In October, the Missions Commission of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship (WAGF) held its seventh global missions congress in Nairobi, Kenya. Hundreds of national leaders, missions directors, and missionaries gathered to both celebrate the progress of missionary work in every region of the world, as well as from every region of the world.
Leaders also heard many calls to further engage missionary sending and church planting work from the global South as well as the urgent need to champion the role of women and the next generation in that missional work. As is common of Pentecostal ministry philosophy, much of the topic of discussion centered around church planting.
Within the next 10 years, the WAGF is planting close to 625,000 churches throughout the world—an initiative they are calling MM33. If accomplished, this would mean that the world’s largest Pentecostal fellowship would nearly triple in size in a decade, to roughly one million churches globally.
Nearly half of those churches are planned to being planted by African Pentecostals. I’ve been fortunate to serve as the coordinator for the WAGF Church Planting Commission and, consequently, have had the privilege of interacting with many of the church planting practices and strategies being used by Pentecostals around the world today, including the faith-filled, rapid expansion of Pentecostal church planting by the African church.
As a former church planter myself and one who now helps consult and strategize with churches and church planters, I am convinced of two things. First, there is no singular “right” way to plant a church. Often, when a particular model for planting works in one setting, it’s elevated as the gold standard for church planting everywhere. But this is shortsighted and, quite frankly, ill advised.
Second, while church planters need to consider the unique needs of their context when strategizing how to plant a church, there are many things we can learn from church planting practices in other cultures. And it is this second point that I believe we who serve as church leaders in the West (whether church planters or not) need to consider—especially as it pertains to learning from African Pentecostal church planting efforts.
While the particular strategies may vary, the principles that undergird those strategies are helpful to reignite a passion within us as we seek to live out our own call to participate in God’s reconciliatory mission where he has called us.
Here are several characteristics of African Pentecostal church planting that are helpful for the rest of us to consider:
1. African Pentecostals Constantly and Regularly Reinforce the Great Commission Responsibility of Every Christian.
A significant characteristic that has contributed to rapid expansion of Pentecostalism in the twentieth century—going from a ragtag minority in places like the United States, Sweden, and India—to a Spirit-filled movement 125 years later that consists of roughly half a billion Christians of all sorts of denominations, independents, Charismatics, etc.—is a high priority placed on the personal nature of the Great Commission. Among African Pentecostals, that personal responsibility to evangelize, to plant churches, to invest in others, is constantly reinforced in preaching, personal conversation, and discipleship. For African Pentecostals, the Great Commission isn’t a concept so much as it is a personal characteristic of one’s life.
For us in the West, the mission of God is often something we sort of assume people get if they hang around the church long enough. But a host of studies in recent years, as well as my own doctoral studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, found that this is hardly the case.
People need to be discipled into sharing their faith, not simply in an abstract way, but it is most effective when they see it demonstrated by relational influences in their own life. This demonstrated mission incarnates the Great Commission task for individuals, helping them not only understand why they should share their faith, but also how.
For church planting by African Pentecostals, this generates an understanding that any Christian is a potential church planter, not simply those within an educated clergy class. Some of the most aggressive church planting strategies in use worldwide today are those that engage the entire priesthood of all believers while providing training and education on the job (as opposed to an objective to be completed before a planter enters ministry).
