] Okay, so this is a different question, this campus church thing. It's just a smart-like one, but I'll throw it out there anyway. It's probably better I don't go there. It's on tape. Okay. Okay.
[37:19] What are the advantages of being a pastor church planner as opposed to a missionary church planner? Any disadvantages? Any disadvantages? Any disadvantages? I think there's some great advantages to being pastor church planner.
[37:33] I think the reason is because you don't have to redo things. You just keep doing the same thing over. You get your people. You get them trained. Get them with the right philosophy.
[37:44] You begin bringing up people through that church. You mature that church. You build that church. You bring up your leadership through that church. And then you take from the leadership you have, go out and plant your church.
[37:56] Leave it a couple of years, go out and plant your church. Leave it a couple of years, go out and plant your church. What I've worked on in a couple of areas is three or four guys get together. Three or four pastors get together as a team.
[38:10] This church plants one this year, this one the next year, this one the next year, this one the next year, and then back to this one, see? And so these four, this one is the reproducing church. These three are helping churches.
[38:21] Then this one's the reproducing church, and these three are helping. What happens is once these four plant this church out here, then you have five. Then once this church plants this one, you have six to do this one.
[38:34] And then seven and eight. And it just begins to mushroom, and then you split it off, you see? And so I really think there's a great benefit to a church being a pastor church planter rather than being an evangelist or missionary church planter, which you just go from place to place.
[38:58] Is there a rule of thumb on the tenure where you might consider starting? I don't know if there's a rule of thumb. What do you mean? Explain that a little bit. You take over church.
[39:09] You just started pastoring there. You've been there a year. Go ahead and start. Five years. You know, three years. I think you have to develop. You know, I don't want to limit God.
[39:22] Yes, sir. Because the things I teach now I didn't practice. You know? I mean, I say now, oh, you shouldn't start a church without a pastor.
[39:33] I did. You know? You look out for a rule of thumb there. Yeah. Yeah. It's great if you can. It's a matter of coming in, developing that philosophy, getting your people on board.
[39:44] Once your people are on board, train your leadership. Get guys ready to go. Better to come through your local church than to come from someplace else. But sometimes you can get guys from other churches. But the time frame, again, I think it's for a pastor, it's what God wants you to do.
[40:01] You know, trusting God and having that peace that God wants you to do that. Because I did things that were really dumb. I can't use that other word. I got the rough questions.
[40:14] I'll save it. But I think on the line that Brother Lawrence and I would be thinking of here, there are people that drive. There are churches here that reach 10, 15 counties.
[40:25] Because people are driving 45 minutes one way to get to church. Because there are other independent churches, but that's the only one like that. But if you were to go to that area and start that church, the guy that's 45 minutes away is going to get angry.
[40:42] And that's just, you're going to say tough, right? Yep. Okay. Well, I wouldn't just say tough. I wouldn't quite put it that way. But I think that I could sit down with him and say, well, why are you angry?
[40:57] And biblically, I think I can lay out a biblical plan as to why he shouldn't be angry.
[41:08] Now, if he's still angry, then it's tough. Well, you know, there is a philosophy that's floating around right now in our area that if you're within driving distance of your church, it is completely unbiblical to change membership unless there is a moral or doctrinal problem with the pastor.
[41:27] And driving distance doesn't, I mean, 50 minutes is okay. I'm sure there's a biblical reason for 50 minutes is okay. Okay.
[41:40] Last question. Unless somebody brings one up to the floor. If you guys want to answer one from the floor, raise your hand and they'll bring a mic to you because there are people listening. Will believers that have not been baptized be raptured?
[41:54] You set yourself up. Is this on tape? Yep. What's going on live?
[42:07] Well, I'm still working on this book. Personally, I believe they will be. I believe they will be raptured, but I do not believe they will be a part of the church.
[42:21] So somebody asked me, I got an email in the middle of it. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 23. It's the verse on it. Throw that verse up there, boys.
[42:32] Look, I'm just working on this thing, guys. Please don't hold me to any of this. I got to change what I believe. I was asked by somebody. I had an email come in while you were talking. Are you a Baptist bride?
[42:43] No, absolutely not. The Baptist bride would absolutely, they would accuse me of being anything but that. Here's the reason. Boy, do I want to go here.
[42:54] There's your Bible verse, by the way. There's the Bible verse. Okay. General Assembly and the Church of the Firstborn. Two different groups. So there's the General Assembly and the Church of the Firstborn.
[43:06] Anyway, let's go to Acts chapter 2, 41 and 42. 42, 40, yeah, 41, 42.
[43:18] Listen, I should have kept my mouth shut. You said you didn't find me a question. I should have kept my mouth shut. What was I thinking? Where's my wife when I need her?
[43:32] All right. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized. In the same day, there were added unto them about 3,000 souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine.
[43:43] All right. The identification, the baptism is an identification with doctrine. What doctrine? What doctrine? The apostles' doctrine.
[43:55] Not New Testament doctrine. The apostles' doctrine. Well, what was the doctrine of the apostles? Well, that's the doctrine you find in the Gospels. And I'm not going to go into all of them.
[44:11] I surely would miss something. But we're talking about eternal security. We're talking about local church. We're talking about the things of the Lord Jesus taught to the apostles. Blood atonement.
[44:21] Virgin birth. You know, the authority of the scriptures. Those things that are found there. All right. Now, there are people who hold those doctrines that do not have the Baptist name.
[44:38] A Baptist writer believes this. He believes that you are baptized by a Baptist who is baptized by a Baptist who is baptized by a Baptist who is baptized by John the Baptist.
[44:51] Okay. So my question to them is this. So you would say that you have got to be a part of a church. Boy, this is going out on the Internet.
[45:02] Oh, my goodness. Please don't put my email out there. So they would believe, and I've had this conversation with some who would hold to a similar position, wouldn't call themselves a Baptist bride, but a whole position that would say you've got to be baptized by a Baptist.
[45:22] And the authority is the church, which I believe the authority is the church. Okay. I believe that. All right. Now, so let's say a church starts, is a split off of another Baptist.
[45:42] A Baptist church splits over location. What I mean by that is the church votes, is going to vote to relocate to another area, and the pastor wants to move.
[45:53] He loses the vote to relocate. So the people say, let's go. So he leaves with the people and goes out and starts another Baptist church in another area.
[46:06] On his own. Not out of a Baptist church. He just goes out and starts church.
[46:17] Is that an authorized Baptist church? Is that a legitimate church? Now, Baptist bride would have to say, no.
[46:29] Okay. The reason is because it's got to be started by church. All right. And since he split off and went out on his own and started a church without a church starting the church, then he would say, no.
[46:44] Then is the baptism valid? They would have to say, no. It wouldn't be valid.
[46:57] Oh, okay. So how do you know that didn't happen? In the church that started your church? Or the church that started that church? Somewhere back down the road.
[47:07] How do you know that didn't happen? And if it did happen, that makes every baptism after that invalid. All right.
[47:18] You say, well, Brother Jessup, that sure puts you in a bind because you believe that churches start churches. That's true, I do. But you know what I have found of organisms?
[47:31] There are some organisms that are illegitimate organisms, but they're still an organism. Some children are born illegitimately.
[47:42] Are they still children? Are they still living, breathing beings? Yes. Are there churches that are doctrinally correct, that are birthed wrong?
[47:53] Yes. And in my, you know, as far as I can tell, the issue is the apostles' doctrine. Not the name Baptist.
[48:06] It's not the name Baptist. Now, am I a Baptist? Through and through. And that's why some on the opposite side would say, oh, he's Baptist pride.
[48:17] No, I'm not Baptist pride at all. Not at all. Because I don't believe that it's the name Baptist that I think it's the apostles' doctrine that holds to that.
[48:27] And I don't know whether that's going to fully answer the question. And I've written more on it than what I have time to talk about. But, you know, by the same token, this verse eliminates Protestantism.
[48:44] All right. The apostles' doctrine eliminates Protestantism. So their baptism is not accepted. Does anyone else have a question from the floor right quickly?
[48:55] No follow-ups on that. Get a microphone over here, guys. Who's got one? I was just wondering whenever you guys help start churches, how much should you get the birthing church to support the started church?
[49:12] Okay. That's a very good question. You know, this matter of supporting the new pastors, basically what you're talking about. Let me say, first of all, for our ministry, when we help a new church get started, we never charge.
[49:27] There's no charge for what we do. We've paid all of our expenses right from 1993 on through. We like for these churches to invest in our ministry, but they don't have to. There's no requirement for that.
[49:38] I want to make that very clear. When we get started, we put together a budget. Our staff, when we start on a church plant with the church, the first thing we do is we get an information sheet, a checklist.
[49:51] We're not going to have time just in these two days to go over many of these things, but there's a checklist. One of my staff will get with the new pastor, the pastor of the new church, and we'll go through that checklist.
[50:01] We get down to a budget. We put together a budget that includes everything for all the startup costs plus the first month of the new church. Okay, so we go through the rent for the first month and advertising or whatever.
[50:13] We want that in the budget. We take it to the pastor. He approves that. That hits his job to say, okay, we're in for this month. Then we try to get the other churches to help us raise that money through a pastor's luncheon and all that.
[50:24] It's really pretty complicated and a lot of work. Six to eight months we put into it. And so we do that. But then the new pastor, we want the reproducing church to help him as much as possible, but he's going to have to get out and raise his support.
[50:41] We don't cover it. The reproducing church doesn't necessarily cover all of it. So the best way, what we have recommended and we think works really well is to raise it temporarily.
[50:52] What I mean by that is $100 the first year, $80 the second, $60 the third, $40 the fourth, $20 the fifth, none after five years.
[51:05] It's on a reducing scale. That way it does several things. One, it helps the pastor of the supporting church to say, this guy's going to walk by faith.
[51:16] He's trusting God, you know, each year. Two, it means he's going to get out there and bust his tail to knock on doors and reach people because after one year he's going to lose 20% of his support or 25%, whatever churches want to.
[51:29] The problem is that you can never get churches to be consistent on what they want to do with these kind of things. And then the third thing it does is it helps the new church understand that after one year they've got to support this guy 20% or 25%.
[51:43] Now, what we have found in our church plants basically is about 20%, and I might be just guessing at this, the offerings are such that can cover the expenses of the new church and cover the pastor's salary of about 20%.
[52:05] One pastor I saw, and I liked what he did. I thought it was a good idea. He took all the money he got for support, put it in the church. The church paid him a full salary.
[52:16] And then as the support went down, the offerings from the church had to cover what, but he took everything he made, put it in the church. The church voted to pay him a salary, and they gave him a salary, but all his support went in.
[52:31] And then as that went down, the offerings had gone up enough to cover it, and it worked pretty well for him that way. But the reproducing church, they do various things as far as what they cover for the new church.
[52:46] If I also have a question, hold your hand up, Joe. Brother, what would the responsibility be of a sending church that's sending a missionary farther away than this just outskirts, like my sending church, sending us to Maine?
[53:02] We've had some, for example, the church that reproduced the church in England was in Ohio. They didn't have any churches over there. So they actually took a group of, I think, 15 or 20 people to London and helped distribute the John and Romans, stayed for the Get Acquainted meetings, and spent a lot of money to do it and did it right, and God blessed it.
[53:27] So it will be various levels, you know, as to what you can do. But I think the main responsibility is to just be, you know, try to help them as much as you can.
[53:42] It's hard to do when you're sending somebody overseas, that kind of thing. How would you involve other churches in the area? Since it will be in the states, the church plant that we'll be doing, would you get others involved in the local area?
[53:55] That's the plan at this time. Okay, you're talking about Maine, for example. Yes, sir. Okay. You're sending church is where? Swan and Ohio. Okay. Church in North Carolina.
[54:06] In North Carolina. Yes, sir. Okay, so you're sending church in North Carolina. Here's what my recommendation would be, and we have done this, and it has worked very well. I think there could be a difference between a sending church and a reproducing church.
[54:19] A sending church responsible for you, but a reproducing church responsible for the church in Maine. All right. For example, your pastor in North Carolina, has he ever been to Maine?
[54:33] Never been to Maine. So you're going to go up to Maine and go to a community, and you're going to start looking at buildings, and you're going to get on the phone and say, Pastor, I found these three buildings. Which one do you think I ought to get? What? What?
[54:45] How am I supposed to know what building to get? I've never been up there. He has no experience in Maine whatsoever. He can't help you. All right.
[54:56] Whereas if you have a church in Maine, and you let that church reproduce the church for you, just let them reproduce the church. And, you know, it may be we had a fellow from North Carolina go out to California, and he was out of Roger Baker's church up there, Calvary, King, North Carolina, went to college up there, and that was their sending church.
[55:24] And he wanted to go to Merced, California. And we had a pastor in California that wanted to plant a church in Merced. And it fell through.
[55:36] The guy he was going to use it fell through. I connected these people together. What I did was I get them all on a conference call, connected these two, and Brother Baker said, look, we'll serve as a sending church, but we will let that church out there serve as the reproducing church to start the new church.
[55:52] Because he knows about California. He knows what needs to be done there. And I don't. And I'm willing to work with him and let him handle that.
[56:03] It worked great. That's what I would recommend. And then that pastor in California, he was able to get other churches to help them there to do that. In Maine, you've got churches, Todd Bell, Jason Stover, Brother Morrison, a new pastor there that I didn't get to that meeting, you know, and others that can help.
[56:27] And those are the ones you need. And they can work together. But it can be put together to work to that place. Does that help answer your question? Thank you for listening to the Church Playing Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church.
[56:44] You can find the complete series of recorded sessions by logging on to www.sermonaudio.com forward slash Vision Baptist.
[56:54] Thank you.