Church
Planters
Church Planters in New
Testament Times
In New Testament times, churches were started in
several ways. The church at Antioch was started as a result of the
scattering of the Jerusalem church during a time of persecution (Acts
11:19-21). The church in Samaria was started as a result of the
evangelistic preaching of Phillip (Acts 8:5-13). Churches were also
started by missionary church planters, such as the Twelve and Paul (Apostles
with a big "A"), and Barnabus, Timothy, Titus, Silas, and
Epaphras (apostles or missionaries with a little "a").
Sometimes the apostles worked alone (Acts 17:16), but usually traveled
with other brethren (Acts 13:13, 10:23, 13:59-40). Usually, one
member of the church planting team, such as Peter or Paul, was the
spiritual leader of the team. Even in the case of the churches
in Antioch and Samaria, which were not founded by church planters,
church planters were usually called in to assist the churches in their
development (Acts 8:14, 11:18) . A church plant was not considered
complete until elders had been ordained (Titus 1:5, Acts 14:21-23).
Even after this, church planters would assist, encourage and counsel
when needed. Although it is certainly possible to start a successful church
without a church planter, disorganization, controversy, false doctrine, and a lack of clear direction are more likely to occur when
there is a vacuum of called and qualified leadership in the
foundational
stages.
Although in some respects, they have roles similar to
the apostles of the New Testament, it might be unwise (and ego
inflating as well) to refer to modern day church planters or
missionaries as apostles, since some might mistakenly equate their
role with that of the Twelve or Paul. Lastly, only once is anyone besides Jesus (Hebrews
3:1), the Twelve, and Paul conclusively and directly referred to in
the New Testament as an apostle (Acts 14:14). In all of the other
instances, the reference is indirect (compare Acts 13:50 and 14:4; 1
Cor 9:5 and 9:6; 1Th 1:1 and 2:6) or inconclusive (Romans 16:7, I Cor
15:7, Gal 1:19). These indirect references establish, however, that
there were some similarities and commonalities between missionary
workers like Titus and Timothy and the Apostles with a big
"A." Modern church planters can find wonderful
guidance in the letters Paul wrote to these men. Nevertheless, it
seems wise that we imitate the New Testament by only sparingly
using the term apostle (with a little "a") to refer to
modern missionary workers.
The Planting of Christ Home
Fellowship
Christ Home Fellowship began meeting in
the fall of 2005 in the home of Marshall "Rusty" and Julie Entrekin.
Rusty and Julie
have seven children. He is a theology graduate of Louisiana
College (SBC), where he was an active preacher on the Baptist Student
Union preaching
team. Afterwards, he served as the founding pastor of an SBC mission
church in Riverside, LA, and on the staff of a non-denominational
church in Louisiana. Since then, he has been a co-leader in several
teams that have planted house churches in North Georgia. He is the
founder and co-editor of an apologetics website called Thingstocome.org,
a website devoted to defending orthodox eschatology against the heresy
of full preterism. He is also the author of the short book, Bringing
First Century Church Life Into the Twentieth Century and several
articles regarding church life. Rusty is a "tentmaking" church planter, supporting his
family through a fulltime job and a computer consulting business.
Rusty's role, as a church planter, is to facilitate
and oversee the growth of Christ Home Fellowship (through evangelism,
equipping, and outreach) into a network of co-operating home
fellowships, to ordain a team of elders to oversee the church who meet
the strict qualifications set forth in I Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus
1:5-9, and to ordain deacons and deaconesses to minister in our church
and community. If the Lord blesses these efforts, he plans to
spearhead the formation of church planting teams that will reach out
to other communities.
