As I was preparing to plant my first church outside of Portland, Oregon, I sought the guidance of a local pastor whose church was experiencing such tremendous conversion growth that it was spontaneously planting new churches in the area. The primary metaphor his church used as its inspiration was Lifeboat 14, taken from the story of the Titanic. In fact, in the lobby of the church building was a full-size replica of Lifeboat 14. The true story goes that as the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage and people were drowning in the ice-cold water, nearly all the lifeboats rowed away from those struggling in the water for fear of being swamped by survivors. Lifeboat 14, under the command of Officer Harold Lowe, was the only lifeboat that rowed back and ultimately saved five people from drowning. The pastor posed the question, “Is the church a leisure ship dedicated to the comfort of its passengers or a lifeboat devoted to rescuing lost people?”
Church planters on the whole are dedicated to launching as many lifeboats as possible. Evangelism is one of the fundamental purposes of church planting and one of the primary motivations of church planters, including myself. One of the most oft-quoted rationales for church planting came back in 1990 from Fuller’s own Peter Wagner in his book Church Planting for a Greater Harvest: “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.”1 (I just heard a planter use this quote in a podcast earlier this year.) Again in 2002, the late Tim Keller reaffirmed this line of thinking in his article “Why Plant Churches?,” writing that “the vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for (1) the numerical growth of the body of Christ in a city and (2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”2
Broadly speaking, both personal experience and studies show that new churches are far more effective at winning people to Christ than established churches. For instance, within the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest church planting organization in the US, planting between 600–800 churches per year), a 2018 report showed that church plants baptize more people per attendee than established churches—a 67 percent better attendee-to-baptism ratio.3
Whether or not church planting is the “most effective” or “most crucial” strategy for evangelism, this article will argue that it has been and will remain an absolutely essential element of the church’s evangelistic witness in the world. Church planting often functions as the “R&D wing” of the church because of how much pioneering missional and evangelistic experimentation takes place through church plants as they practice new and creative forms of engaging a diverse and disruptive culture with the gospel. Church planters and their teams are often a combination of entrepreneurial and evangelistic. The “research and development” that church plants discern and discover are then meant to flow back into the wider body of Christ to help the church engage and impact the culture with the gospel more broadly—hence Keller’s second point that planting contributes to “the corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”
Now, it’s important to note that this article primarily reflects the mainstream North American church planting world, which is typically white and Protestant. There are many churches planted by and for Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in the US, and one of the realities is that many of those churches fly under the radar because they function quite autonomously, are often small, and are not necessarily part of established denominational structures that track and report results. In addition, global Christianity has clearly shifted to the global South, and so I am also not speaking to the thousands of churches planted by global Christians.
Why Are Church Plants More Evangelistic Than Established Churches?
It’s helpful to identify why church plants are generally more effective in reaching people for Christ than established churches. In his 2019 book on congregational practices of evangelism, You Found Me, Rick Richardson surveyed and researched 4,500 North American churches. He identified that ten percent of churches are experiencing conversion growth (as opposed to transfer growth). He calls these congregations “conversion communities” and identifies three common characteristics: missional imagination, missional leadership, and missional congregational practices.4 It’s no coincidence these characteristics are precisely what healthy church plants are designed to cultivate.
Pastors of established churches don’t generally receive the kind of vetting and training as church planters, and established churches tend to prefer and affirm the classic pastoral gifts of STs—shepherds and teachers. During the pandemic, anecdotally it seems that pastors with ST gifts struggled even more since many were forced to become televangelists (due to live streaming their sermons) as well as church planters (due to the need to freshly engage their physical and online communities).
Dysfunctional Church Planting Narratives
Unfortunately, the same evangelistic zeal that drives church planting organizations often leads to theological errors or methodological excesses. The shadow side of church planting is that the very things church planting leaders are gifted with may be the same things that can breed excess and exploitation. This is why the Fuller Church Planting Initiative (FCPI), which I lead, puts a huge emphasis on the spiritual formation of the planter and their team. Below are some of the dysfunctional narratives arising in church plants.
A Theological Issue: Triumphalism
Often, the language and imagery used in the mainstream church planting world is militaristic (“parachuting in,” “taking a city for Christ”) and triumphalistic. While the metaphors of multiplication and reproduction are certainly biblical, like the seed growing in good soil, they are balanced by the reality that the way of Jesus ultimately leads to the cross. The seed needs to first die in order to bear fruit. And even though many of us (myself included) believe that the multiplication of healthy churches is crucial to helping establish gospel movements, sometimes the language of multiplication and reproduction can simply be triumphalism by another name.
A Racial Issue: Colonialism
Evangelism used as a colonial enterprise is a dysfunction that shows up in church planting. Much of the mainstream church planting world still operates on what Toby Kurth calls “the white success story model,” where the primary narrative has been that of a white, male, wealthy, suburban church planter (or to further the stereotype, a planter with facial hair and skinny jeans), who raises insane amounts of money to plant a large and growing attractional church. The racial reckoning that the evangelical church has been experiencing has meant that church planting movements are now recognizing that planters (particularly white ones) who move into a city without knowing and building relationships with the existing pastoral leaders and stakeholders often operate from a colonial rather than collaborative mindset.
An Economic Issue: Gentrification
A further implication of a colonial approach is that planters who are unaware of their social location or neighborhood dynamics can unwittingly contribute to gentrification. A common scenario is that white church planters will enter an urban core without a sense of who’s already been ministering in that neighborhood or of what is happening economically. Then their church plants join the yoga studios and trendy cafes in gentrifying a neighborhood and deepening the economic inequities that generally fall along racial lines. Relocating a launch team to an urban core can raise housing prices and eventually drive out long-term residents, destabilizing the community rather than strengthening it.
A Psychological Issue: Narcissism and Celebrity Pastor Culture
The recent fall of many prominent church planters has highlighted the reality that church planting attracts and even affirms narcissistic leaders, and creates systems in which abuse of power is rampant because no accountability structures exist within highly autonomous church plants—even denominational plants. If the church grows, pastors are given more freedom and accolades even as the checks and balances diminish. At worst, a cult of personality arises and the church plant no longer serves as a missional outpost but a vehicle to advance the planter’s personal brand and celebrity, potentially leading to scandals around the usual suspects of money, power, and sex.
Church Planting and New Ways of Holistic Evangelism
Even given the dangers inherent in church planting, by definition it is a crucible in which deconstruction must ultimately give way to reconstruction. Angst about evangelicalism must give way to a concrete expression of a community living on mission. So, what might be some of the new narratives, models, and practices that church planting can offer in proclaiming the good news of Jesus afresh to the next generation?
New Narratives
For decades, the imagination of US pastors and planters has been held captive first by the church growth movement’s obsession with numerical growth (pioneered for better and for worse by Fuller Seminary’s Donald McGavran) and then by fearmongering around church decline.
My friend Daniel Yang of Wheaton College’s Church Multiplication Institute wrote an article titled “Beyond Church Growth and Decline,” arguing that Gen Z “might be triggered by any vision that thinks the church can reclaim the culture, restore Sunday church attendance, and reverse religious decline by doing more of the same like previous generations.” Instead, “Gen Zers need to feel that they aren’t advancing the cause of a declining religion. They need to feel as if they’re a part of what Jesus is doing to heal the nations. Whatever missional narratives emerge over the next few years, the most effective ones will likely feel less anxious, and instead feel more beautiful to them.”5
How might we highlight the beauty and radical inclusiveness of Jesus? For many, that beautiful new narrative must include a commitment to a racially diverse church that not only reflects the demographic reality that there will be no majority ethnicity in the US by 2044 but celebrates the beauty of a Revelation 7:9 fellowship. Part and parcel of that diverse church is a holistic understanding of the gospel that unites bold evangelism with a deep commitment to racial and economic justice.
And rather than exclude half the population from the work of evangelism and church planting, we must affirm the full inclusion of women church planters. These leaders tend to be inherently less prone to the excesses named above and more collaborative and empowering in their leadership style.
New Models
Church planting, like many startup incubators, is constantly engaged in experimentation, trying new forms of missional church and pushing the boundaries of traditional ecclesiologies. Some of these ascendent new models of church include:
Microchurches: Pioneered by movements like the Tampa Underground, these networks of small churches are hyperfocused on reaching a particular people group, such as women in the sex industry, foster parents and families, the homeless, men in recovery, and more.6 Microchurches are highly flexible and adaptable and rarely involve paid pastors.
Multiethnic Churches: Given the rise of ethnic minority populations in the US (including an 81 percent rise in Asian Americans and a 70 percent rise in Latinos between 2000 and 2019 according to Pew), multiethnic churches are the church of the future.7 This means that the next generation of church planters/missionaries will need intercultural competencies to proclaim and contextualize the gospel to multiple cultures. They will also need a commitment to coplanting with persons of other ethnicities to plant not just diverse yet monocultural churches but truly multiethnic churches that share both leadership and platforms. This also entails a concerted effort to identify, train, and coach planters of color—a major focus of our current work at FCPI.
Digital Churches: The term digital church comprises the COVID-style hybrid of physical and online church, fully online Zoom churches, as well as metaverse churches that exist primarily in virtual reality (VR) using VR headsets, digital avatars, and real-time interaction with other avatars. Digital churches can reach people with high skepticism about or lack of access to physically attending a church, and they can scale easier and faster than brick-and-mortar churches.
Renewed Practices
Ultimately, the work of evangelism happens when we actually “do the work of an evangelist,” as Paul exhorts Timothy to do (2 Tim 4:5). This means engaging not necessarily in new practices but in renewing our commitment to historic practices, including prayer, hospitality, and conversation.
Prayer: Put simply, the great movements of God begin with prayer—individual prayer to develop intimacy with Christ and communal prayer to till the soil of a city that the eyes of unbelievers may “see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ” (2 Cor 4:4). One particular form of prayer evangelism to consider is prayer walks, where a church planting team walks the neighborhood to gain new eyes for their neighbors and to pray for spiritual breakthroughs in the hearts of people. Another form of prayer evangelism championed by my friends Alex and Hannah Absalom is simply to ask for opportunities to talk with people and ask them, “How can I pray for you?” Then while praying, listen for the Holy Spirit’s promptings that you may pray in power and lead them to Christ. Jared, a church planter in our current Church Planting Certificate cohort, shared this story from two weeks ago:
As I was at Sprouts grocery store tonight, I noticed a guy in his late 20s and felt like I was supposed to ask him if he wanted prayer. He wanted prayer for health and for his son, so I prayed a blessing over him and his son. I asked if I could share how Jesus changed my life and got to share my testimony. I asked if he wanted to believe and follow Jesus, and he said he wanted to. We had a powerful conversation and said he was feeling God while we were talking (he was visibly emotional) and that this was his third sign this month. All I had to do was simply respond to the Spirit at work in Sprouts!
Hospitality: The Greek word for hospitality, philoxenos, literally means lover of strangers. If ever there was a time in the American church when we needed to demonstrate hospitality to those whose political persuasions, racial background, or sexual orientation is different from ours, it’s now. Much of the missional/incarnational stream of church planting puts hospitality at the center of evangelism—whether it is hosting people in our homes or simply creating contexts for people of diverse backgrounds to feel welcomed, accepted, and loved in Jesus’ name. (As my wife and I have hosted many neighborhood parties and gatherings over the years, my across-the-street neighbor Kelly once referred to me as the “mayor” of our neighborhood!)
Conversation: Conversations with credible Christians are the most powerful witness to most people who are not believers. So for most of us wanting to grow in evangelism, counting conversations rather than conversions is a good starting point. Let’s learn to engage in conversation with our unbelieving neighbors, colleagues, and fellow pickleball players. Pray for the Spirit’s leading. Learn to share your own conversion story in bite-size chunks. Even in a skeptical age, most people would accept an invitation to church from a friend.8
Missio, the church plant I lead in Pasadena, has sought to make dialogue and questions a central part of our engagement—particularly with the scientists at Caltech and in Pasadena. To reach our specific context, we host science/faith events on the Caltech campus and include a Q&A after each sermon to help them pursue truth. And when we baptized a Caltech freshman this past March, he brought about a dozen of his unbelieving friends to the service. Often evangelism begets evangelism!
Church planting is a means whereby a whole congregation can embody and express the good news of Jesus Christ in highly contextualized ways. For this reason, it will always be a significant and powerful learning lab and testing ground for the church’s work of evangelism. May the Spirit empower our work as evangelists through the work of missional leaders and church planters.
Len Tang is the director of Fuller’s Church Planting Initiative. A Fuller alumnus and ordained pastor in ECO, he planted and pastors Missio Community Church in Pasadena, California. Tang is the coeditor, with Charles E. Cotherman, of Sent to Flourish: A Guide to Planting and Multiplying Churches.
As I was preparing to plant my first church outside of Portland, Oregon, I sought the guidance of a local pastor whose church was experiencing such tremendous conversion growth that it was spontaneously planting new churches in the area. The primary metaphor his church used as its inspiration was Lifeboat 14, taken from the story of the Titanic. In fact, in the lobby of the church building was a full-size replica of Lifeboat 14. The true story goes that as the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage and people were drowning in the ice-cold water, nearly all the lifeboats rowed away from those struggling in the water for fear of being swamped by survivors. Lifeboat 14, under the command of Officer Harold Lowe, was the only lifeboat that rowed back and ultimately saved five people from drowning. The pastor posed the question, “Is the church a leisure ship dedicated to the comfort of its passengers or a lifeboat devoted to rescuing lost people?”
Church planters on the whole are dedicated to launching as many lifeboats as possible. Evangelism is one of the fundamental purposes of church planting and one of the primary motivations of church planters, including myself. One of the most oft-quoted rationales for church planting came back in 1990 from Fuller’s own Peter Wagner in his book Church Planting for a Greater Harvest: “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches.”1 (I just heard a planter use this quote in a podcast earlier this year.) Again in 2002, the late Tim Keller reaffirmed this line of thinking in his article “Why Plant Churches?,” writing that “the vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for (1) the numerical growth of the body of Christ in a city and (2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”2
Broadly speaking, both personal experience and studies show that new churches are far more effective at winning people to Christ than established churches. For instance, within the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest church planting organization in the US, planting between 600–800 churches per year), a 2018 report showed that church plants baptize more people per attendee than established churches—a 67 percent better attendee-to-baptism ratio.3
Whether or not church planting is the “most effective” or “most crucial” strategy for evangelism, this article will argue that it has been and will remain an absolutely essential element of the church’s evangelistic witness in the world. Church planting often functions as the “R&D wing” of the church because of how much pioneering missional and evangelistic experimentation takes place through church plants as they practice new and creative forms of engaging a diverse and disruptive culture with the gospel. Church planters and their teams are often a combination of entrepreneurial and evangelistic. The “research and development” that church plants discern and discover are then meant to flow back into the wider body of Christ to help the church engage and impact the culture with the gospel more broadly—hence Keller’s second point that planting contributes to “the corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”
Now, it’s important to note that this article primarily reflects the mainstream North American church planting world, which is typically white and Protestant. There are many churches planted by and for Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in the US, and one of the realities is that many of those churches fly under the radar because they function quite autonomously, are often small, and are not necessarily part of established denominational structures that track and report results. In addition, global Christianity has clearly shifted to the global South, and so I am also not speaking to the thousands of churches planted by global Christians.
Why Are Church Plants More Evangelistic Than Established Churches?
It’s helpful to identify why church plants are generally more effective in reaching people for Christ than established churches. In his 2019 book on congregational practices of evangelism, You Found Me, Rick Richardson surveyed and researched 4,500 North American churches. He identified that ten percent of churches are experiencing conversion growth (as opposed to transfer growth). He calls these congregations “conversion communities” and identifies three common characteristics: missional imagination, missional leadership, and missional congregational practices.4 It’s no coincidence these characteristics are precisely what healthy church plants are designed to cultivate.
Pastors of established churches don’t generally receive the kind of vetting and training as church planters, and established churches tend to prefer and affirm the classic pastoral gifts of STs—shepherds and teachers. During the pandemic, anecdotally it seems that pastors with ST gifts struggled even more since many were forced to become televangelists (due to live streaming their sermons) as well as church planters (due to the need to freshly engage their physical and online communities).
Dysfunctional Church Planting Narratives
Unfortunately, the same evangelistic zeal that drives church planting organizations often leads to theological errors or methodological excesses. The shadow side of church planting is that the very things church planting leaders are gifted with may be the same things that can breed excess and exploitation. This is why the Fuller Church Planting Initiative (FCPI), which I lead, puts a huge emphasis on the spiritual formation of the planter and their team. Below are some of the dysfunctional narratives arising in church plants.
A Theological Issue: Triumphalism
Often, the language and imagery used in the mainstream church planting world is militaristic (“parachuting in,” “taking a city for Christ”) and triumphalistic. While the metaphors of multiplication and reproduction are certainly biblical, like the seed growing in good soil, they are balanced by the reality that the way of Jesus ultimately leads to the cross. The seed needs to first die in order to bear fruit. And even though many of us (myself included) believe that the multiplication of healthy churches is crucial to helping establish gospel movements, sometimes the language of multiplication and reproduction can simply be triumphalism by another name.
A Racial Issue: Colonialism
Evangelism used as a colonial enterprise is a dysfunction that shows up in church planting. Much of the mainstream church planting world still operates on what Toby Kurth calls “the white success story model,” where the primary narrative has been that of a white, male, wealthy, suburban church planter (or to further the stereotype, a planter with facial hair and skinny jeans), who raises insane amounts of money to plant a large and growing attractional church. The racial reckoning that the evangelical church has been experiencing has meant that church planting movements are now recognizing that planters (particularly white ones) who move into a city without knowing and building relationships with the existing pastoral leaders and stakeholders often operate from a colonial rather than collaborative mindset.
An Economic Issue: Gentrification
A further implication of a colonial approach is that planters who are unaware of their social location or neighborhood dynamics can unwittingly contribute to gentrification. A common scenario is that white church planters will enter an urban core without a sense of who’s already been ministering in that neighborhood or of what is happening economically. Then their church plants join the yoga studios and trendy cafes in gentrifying a neighborhood and deepening the economic inequities that generally fall along racial lines. Relocating a launch team to an urban core can raise housing prices and eventually drive out long-term residents, destabilizing the community rather than strengthening it.
A Psychological Issue: Narcissism and Celebrity Pastor Culture
The recent fall of many prominent church planters has highlighted the reality that church planting attracts and even affirms narcissistic leaders, and creates systems in which abuse of power is rampant because no accountability structures exist within highly autonomous church plants—even denominational plants. If the church grows, pastors are given more freedom and accolades even as the checks and balances diminish. At worst, a cult of personality arises and the church plant no longer serves as a missional outpost but a vehicle to advance the planter’s personal brand and celebrity, potentially leading to scandals around the usual suspects of money, power, and sex.
Church Planting and New Ways of Holistic Evangelism
Even given the dangers inherent in church planting, by definition it is a crucible in which deconstruction must ultimately give way to reconstruction. Angst about evangelicalism must give way to a concrete expression of a community living on mission. So, what might be some of the new narratives, models, and practices that church planting can offer in proclaiming the good news of Jesus afresh to the next generation?
New Narratives
For decades, the imagination of US pastors and planters has been held captive first by the church growth movement’s obsession with numerical growth (pioneered for better and for worse by Fuller Seminary’s Donald McGavran) and then by fearmongering around church decline.
My friend Daniel Yang of Wheaton College’s Church Multiplication Institute wrote an article titled “Beyond Church Growth and Decline,” arguing that Gen Z “might be triggered by any vision that thinks the church can reclaim the culture, restore Sunday church attendance, and reverse religious decline by doing more of the same like previous generations.” Instead, “Gen Zers need to feel that they aren’t advancing the cause of a declining religion. They need to feel as if they’re a part of what Jesus is doing to heal the nations. Whatever missional narratives emerge over the next few years, the most effective ones will likely feel less anxious, and instead feel more beautiful to them.”5
How might we highlight the beauty and radical inclusiveness of Jesus? For many, that beautiful new narrative must include a commitment to a racially diverse church that not only reflects the demographic reality that there will be no majority ethnicity in the US by 2044 but celebrates the beauty of a Revelation 7:9 fellowship. Part and parcel of that diverse church is a holistic understanding of the gospel that unites bold evangelism with a deep commitment to racial and economic justice.
And rather than exclude half the population from the work of evangelism and church planting, we must affirm the full inclusion of women church planters. These leaders tend to be inherently less prone to the excesses named above and more collaborative and empowering in their leadership style.
New Models
Church planting, like many startup incubators, is constantly engaged in experimentation, trying new forms of missional church and pushing the boundaries of traditional ecclesiologies. Some of these ascendent new models of church include:
Microchurches: Pioneered by movements like the Tampa Underground, these networks of small churches are hyperfocused on reaching a particular people group, such as women in the sex industry, foster parents and families, the homeless, men in recovery, and more.6 Microchurches are highly flexible and adaptable and rarely involve paid pastors.
Multiethnic Churches: Given the rise of ethnic minority populations in the US (including an 81 percent rise in Asian Americans and a 70 percent rise in Latinos between 2000 and 2019 according to Pew), multiethnic churches are the church of the future.7 This means that the next generation of church planters/missionaries will need intercultural competencies to proclaim and contextualize the gospel to multiple cultures. They will also need a commitment to coplanting with persons of other ethnicities to plant not just diverse yet monocultural churches but truly multiethnic churches that share both leadership and platforms. This also entails a concerted effort to identify, train, and coach planters of color—a major focus of our current work at FCPI.
Digital Churches: The term digital church comprises the COVID-style hybrid of physical and online church, fully online Zoom churches, as well as metaverse churches that exist primarily in virtual reality (VR) using VR headsets, digital avatars, and real-time interaction with other avatars. Digital churches can reach people with high skepticism about or lack of access to physically attending a church, and they can scale easier and faster than brick-and-mortar churches.
Renewed Practices
Ultimately, the work of evangelism happens when we actually “do the work of an evangelist,” as Paul exhorts Timothy to do (2 Tim 4:5). This means engaging not necessarily in new practices but in renewing our commitment to historic practices, including prayer, hospitality, and conversation.
Prayer: Put simply, the great movements of God begin with prayer—individual prayer to develop intimacy with Christ and communal prayer to till the soil of a city that the eyes of unbelievers may “see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ” (2 Cor 4:4). One particular form of prayer evangelism to consider is prayer walks, where a church planting team walks the neighborhood to gain new eyes for their neighbors and to pray for spiritual breakthroughs in the hearts of people. Another form of prayer evangelism championed by my friends Alex and Hannah Absalom is simply to ask for opportunities to talk with people and ask them, “How can I pray for you?” Then while praying, listen for the Holy Spirit’s promptings that you may pray in power and lead them to Christ. Jared, a church planter in our current Church Planting Certificate cohort, shared this story from two weeks ago:
As I was at Sprouts grocery store tonight, I noticed a guy in his late 20s and felt like I was supposed to ask him if he wanted prayer. He wanted prayer for health and for his son, so I prayed a blessing over him and his son. I asked if I could share how Jesus changed my life and got to share my testimony. I asked if he wanted to believe and follow Jesus, and he said he wanted to. We had a powerful conversation and said he was feeling God while we were talking (he was visibly emotional) and that this was his third sign this month. All I had to do was simply respond to the Spirit at work in Sprouts!
Hospitality: The Greek word for hospitality, philoxenos, literally means lover of strangers. If ever there was a time in the American church when we needed to demonstrate hospitality to those whose political persuasions, racial background, or sexual orientation is different from ours, it’s now. Much of the missional/incarnational stream of church planting puts hospitality at the center of evangelism—whether it is hosting people in our homes or simply creating contexts for people of diverse backgrounds to feel welcomed, accepted, and loved in Jesus’ name. (As my wife and I have hosted many neighborhood parties and gatherings over the years, my across-the-street neighbor Kelly once referred to me as the “mayor” of our neighborhood!)
Conversation: Conversations with credible Christians are the most powerful witness to most people who are not believers. So for most of us wanting to grow in evangelism, counting conversations rather than conversions is a good starting point. Let’s learn to engage in conversation with our unbelieving neighbors, colleagues, and fellow pickleball players. Pray for the Spirit’s leading. Learn to share your own conversion story in bite-size chunks. Even in a skeptical age, most people would accept an invitation to church from a friend.8
Missio, the church plant I lead in Pasadena, has sought to make dialogue and questions a central part of our engagement—particularly with the scientists at Caltech and in Pasadena. To reach our specific context, we host science/faith events on the Caltech campus and include a Q&A after each sermon to help them pursue truth. And when we baptized a Caltech freshman this past March, he brought about a dozen of his unbelieving friends to the service. Often evangelism begets evangelism!
Church planting is a means whereby a whole congregation can embody and express the good news of Jesus Christ in highly contextualized ways. For this reason, it will always be a significant and powerful learning lab and testing ground for the church’s work of evangelism. May the Spirit empower our work as evangelists through the work of missional leaders and church planters.
Len Tang is the director of Fuller’s Church Planting Initiative. A Fuller alumnus and ordained pastor in ECO, he planted and pastors Missio Community Church in Pasadena, California. Tang is the coeditor, with Charles E. Cotherman, of Sent to Flourish: A Guide to Planting and Multiplying Churches.
Jose Abraham, associate professor of Islamic studies, reflects on approaches of evangelism among people of other faiths during our postcolonial age.
