[0:00] These sessions were recorded at the Church Planting 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.
[0:14] Welcome to the Church Planting Seminar, hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church. I'm glad you guys can make it today. I hope you guys, these next few days, will be heart-stirring and get you guys excited about planting churches, not only on the world front and in foreign countries, but also in North America.
[0:37] It's an honor today to have Dr. Jessops here. Dr. Jessops is the director, correct, of Baptist Church Planting Ministries. Been in the ministry for 39 years.
[0:48] Since 1993, you've helped churches start, plant over 110 churches in North America. Okay, 130 now.
[0:58] Okay, praise the Lord for that. Amen. To God be the glory for that. Just wanted to introduce him as he comes up here. He's going to be our main speaker. And if you guys would, I ask you guys to listen, pay attention, as Dr. Jessops comes up here and he presents his notes.
[1:11] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[1:48] Thank you. But I'm going to try to use this remote. Brother Gardner, you may have to help me when I get started. Where'd he go? There he is. You may have to help me figure this out, but you can, I'm sure, can help me along the way.
[2:00] It is a joy to be here. Thank you very much, Pastor Gardner. I don't know where he slipped to, but thank you very much for inviting me to come. I've heard about this ministry. I heard, first of all, from Brother Holmes when I was in Florida.
[2:12] I was in a meeting down there doing a missions conference. I believe it was last January. And he had mentioned it to me, and I was quite impressed with the idea of having a college for practical training, because that's what I believe needs to be done.
[2:31] And so I had put it in my memory to contact Pastor Gardner. I'd heard about him and his ministry in Peru for many years and had known about that.
[2:41] And several of the fellows that have gone out of here, Brother Bayshore, his pictures over there, and a couple of the others we have kept up with and been in conferences with.
[2:53] But it is a joy to be here. And they're bringing notes for this first session. While they're doing that, well, let's open with a word of prayer, and we'll get started and then move along from there.
[3:03] Father, we thank you for all you've done for us. And I pray for this day and the opportunities that we have. Lord, I pray for wisdom and strength today as I speak.
[3:16] I pray that you would use me, help me, Lord, to be clear in what needs to be given to these men and ladies.
[3:27] We thank you for each one who are here. We thank you, Lord, for calling us into the ministry. We thank you, Lord, for allowing us to serve you. And we pray, Lord, that this time will be profitable in their lives and profitable in my life as they challenge me and as they sharpen me today as well.
[3:45] And I thank you, Lord, that you've given me the life to be here today. And I am grateful for all you've done in our lives and in our ministry. We pray, Lord, that you will continue to bless.
[3:57] In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I probably ought to share a little bit about who I am. Most of you probably do not know me or know anything about me. My name is Earl Jessup. I went to Canada in 1972 as a church planting evangelist missionary.
[4:13] I was 21 years old when I got to Canada. I wasn't ready to start a church. I shouldn't have been ready at that time. And spent my first term working with a veteran missionary.
[4:24] I was with BIMI at the time. And then when we went back for our second term, we went to a little place called Pickle Lake, Ontario. I know you've never had any.
[4:35] Surely nobody's ever heard of Pickle Lake. No? No, I didn't think so. Pickle Lake is as far north in Ontario as you can drive. It's north of International Falls, 350 miles. We lived in a log cabin.
[4:47] My wife always wanted a log cabin until she got one. And it was built in 1932. Not like your log cabins down here, you know. And we went there. It's a little town of 1,200.
[4:57] The nearest town to us was 180 miles to the south. There wasn't anything else there. It was right at the end of the road. That's all there were. Other than an Indian village, it was about 25 miles to the south.
[5:10] That was it. So we had 1,200 people to work with. And we went there to start a church. The Lord blessed in a great way. In five years, we turned it over to a Canadian to pastor that work.
[5:22] He was fully supported by the church. They had $100,000 worth of property. The church was averaging about 125. And now, you know, I say 1,200 people, but actually what happened was it was a very transient community.
[5:36] People would move in and out. And so when people would move in, we'd win some of them to the Lord. They would stay. And others would move out. New people would move in. And we'd win some of them to the Lord. And so we really worked with about 3,000 people over that five years because new people would come along.
[5:50] We'd win them to Christ. And they'd stay because of the church. And everybody else would leave. We'd get a new crowd in. But the Lord blessed that ministry in a great way. And we left there in 1983, six days short of five years, having turned it over to a Canadian.
[6:07] We went to Fort Francis, Ontario, to start our second church, which is right across the border from International Falls, Minnesota. Now, that community, about 9,000 people, was a lumber mill.
[6:20] The first town, Pickle Lake, was copper mining. And this was a lumber town, an old town, very established town. And in the 1980s, church planting changed.
[6:31] There were two major factors that caused that here in the United States that really hurt church planting, not only in the United States, but also in Canada and in other places around the world.
[6:44] We had the political problems during that time, but we also had some religious problems. One was Jimmy Swaggart. The other was Jimmy Baker. You remember how those two guys in the 1980s had their reputations completely done away with?
[7:00] Well, it doesn't matter who you are. It affected all of us. It really affected us. And it changed the thinking of people concerning preachers who were going in to start churches.
[7:13] Another problem that we faced during that period of time was the IRA, the Irish Republican Army. And the word fundamental was attached to them.
[7:24] You remember that. And those of us who consider ourselves as fundamental Baptists, now the word fundamental just means basics. Just get back to the basics. That's what it means. But during that time, that word was attached to militancy.
[7:37] It has been ever since then. And we call ourselves fundamental Baptists. And you know today what that word brings. And it brings a connotation, not a good thing. So for the majority of people, when you go into a town to start a church alone, you have to overcome that term.
[7:57] And the second thing you have to overcome is the fact that no one knows you. So when we went to Fort Francis, we were facing those problems. Nobody knew us. I got kicked off the Christian radio station.
[8:09] I didn't know the Lutherans ran the station and have a problem with baptism by immersion. How was I supposed to know that, you know? I got kicked off the Christian station. So now the people in town are saying, you know, the Christians don't like this guy.
[8:22] You know, it was really difficult to build a church there. God blessed. In five years, I was not able to get it fully self-supporting. But they are today. I have their own building and so on.
[8:33] And because of some physical problems with my back, I was put in the hospital, had to turn it over to someone else. But it was at that time, it was during that time in Fort Francis that I began to rethink my thinking for church planning.
[8:47] Because I began to, as I began to look at my life and follow this out and calculate out how many churches I was going to start, you know, my lifetime, I wasn't going to get much done.
[8:59] And so I began to really look at the Bible from a different perspective on church planting. And I was the only missionary at that time with BIMI that had started more than one church in 14 years in Canada.
[9:18] And I just didn't see us getting a lot done with missions dollars. And I thought we were wasting a lot of money. And God began to use that in my life, took me to a church in Manitoba where I became pastor of the church.
[9:30] And in five years, four years, we started five churches out of our church. Here's basically what we did. We took our congregation, went to another community. We handed out, we knocked on every door, handed out literature, invited them to some special meetings.
[9:47] That's what we called it when we first began. And we basically held our Sunday night service in their town. That's what we did. We took our nursery workers.
[9:57] We took our ushers, our special music, everything that we did on Sunday night. We just picked it up, moved it to another community, and started, rented a building, paid all the expenses ourselves, and held our Sunday night service in their community.
[10:15] We had, in Manitoba, we had 27 towns. I believe it was 27 towns of 3,000 people or more, and not one had an independent Baptist church. Winnipeg, in southern Manitoba, there were only three in all of southern Manitoba at that time.
[10:31] Ours, one that was already starting to go contemporary back in the late 1980s, and then a third one that was downtown in the inner city.
[10:42] That was it. And outside of Winnipeg, there weren't any, and so we began to pick the larger centers and go in there and start churches. And we started five churches in a four-year period.
[10:54] In our fifth year, we helped two other churches start churches. What began to happen was we had other churches looking at what we were doing and saying, Look, can you help us do the same thing?
[11:06] And so I went to two other churches and helped them, and we used them and began to set up the ministry, which became Baptist Church Planning Ministry.
[11:18] Our ministry during this same time from 1987 through 1993 grew from 120 to 300, which was one of the largest churches in Canada at that time.
[11:30] And we'd started the five churches, and God blessed it in a tremendous way. And as I began to get contacts for this church planning and getting invitations to travel, I just didn't feel it was right to travel and try to pastor.
[11:46] I just didn't see that was something that was appropriate for me to do. Other guys can do it, and it works out fine. My wife and I began to pray about it, and in June of 1993, we resigned the church.
[12:01] And August the 1st of 1993, we started Baptist Church Planning Ministry, which basically our ministry, we set it up designed to help churches reproduce churches.
[12:11] We have a display set up over here. There's some literature there that some of the things you'll hear over these next sessions will be there as well. And we've learned.
[12:21] We've learned so much, even during that first five years that I was pastoring with the seven churches that we helped there. And we've grown over these years in learning things about church planning.
[12:33] And we developed a ministry basically to go in and help churches reproduce churches. Now, our primary focus has been the United States and Canada.
[12:45] We moved back to the States in 1993. We moved to Rosemont, Minnesota, First Baptist Church. There's the home church for our ministry here in the States. And we stayed there until 2001, where I returned to Canada.
[12:58] And we live in Barrie, Ontario, which is the Heritage Baptist Church. It's the home church for our ministry in Canada. We really have two distinct ministries that are joined by a joint ministry agreement.
[13:09] Canada sort of makes you set it up that way. And so these two ministries work in combination with one another to help churches in Canada and the United States, but also around the world.
[13:19] Seven other countries we've been involved in, in Kenya. We were in Guatemala. We helped set up a ministry there, how that's going. We just turned it over to them. I went down there and taught, basically similar to what I'm doing right here.
[13:31] And then in Australia, France, Scotland, and Trinidad, other countries. I don't remember all of them. But the Lord has been very good to us since 1993.
[13:46] It's around 130 churches. I'm not exactly sure because over the last two years, I've not been able to really be involved a great deal. This is the first time that I have spoken like this in two years.
[14:01] I have done very little in being in many of the church plants, only one or two that I've been able to be in. And that's because in January of 2010, I was diagnosed with metastatic bladder cancer in the lung and given six months to live.
[14:16] I've had three surgeries since that time. The last one in April, I just finished 15 treatments, 15 weekday treatments of radiation, 600 doses of radiation with the tumor that is now inoperable, which is around the bronchial.
[14:33] So if I get tired, if I sit down, if I have to take a break, that's just the way it's going to be. But you pray for me. Like I said, this is the first time I've spoken to this extent in over two years.
[14:49] And I'm thankful the Lord has given me a wonderful staff to carry our ministry. Jeremy Rowland, he came on our staff. It was because, really, you have to understand, I don't have time to really tell the whole story, but it started in 2007 when I fell off a ladder, which I should have died there.
[15:12] And that led to an inflamed breastbone, which they thought was a heart problem, which caused me to take a stress test, which caused my heart to stop for 35 seconds where I should have died there.
[15:25] And that led to putting a pacemaker in, which restricted the blood flow to my heart enough that they did a CT scan to find the tumor in the lung.
[15:38] And so had I not fallen off the ladder, they would never have found the tumor. And so we're thankful for what the Lord has done in our lives. And so we found it pretty early. In January, when the second tumor showed up, they said, you know, I have six months if I don't take chemotherapy, which I did not take.
[15:55] Well, I took one treatment of it. And so Brother Rowland, when my heart stopped, we were setting in place for him to come on staff in 2012. And he called and said, no, I'm going to come right away.
[16:07] And he found a pastor for his church. It was a church that we had helped reproduce in Florida. And he had taught for me before and very much of our philosophy of ministry. And so he put in motion to be on staff by the January the 1st, 2010.
[16:22] And it was the 18th of January that I found out the cancer was terminal. And so the Lord put him in place along with another staff member. And this fall, we've had five church plants that we've been involved in.
[16:33] And it has been one of the best sessions, one of the best seasons of church planting. Most of our church plants are in September, early to mid-October, late October, and then in the spring, March through early May.
[16:50] We squeeze them into that period of time. And I'm going to go over, you know, how we do this. Now, in the United States, it's a little bit different. In some of the other fields, this can be done anywhere around, and it should be done anywhere around the world because it's biblical.
[17:03] Okay? We want to follow some biblical pattern here, and that's what we want to get into. Did we get those notes back yet? Walking in the door. Great.
[17:13] There he is. He's the guy we're looking for. We're going to just, you know, Pastor and I have talked. We're just going to take this as we go. What I'm able to do, we're going to do.
[17:26] What I can't do, we won't do, and somebody else will do. And if I'm able to continue on, my wife was going to stay with her mother in South Carolina, and she said, if you're speaking six times, I want to be there.
[17:37] So she's here, but she decided to go shopping this morning. So she'll be back for lunch. She's about my lunch. One of the things I have done to fight this cancer while they're handing that out is I've changed my diet. I have a straight vegan diet, which means I eat no meat, no eggs, no dairy.
[17:53] I still love to hunt, so it's now shoot and release. So, you know, I wanted to shoot a hog so bad in South Carolina this last week. I went hog hunting this last week.
[18:04] The friend I was with shot a 220-pound boar, but I didn't get to shoot any. But even if I shot, I wouldn't get to eat it. That's terrible, isn't it? You know, you're supposed to eat what you shoot. But anyway, I've changed my diet for that purpose, and maybe it's helped.
[18:21] You know, I'm on a lot of vitamins and minerals, so the Lord's been very good to us, very good to us. And I'm thankful for a wife who has fought this battle with me and helped me along the way.
[18:37] I want to thank Brother Canfield for his work and effort in this. He's certainly done a great job in getting ready. Now, the notes that have been handed to you are the first two sessions that we're going to talk about.
[18:50] One is a biblical philosophy of church planning, which these notes come from, been adapted from Brother Robert McKeever, a friend of ours. There were five of us who started church planning conferences.
[19:02] Pastor, I don't know if you knew this, ever heard about those church planning conferences that Brother Townsley and Brother McKeever and Brother Crichton and Brother Bales and I started. So back in, I want to say, 1999, by 2007, every one of us had been touched.
[19:23] Brother McKeever is now in heaven, had a brain tumor. Brother Townsley lost his voice for 18 months. Brother Bales and his wife were in a very serious car accident.
[19:34] She was very seriously injured. In 2004, I lost a grandson, 15 months old, very suddenly. My son, from that point on, just turned from God.
[19:45] He's coming back to the Lord now, for which we're very thankful. And then in 2007, Brother Crichton, the last one of the five, called me one day and he said, you know, I hesitate to get up in the morning.
[19:56] He said, every one of you guys have been touched. Within six months, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Shortly after that, as Brother Crichton was getting ready to turn his church over to his son, in 2007, the same week that I fell off the ladder and broke my back in two places, very serious concussion, broke my collarbone, collapsed the lung.
[20:21] His son, he found out that his son was an extreme hyper-Calvinist. And his son would not leave the church. He had to fire him. And his son took half his church and started a new church.
[20:35] His faith promise went from 180,000 to 90,000. All five of us. And, of course, we were not able to continue the church planning schools that we were doing.
[20:47] And I honestly believe that Satan does not like what we're doing. I believe that. And Brother McKeever, these notes that you have here before you.
[21:00] Brother McKeever is one of the men who helped us get this started. All right, let's see if I can figure out how to use this. And no connection available.
[21:14] So are we on? Let's see. Let's see. You knew you'd be up here, didn't you? There you go. Good. All right, we're going to look at a biblical philosophy of church planting.
[21:27] And these notes are adopted from Brother McKeever. I hope you have your Bible. These first couple of sessions, we're going to be looking at the scripture. So turn with me, please, to Acts 1 and verse 8.
[21:38] And the definition, and one of the things I probably wish I had done, this material that you're seeing here, there are 25 sessions that in 2009, shortly after my heart quit, I was able to get this done.
[21:55] I'm thankful I did. I put together 25 sessions on video of church planting. And we got the video done with two different cameras.
[22:05] And so these sessions are a part of that material. As I was going through the begin today, I hadn't looked at them for quite some time. I mean, until this week, I've noticed a couple of corrections that need to be made when they reprint the notes again.
[22:22] And so, all right, okay, so I just touch the screen or slide it over. All right, I did.
[22:37] Aren't these things wonderful, Brother Gardner? I tell you, just. There we go.
[22:48] I like that. That's pretty good. Thanks. All right, good.
[22:59] I can't read it. I'll have to look at my notes. But one of the things I kind of wish I had done and has been suggested that I do is another session on the church.
[23:12] Sadly, most of us, and I don't know about your pastor, we haven't had a chance to talk about what his background is, but most of us were taught a Protestant Baptist position on the church rather than an ancient Baptist position on the church, which is, and you'll find it in my notes, I use the term local church, local church, local church.
[23:30] You shouldn't have to say that. The only church there is is a local assembly of believers. When you look at this definition, the New Testament church is an organized body of saved and baptized believers united together for the main purpose of carrying out the Great Commission.
[23:48] That's what a church is. And that is, we have been given the responsibility of carrying the Great Commission to the entire world. Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, which we'll look at again and again in this period of time, says this, Now, in this verse, it clearly tells us where we are to be witnesses.
[24:31] Now, we're going to talk about that word witness in a little bit, but it is, first of all, in Jerusalem. Now, I haven't been down to the Atlanta area for years. This is the first time I've been down here.
[24:42] Well, I flew in one time to do a conference for bio for their mission organization to teach at their candid school or whatever. But other than that, it's been a long time since I've been to Atlanta.
[24:55] I never spent a lot of time here. So I know very little about this area, but this is your Jerusalem. It is important that you reach this area with the gospel.
[25:06] But not only do you have your Jerusalem, you have your Judea as well. Now, your Jerusalem is your home area.
[25:18] Your Judea is the area around your home area. Now, let me stop here just a moment and say this. The problem that we have in church planning today, Well, let me back up and see if I can give you this note correctly.
[25:40] In the book that Brother Chappell and Brother Reed wrote, what's the name of that book? Church Still Works. That's it. A survey was done between, I want to make sure I get this right, 1950, 1970.
[25:58] I have these notes written somewhere else. So for every 1,000 churches, 1,400 churches were started during that period of time. Between 1970 and 1990, for every 1,000 churches that were started, for every 1,000 churches, there were 750 started.
[26:18] Between 1990 and 2010, that next 20-year period, for every 1,000 churches that are in existence, 250 were started.
[26:33] How did we get this way? Now, listen, that's the reason America's in the state that it is. All right. Okay. Now, that's just the case. All right. But why? Why did we get that downward trend?
[26:44] What happened really between, in the 1970s, what happened in the 1970s? Now, you know, I could be wrong about this, but I personally think it was a book called America's 100 Largest Sunday Schools by Elmer Towns.
[27:01] And what happened was, between 1950 and 1970, guys were leaving and going out and planting churches, and they were starting churches, and pastors were willing to let their people go and start church.
[27:15] But in 1970, when this mega church movement really got started, and I'm not against the bus ministry. I'm for it. I am for it. But what happened was, guys began working to bring people in to their church from their Judea, rather than going out to their Judea and planting a church, and putting it where they were supposed to.
[27:39] They would bus them in 20, 30, 40 miles. Years ago, I was with Sheldon Smith. We were having lunch together, and my pastor was sitting there, and my pastor had a large bus ministry at First Baptist Church.
[27:56] My daughter was their first teenage bus captain. They were going to close the route, and she said, you can close her, you can give it to me. She took it, and she rebuilt the bus route. And when I'd go home from traveling and was there for visitation, soul winning, I'd go visit her bus route, and it was easy to get in because I'd just say, I'm Susanna's dad, and they'd let me in and so on.
[28:15] We're sitting there having lunch, and he said, we're talking about a book, writing a book. And I said to Brother Smith, I said, I'm not sure you'd want to publish a book I wrote. He said, why?
[28:25] I said, well, I don't know that your philosophy is the same as mine. I said, for example, did you believe people ought to be in church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night?
[28:36] He said, well, absolutely they should be. He said, did you run your buses Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night? Well, no. I think Lee Robertson did, I think.
[28:51] I'm not sure. But he said, and I said, why? Well, it's too far. I said, then why wouldn't you plant a church out there where they live so they can go to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night?
[29:02] Plant a church where they live. That's your Judea. He said, reach your Jerusalem, reach your Judea. I had a pastor just this past week say to me, you know, Brother Joseph, we want to plant a church.
[29:15] And I said, then plant one where you have four or five families that are driving 30 minutes to your church. Put a church out there where they obviously don't have a church that they need to have in their community.
[29:26] Put a church out there. That's your Judea. If you look at a map, you've got Jerusalem, you have Judea around that area. He said, look, reach your Jerusalem, reach your Judea. Oh, well, we're doing that.
[29:37] We're bringing them in here. No, the only, I wrote an article in the Cultivator. Our newsletter is over there. And I don't know when I wrote it. Some years ago. I wrote an article on this very, the unevangelized fields of America.
[29:50] Do you know where they are? They're 20 and 30 minutes from our independent Baptist churches. And here's the reason. The only people, you know, I go to, I see pastors all the time and they say to me, oh, yeah, well, we're reaching that area.
[30:03] We got three or four families that live out in that area. We're reaching that area with the gospel. We go out there soul winning. The only people they reach from that area are people who move into that area that already believe like them, that are willing to drive that distance.
[30:17] They don't reach anybody in that area through soul winning and get them to drive that distance to church. They won't do it. I was, in fact, we're helping this pastor start a church this year.
[30:30] I was teaching at his institute. And I was in a Sunday night service getting ready for the meeting the next week.
[30:46] And so I said this in the Sunday night service. And so the other pastor that was there, he said to me, he said, this pastor of the church went to this other pastor and said to him, look, you think Brother Jessup can, you know, take some criticism?
[31:00] And the other guy was a good friend of mine. I said, oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. He'd be happy to. Oh, yeah, good. So he said, so the other pastor came to me and he told me, he said, you know, he's concerned with what you said because he has people that drive 30 and 40 minutes to his church.
[31:16] So he's coming to your first session on Monday night. I said, fine, no problem. So I don't know whether I was at this point, but anyway, I got through a session and asked for questions.
[31:27] He said, so Brother Jessup, what you're saying is, you know, these people who live out here, we should, you know, we ought to plant a church in that. I said, yeah, you ought to. So his assistant, who was not quite as bright as the pastor, said this.
[31:39] He said, so Brother Jessup, you're saying we should cater to their carnal desires and make it easy for them to go to church. I said, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. I mean, how do you respond to something like that?
[31:55] You want to say, well, of course, you idiot. I mean, yeah, come on. You know, you want to make it easy for them to get to church. A church that believes right, you know, that stands right.
[32:10] So we're to reach our Jerusalem. We're to reach our Judea. We're to reach our Samaria. Now, I don't know what your thinking is on this, but my thinking is Samaria is a cross-cultural church planting situation.
[32:24] We need to go across our culture and reach these people with the gospel. And I know that that's much of what you're doing right here. That has to be done. Got to reach that area with the gospel.
[32:37] And we are to reach the uttermost part of the earth. And that means our ministry, for example, I just said to this pastor the other day, we require three things to help a church start another church.
[32:48] And that is a commitment to the church plant by your church, a pastor for the new church, and a commitment to a missions program.
[33:00] I do not want to help a church that's not going to have a missions program. Reaching the uttermost part of the earth. I was down at Pensacola years ago, years and years ago. I taught there for 10 years every other year in their pastoral theology program.
[33:15] And when I first went down to meet with them and explained to them, I told them that. And one of the good, a good friend, Del Johnson, who was there at the time, he said, so, Brother Jessup, you, wait, you believe that a church ought to have a missions program before they support their pastor?
[33:32] I said, well, to be biblical, they should. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, the church at Philippi invested in Paul when he went to Thessalonica right after he started their church.
[33:46] Surely they were not self-supporting. They had a missions program. That is a clear biblical example of a new church having a missions program. Therefore, we ought to follow that example.
[33:58] That's the first mentioned principle of that in the scriptures. Okay. Well, I never thought about that. But that's the way it ought to be. We ought to have, we ought to be reaching the uttermost part of the earth.
[34:09] Now, there are three important words in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8. First of all, we need to move along here. First of all, the word power. That word dunamis is there. Power referring to the help or aid of the Holy Spirit.
[34:23] Second, the word witness. Now, this word witness is the word martus. It's not witness like go out and tell somebody about the Lord. That's not what this word means. This word means sacrificer of all, even life itself.
[34:35] These people were willing to sacrifice. Now, we'll talk about this later. I don't think in this session. I think in the next session. Most people in our churches don't realize their responsibility in church planting.
[34:55] They see you men as church planters. Okay. I go to churches all the time. And I'll say, will all the church planters please stand?
[35:07] Maybe I'll do that tonight. I don't know. But, you know, very few people stand. My wife will stand. So on. But they don't stand. You know why? Because they don't understand who real church planters are.
[35:19] The church planters in the scripture, the first church planters were laymen. They weren't preachers. They were just ordinary people in the church.
[35:31] And when we went out in Winnipeg, when I was pastoring, we started. This was really not very smart to do, but we did it. We started two churches on the same Sunday.
[35:42] We held two 13-day meetings back-to-back. In June of 1990, our people went to church every night for the entire month, except for a Saturday night between these two meetings.
[35:56] We started on a Sunday. We started on Sunday. We started on Sunday, went through Friday, skipped Saturday, started on Sunday, went through 13 days to the next Friday.
[36:06] And it was 45 minutes east of Winnipeg for the first church plant, 45 minutes west of Winnipeg for the second church plant. And then on July 15th, we had the first Sunday for both those new churches.
[36:19] In our church, we didn't go soul winning one time for an entire month. We didn't have soul winning at our church. We didn't have one youth meeting.
[36:31] We didn't have one ladies meeting. We had nothing but Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night service at our church. Everything else was in those two communities. Everything. Now, I'm telling you, our people had to make some sacrifices for that because they had to get off work early.
[36:49] We had eight grand that we had to pay to do it. It was much cheaper back then, but $8,000 to pay for it. But now, not everybody went every night.
[37:00] You know, I want you to understand that. But everybody was involved. Everybody. Teenagers would babysit for families so that mom and dad could go. They'd babysit for free, take care of the children so mom and dad could go to the meeting.
[37:10] We didn't need these little kids there. And so they would do that. But what were they? They were witnesses. They were martus. They were sacrificers of all. Now, notice the word both.
[37:22] All at the same time, simultaneously. Let me move on here. There we go. The main mission of the church's missions and our mission field is the world.
[37:34] Let me take my watch off. Not that it's going to matter. But anyway, let's move on here. All right.
[37:44] Now, let's look at the twofold goal of missions. First of all is evangelism. Evangelism is preach to reach each. We are to preach to reach every person we can.
[38:00] We cannot fulfill the Great Commission without soul winning. All right. We have to get out there and evangelize. We have to do what we can to reach the world. Secondly, it is church planting.
[38:12] It's church planting. The immediate objective of missions is to win the loss, but the ultimate objective of missions is to plant churches.
[38:26] That's the role that we have. We are to plant churches. And as indispensable as evangelism is to missions, it's incomplete without the formation of local churches or churches.
[38:41] I appreciate those who go down to communities in Mexico or other places around the world and distribute John and Romans. I appreciate that a great deal.
[38:53] But without planting a church, you have not fulfilled the Great Commission. You haven't done it. I'm glad that we have that. I'm glad that we're getting the gospel out.
[39:04] In Canada right now, we are undertaking to put a John and Romans in every home in Canada. It will be their 10 million homes in Canada.
[39:17] And we have finished Newfoundland. We have finished PEI. We're working on Nova Scotia. We're working our way west. And we have only begun to scratch the surface. We've had some contacts from that.
[39:29] But, you know, as important as that is, it's not as important as going into these communities, planting a church, and saturating that area with the Word of God as we do that.
[39:43] So it's great that we have evangelism, but it's incomplete without the formation of a local church. I better flip that over. Now, planting churches involves sowing the seed, and that seed is the Word of God.
[39:55] That's the very thing we're talking about here with the John and Romans. It's important that we use that. But the fact is, we've got to have the churches planted.
[40:09] So in church planting, we sow the seed, but it's God that gives the increase. And once a church is established, our goal is to see that church become indigenous. Now, we use John and Romans exclusively for our church plants.
[40:25] We have found that they have a great shelf life. We have done over, I don't know, 3 million John and Romans in the United States and Canada and other places around the world. We've been able to use some – we have some sources that have helped us a great deal in that.
[40:42] And we're thankful to have that. And we've seen some great results from that, you know, as far as people coming much – a long time after the church has been planted.
[40:52] And we're grateful for that. Now let's talk about this indigenous principle of missions. The definition basically is native or natural to a country or area.
[41:08] And I believe that church planting done biblically, biblical church planting involves laymen in that country.
[41:18] For example, when we went to Kenya, I went over to Kenya to work with Brother Robert Mickey. And I taught at his Bible college there. And I taught in the mornings.
[41:29] We planted a church in the evenings. We went out to Shrew to John and Romans throughout the community, held the meetings there. And there were 60 people, I believe, saved.
[41:43] Not one of them was led to Christ by a white person. They did all the work. And I made a statement to them that it just – I could tell when I made the statement that they, like, almost recoiled at it.
[41:57] I said, look, if we equip you properly and train you biblically, then you're able to plant churches without us. And I said to Robert Mickey after, I said, why did I get that – he said, they've never been taught that.
[42:13] Other than for me, they've never heard that. All the other missionaries are saying, no, we're here to do it for you. That's not indigenous. Not at all. And I know we're – I'm talking to guys that are going to various places.
[42:25] And it is native or natural to a country or area. So there are three questions that – or a question that we need to answer. When is a church indigenous? Three things have to be true.
[42:37] First of all, when it is self-governing or autonomous. Secondly, when it is self-supporting or sufficient. Thirdly, when it is self-propagating, reproducing.
[42:48] Now, remember that a church is more than an organization. It is a living organism. We'll talk about that in the next session. It's a living organism.
[43:02] And organisms do two things. One, they grow. And two – come on, slide over. I don't know what I did there.
[43:16] Did I lose it? Let's see. That will come back. Oh.
[43:37] Brother Chris, it looks like the – oh, it's coming. Here we go. Throw.
[43:48] Throw. Reproduce. There we go. I got it. An organism grows and reproduces. Now, let me ask you this question. If a church never reproduces a church, is it indigenous?
[44:09] Look, there are churches all across the United States never reproduced a church. Are they indigenous? They're saying to you guys going to the fields. Are they indigenous? They're saying to you guys going to the fields.
[44:21] You get out there and you plant indigenous churches. You make sure that it's indigenous. You know, you got to get out there and you got to start churches and then start another church and start another church. They're not doing it.
[44:33] They're not planting churches. That's why we're in a mess that we are. And if a church never reproduces a church, is it indigenous? Now, I know you guys, you know, you're out there trying to raise money, you know, to get to the field and you can't say some things.
[44:49] I can say to some of these guys, and I do, you know. I don't need their money. I'd like to have their money, but, you know. But we've got to get back to this.
[45:02] All right, let's move on here. There we go. The missionary church planter. First of all, the pastor is called by the Lord to a church, but a missionary church planter is called by the Lord to a city, all right, to plant a church there, not to a group of people.
[45:22] Maybe I'll have time to talk about that a little later, and I probably will. The work of the church planter involves three factors. First of all, it involves sonship.
[45:36] That's soul winning or evangelism. We've already talked about that. Secondly, the work of a church planter involves discipleship, teaching converts. It's, you know, we win them to Christ, we disciple them.
[45:53] And sadly, they want you to do that on the field, but many churches here don't have discipleship programs. One of the things that I really work on with these new pastors is get a discipleship program.
[46:05] If you're going to build your church, build it through discipleship. Brother Jeremy Rowland, who is now my assistant, when he was in North Port, Florida, had to build his church twice because of a hurricane.
[46:16] Hurricane came through, destroyed everything. People left. He had to start again, did it a second time, and he did it through discipleship. That's how he did it, by training the converts. And thirdly, leadership, training leaders.
[46:28] And I'm thinking about doing a session tomorrow on this area of training leaders. Excuse me just a minute.
[46:45] Smart for me to throw one of these B12 under my tongue right now. I am really sorry about this. But that's what we need to do in our churches.
[46:59] We have to train leaders. And many of our churches here, the problem we've got here in the States and in Canada, and I'm really working on it in Canada, I have more of a voice there, is our church planning has outstripped our training leaders.
[47:16] We have 16 churches without pastors right now in Canada. And part of it is they really have the philosophy and have the grasp of church planning, but they don't have the grasp of training leaders to take these churches that are being planted.
[47:34] We're now 10 years into it, and some guys are saying, okay, I need to move on or whatever, and we don't have men to take them. And we can't depend on men from the States any longer to do that.
[47:45] And so, but the same is true here in the States of training leaders, and I'm sure there's a lot of lack of leadership here in that area.
[48:04] All right, C, the ultimate goal for the church is to become indigenous. We've already talked about this, self-governing, self-supporting. I think what I have to do is wait for that thing to stop spinning, Brother Chris.
[48:18] Maybe when it stops spinning, that's when I can move on to the next one. And self-propagating. Those are the three areas that that's our ultimate goal is for the church to become indigenous. We've already talked about that. Now, notice the completion of the church planning process.
[48:33] The church planter leaves. It's twofold. The church planter leaves and begins the process again. Now, when that happens, he is an evangelist church planter, evangelist missionary church planter.
[48:47] Now, this is one who some of you are, and I don't necessarily think this is the way it even ought to be done on the foreign field. I really believe that those you guys that are going out to other fields around the world, I think you ought to go in there with the purpose of reproducing a church.
[49:07] And if you want to stay there and lead that church to reproduce churches out of that church and be a part of that church, I think that's great. I don't see a problem with that at all. I think it's far better to use that church to continue to reproduce churches and reproduce churches and reproduce churches than to say, okay, the way I did it, the way I was taught was you go out, you go to the mission field, you start a church, you get a pastor for that church.
[49:33] And once you get a pastor for that church, then you leave, you go out here and you start from scratch again and you start all over and do it by yourself and another community. I just think that's crazy. I think it's crazy to do it that way.
[49:44] So we have the second type is a church planter that stays and reproduces churches out of the local church, a pastor slash church planter.
[49:59] So there's the evangelist slash church planter. We have some of those in Canada. We just helped a fellow start a church in Canada. And this is the second one that or the third one that he's done that we've helped, but he goes through a local church.
[50:15] He doesn't take the responsibility of starting or starting the church. He goes through the local church and local church does it. All right. Let's. There we go. Evangelism is not complete until the evangelize become evangelist.
[50:28] And the great commission is not complete until the church reproduces churches. Now, I do want to talk about this matter of the three misconceptions that hinder church planning.
[50:40] First of all, first misconception is what constitutes a mission field. All right. Are we OK with these notes? Everybody with? By the way, if you want to stop along the way and say, hey, I got a question.
[50:50] No problem. OK. And let me say this as well. I do not mind being challenged. OK. Because I know some of the things I'm going to share with you, it's going to challenge your thinking.
[51:04] And you're going to say, whoa, wait a second. I don't. I just don't. That doesn't fit with with what I've been taught or what I think. OK. That's OK. You can't offend me.
[51:16] You can't. All right. Because I've offended a lot of other people. And so I can take it. All right. So you feel free to just challenge me all you want. It's not a problem at all.
[51:28] All right. So the misconception of what constitutes a mission field. You see, it's been reduced to geography. But our mission field is the world.
[51:40] Now let's talk about this. You see the sign. I think it was baptism admissions. You're now entering the mission field. Well, we really are. You know. It's not over there and here.
[51:53] And the sad thing is, I mean, we've had churches who change pastors or whatever. And the pastor said, well, we're dropping you because we don't believe in home missions. Well, you know, I think you'll see when we get done by tomorrow.
[52:08] Why it is so important that we plant churches in America. You know, and what can be accomplished financially getting you guys that are going to other fields out there because of that.
[52:21] But our mission field is the world. Now, this is something I wanted to talk about. The average church's misconception of the church planter. I mentioned just a moment ago. You see, they don't understand that church planting should be a ministry of the church.
[52:38] I mean, I don't know. I've been in, I don't know that I've ever been in a church, maybe one or two, that had, you know how you have your bulletin on Sunday and it says, you know, ministries.
[52:55] And it has bus ministry and soul winning ministry and music ministry and deaf ministry. That's normally the deacons, but, you know, you know, you know, the various ministries of the church.
[53:10] Have you ever been in one that said church planting ministry? A church that said, we got a church planting ministry. You know, it's listed right there as a part of our ministries.
[53:25] You know, I think if the Jerusalem church had any, and we'll talk about this tonight. I'm going to preach the third session that I normally would teach. I'm going to go ahead and preach it tonight.
[53:37] And if you can't be here for tonight, if you're going somewhere else, I have some DVDs of that session that are taken from the class that I taught.
[53:51] But, you know, it's important for our people to realize they're church planters. They're church planters.
[54:04] Thirdly, the third misconception is the church planter's misconception of building strong indigenous churches. And the cultivator that's laying back there, I believe the main article that I wrote is welfare.
[54:19] It's on welfare. And that's really one of the things that I want to talk about here. There are three common errors that a church planter makes. First of all, he becomes dependent upon outside support.
[54:36] Never giving up if he's going to pastor. And in Canada, we have a lot of this. We have guys who come to Canada, and maybe not from the States, but even Canadians. We go out and help them start a church, and they forever stay on mission support.
[54:52] Give it up. You know, let that step out by faith. You know, second, dependent upon the church planter, where the church is completely dependent upon the church planter, rather than being dependent upon the Lord.
[55:08] And thirdly, dependent on outside leadership. The church needs to be independent of those things. We have to be careful that we do not develop a welfare mentality.
[55:20] That's what hinders church planning. It's when the church thinks that somebody else has to do it. I remember the first church that I started, I don't know why she did this. My secretary came up to me one day, and she said, you know, we could use a typewriter.
[55:34] Why don't you write your churches and have them, you know, send us a typewriter? I said, you want a typewriter, get it yourself. It's not their job to take care of this church.
[55:46] We can get a typewriter here. We never wrote churches and asked them to take care of those kind of things. You know, we didn't want them taking care of it. We want to take care of it ourselves as a church.
[55:58] Now, let's move quickly. Number five, the church planters need to build missionary-hearted churches. Churches started by missionaries should be supporting missions.
[56:10] We've already talked about this a little bit. And so, and I personally believe they should start supporting missionaries right from the very beginning. Right from the very beginning. When you get out there and you get a church started, you alone should be giving something to missions that can be used and be the example to the remainder of those who are attending to be out there and do this.
[56:35] Because God blesses a church that gives to missions. He does. And God's promises, God promises his plan. All your church's needs.
[56:46] Philippians chapter 4, verse 19, which follows that passage which I was talking about, about the church at Philippi investing in the life of Paul as he went to Thessalonica.
[56:57] And Harold Seitler said, if you want a healthy church, put it on a missionary diet. Now, in conclusion, let's get through this. I'm not doing too badly, I don't think, here.
[57:08] We need to get back to the basics of planting churches in America, North America. We really do. We really need to get back to the basics in this area.
[57:21] Because church planting is the only answer. I mean, there isn't any other answer for this country. And who knows what the political landscape will be in the next year or two years.
[57:36] But listen, I'm telling you, and I know I'm speaking to the choir here, you can't count on the Republicans or the Tea Party to take care of this thing. You just can't do it. They're not going to do it.
[57:48] Not going to do it. And church planting is the only answer for the world. I think you'll see that when we get done. If we don't plant churches here in America, we're not going to have the money to send our missionaries out.
[58:03] Okay? We're not going to have that. So we can increase our missionary force by increasing our mission source. And that is planting churches.
[58:20] It is planting churches. No doubt it is. It's not just money, but it's... We get the majority of our new missionaries come from new churches.
[58:32] They don't come from old, stale, old churches. They don't. They come from young churches. Unless something happens where leadership changes in a church that creates youth and vitality in a church, it's very difficult to get that to happen in most of the old churches.
[58:55] All right? We're going to take a break here, and we'll start probably 10 minutes or so. If you enjoy that, say amen real quick. Amen. Thank you very much, Dr. Jessops.
[59:07] Right now what we do is the ladies provided some cookies and drinks, so you guys got the next 10 minutes to go over there and get juiced up, and we'll start back up in 10 minutes on the dot. Thank you very much.
[59:17] Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Church Playing Conference hosted by the Our Generation Training Center and Vision Baptist Church. You can find the complete series of recorded sessions by logging on to www.sermonaudio.com forward slash Vision Baptist.
[59:37] The following day, theusion bunun is tuned.