Caring Deeply About Church Planting

Twelve Keys from the Life of Jesus

Rich Kao

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000326901
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Never has the need for church planting been more acute or more necessary. The world around us is beset with problems of every kind—political, social, economic, racial, and moral. The list is endless, and the difficulties are systemic and entrenched. The best minds, institutions, and efforts are being marshaled to address these problems, but are we getting to the root issues? Could it be that the solutions lie elsewhere?

Indeed, the greatest reformer to ever live told us the hope we need comes from the church. Yes, the church, as anemic and as irrelevant as it may seem to some (or many). Jesus said of the community He would birth, "You are the light of the world and the salt of the earth" (Matt. 5: 13-14). The church, in all its forms, from small to big, whether found in the countryside or in megacities is God's redeeming force for society, for culture, and for the nations. The church is God's secret weapon and His change agent for the world. He's all in on the church.

As such the church is God's organizational servant on the earth. It's to be an enterprise of the highest quality. It's to sparkle with kingdom power, love, and truth. As Ephesians 3: 10 states, "[God's] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms." For such a task, outstanding leaders are needed. Great leaders are not just for the arenas of business, politics, or the military. The church must also focus on recruiting, training, and deploying the best. As the leader goes, so goes the organization.

This book assists in the great endeavor of planting churches. It gives church planters a biblical and conceptual framework so they can be armed with a map for how to go about establishing new works. This framework is rooted in the humble yet glorious, small yet significant, quiet yet powerful ways of Jesus.

Phase I

Conception (Leader)

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Key #1—Caring Deeply: The Call of God

“I must be about my Father’s business” (Luke 2:49).

Every great leader has a vision to change the world, “to put a dent in the universe” (Snell, 2011). Jesus was the ultimate world changer. Scriptures tell us that in view of humanity’s sin, God sent His only begotten Son into this world to redeem it. Jesus lived to die. There is no higher expression of caring than that. At the center of His being was an ocean of love for humanity (John 3:16; 1 John 4:8). In the depths of His heart was a vision to save man from his predicament and a burden that none would perish (1 Tim. 2:4; 1 Peter 3:18; 2 Peter 3:9). Care would be His fuel to do supernatural deeds and demonstrate world-class leadership. It was the fountainhead from which everything else would flow.

How does God develop care in our lives? How does He move and deepen our love for people? By taking us through the peaks and valleys of life. Jesus lost his father at a young age, and, as the oldest in the family, likely had to assume responsibility for the home. Taking over his father’s carpentry shop, Jesus had the burden of running the business and providing for the family. He had to be a listening ear to his mother, pray for a flow of customers to keep income coming in, and be a fatherly figure to his siblings. He could have easily fallen to the side of resentment and bitterness, seeing as how many of his friends and peers didn’t have to shoulder what He did; but instead, He used the situation to understand the grit of life in which people lived. His sympathy grew deeply as He came to understand the aspirations and hopes of people around him. Jesus would show unfailing kindness to all, but a stark reality would always loom; there would be no whitewashing of the sin constantly at work in people’s lives. It was the ugly underbelly in every situation.

Each and every day the dysfunction could be seen in His own small village of Nazareth. Every day He could see the effects of human beings’ fallen nature—their greed, their anger, their rage, their lust, their covetousness, their selfishness. He could see it in His siblings and His mother. The condition of humanity was intractable. No matter how much they tried, they couldn’t improve themselves. Yes, there could be incremental gains, but no fundamental ones.

And therein lay Jesus’ mission. His conversations and meditations, the study of the Scriptures, and fellowship with His heavenly Father began to take on experiential weight. He would begin to apprehend the everlasting love the Father had for the world. Jesus would begin to assimilate the very heart the Father had for humanity. As God began to reveal Jesus’ unique birth and His divine nature, Jesus would discern the call God was putting upon Him. He was to give His life for the sins of the world. This was not a mission of obligation. It would be a mission of love. No man would deter Him from going to the cross. He would weather difficulties and misunderstandings, even from His own family. He would have to challenge the very traditions of His people and their understanding of the Law. Faith would save the people, not works.

The Father would endow Jesus with unparalleled power from the Holy Spirit to express His heart for the multitudes trapped in sickness, heaviness, bondage, and hopelessness. Jesus would work miracles, but all in service of His ultimate call—to give His life for the sins of the world. He would die a humiliating death, not because raging forces inexplicably overtook His life, but because they were sovereignly orchestrated by His all-knowing Father, down to the donkey upon which He would ride into Jerusalem. Jesus endured it all because He cared. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:2). Care changes the world.

PAUL: APPREHENDED FOR CHRIST

“I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).

While journeying on the road to Damascus, Paul had a life-altering encounter with the risen Christ. Prior to this, Paul was deeply committed to “being hostile, locking up the saints, punishing them often in all synagogues, forcing them to blaspheme, and being furiously enraged at them” (Acts 26:9-11).

But all that changed when Jesus shone upon the chief persecutor at midday, “brighter than the sun” (Acts 26:13). Jesus’ revealing of Himself came with such force that Paul and his companions were knocked to the ground (Acts 26:13-14a). Whereas Jesus was previously a menace to the Jewish people, Paul now addressed Him with a new respect (Acts 26:14).

[Paul] said, “Who are You, Lord?” And the Lord said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” (Acts 26:15-18)

Through this encounter, Paul the persecutor became a man with a new heart and a new call. Jesus’ apprehending of Paul upended everything in his life, and, as humbling as it was, nothing was dearer to Paul than the day his life was turned around, “So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).

Paul was so radically changed by his Damascus conversion that he would tell the Corinthian church, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). Just as the great prophet Isaiah first uttered “Woe is me” when he saw the Lord high and lifted up (Isa. 6:1-5), so Paul would give voice to that same devastating feeling. When God calls, He touches our innermost being. This is how God prepares His servants to plant churches. Be not surprised that God puts a “woe” inside of you. It’s Him putting His care and burden in you to change the world. It’s the start of something powerful.

ACTIVATION—CARING DEEPLY (#1)

1. Describe why you care deeply abo
Dut your call.

2. A remarkable leader is defined as one who cares deeply and sacrificially (p. 8). What kind of sacrifice has your call produced in you? Name three examples of how it has played out in your life.

3. What inspires you most from Jesus’ or Paul’s life about how they cared deeply and sacrificially?

4. What natural things in your life have shaped your call? What events have happened that make you care deeply about what you’re going to do?

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Key #2—Clarity: Caring Deeply Must Have a Compelling, Tangible Goal

“I came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Clarity is related to calling, and is sometimes equated with calling, but here it refers to fine-tuning the call. The rumblings and burdens of caring deeply must eventually be synthesizable and reducible to a crystal-clear idea, a sentence, a memorable phrase, or a one-thought action plan. At first, when God opens our eyes, we see the trees but not perfectly (Mark 8:23-24). We know the field we need to head toward, but we need more insights, more discussions, and more prayer. When Jesus prayed for the blind man a second time, the Scriptures say the blind man “looked intently and was restored and began to see everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). Clarity is an iterative exercise. It’s process-driven, and it takes time—sometimes years.

Jesus developed crystal-clear vision through years of listening, honing, and getting it right in His spirit. At age twelve, He knew He had to be “in His Father’s house” (Luke 2:49). The call was there. But what did that mean? Would He be a teacher? Would He be a rabbi? Would He be a prophet? Yes, these would all be parts of his call but not the main part. Rather, His destiny would be to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). The Savior’s ministry would be His central purpose. His love for the world had an “executable” and a clear “actionable.” Caring deeply moves to reality when it has a clear goal.

Because Jesus understood the power of clarity, he wanted others to have it as well. Thus, He taught, “Seek first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33). He preached about praying and fasting (Matt. 6:5-18). He modeled the necessity of personal seclusion by retreating to mountainsides (Mark 1:35; Matt. 14:23), or “slip[ping] away to the wilderness” (Luke 5:16). He would never allow the demands of ministry to rob him of His need to hear from the Father and remain centered. His disciplines removed any haziness or uncertainty about what He was to do. Everything in His life, in His organization, and for the men around Him would be properly ordered. Seeking God in the service of clarity is a must for every church planter. Clarity is a blessing God loves to give.

PAUL: CALLED TO THE GENTILES

“He is a chosen instrument to bear my Name before the Gentiles” (Acts 9:15).

As told by God at his conversion, Paul’s call would be to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15). God had called the original apostles from the shores of Galilee to steward the gospel to the Jewish world, but Paul’s ministry would be aimed at the Gentile world. The twelve apostles would focus on Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and Paul would focus on the uttermost parts of the earth. The Twelve would be stationed in Jerusalem, but Paul’s ministry would be mobile, traversing the Roman Empire. The Twelve were “uneducated” and from the countryside; Paul was highly educated and from the city. The apostles were primarily monocultural in their upbringing, while Paul was multicultural. God’s division of labor was clear. Each one was raised up in just the right way for their respective calls.

Waiting in Clarity for Clarity

Interestingly, it would be twelve years before Paul officially moved into his ministry. He spent this time out of the public eye in Tarsus (Acts 9:30; Gal. 1:17). Why this long wait? Because God had to form the message inside the messenger. This shows us the “what” is as important as the “where.” We need as much clarity about what and how to do something as to where to go. To reach the Gentiles, Paul needed a full and complete understanding of the new covenant and the gospel of grace. He would have to understand it from the Old Testament in light of Christ’s work on the cross. He would need to know how to defend it, preach it, and how to apply it in the varied situations he would face. This would not be something he could learn from other people, this had to be divinely imparted to him (Gal. 1:11-12).

He had to understand the overwhelming nature of God’s love (Rom. 8:37-39; Eph. 3:16-19); the utter divinity and supremacy of Jesus (Col. 1:15-20); and how Jesus was better in every way—whether it pertained to angels, Moses, Joshua, the Aaronic priesthood, or anything else (Heb. 1-13). He had to fully grasp how propitiation and justification and glorification converged in Christ (Rom. 1-8). He had to understand how the law of the Spirit triumphed over the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:1). He had to come into a revelation of the new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). He had to understand the eschatological implications of Jesus’ return (1 Thess. 5; 2 Thess. 2). He had to receive God’s wisdom about spiritual gifts, the number of them, the definition of them, and how they were to be used in a congregation (1 Cor. 12-14). He had to see how the prophet-priest-king paradigm in the Old Testament was making way for the new governmental structure of apostle-prophet-evangelist-pastor-teacher (Eph. 4:11). He had to gain insight into sonship and the inheritance that came with being in Christ (Eph. 1:1-14). He had to come into a reworked understanding of natural Israel’s ongoing role within the new covenant (Rom. 9-11).

The amount of truth he had to process was mind-blowing. That’s why he prayed that the saints would be given a like “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him … that our hearts would be enlightened, so that we would know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe” (Eph. 1:17-19). In the giving of these truths to Paul, God even took him up “into Paradise and [he] heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak” (2 Cor. 12:4). But to keep Paul from falling into pride for the “surpassing greatness of the revelations” he was given, Paul was given a thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:7).

The message Paul received to preach to the Gentiles was unprecedented. Like a church bell, it would soon ring beautifully throughout Paul’s ministry, calling the nations to Christ. Paul waited in clarity for clarity.

ACTIVATION—CLARITY (#2)

1. Read Mark 8:22–26. Explain where you are in the story. Have you received your first touch or second touch? This first touch is having your eyes opened to where you’re supposed to head (you see the field of trees, v. 24). The second touch is high-definition clarity. You see so clearly now, you can walk in your “new vision.”

2. When Paul waited in clarity (knowing to whom he was sent) for clarity (what he was to say to them), he was waiting for his “second touch.” He knew he was called to the Gentiles, but God needed to give him the message. Sometimes the second touch can take years. How long have you been waiting for the second touch? If you’ve had your second touch, what testimony or encouragement can you share with others about waiting on God?

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Key #3—Capability: Planting Must Be Connected to Skill, Especially Preaching

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:18).

While the motivation to do God’s will can be strong, it must be connected to skill. Otherwise, the dream cannot be acted upon. Jesus began growing His skills at a young age, and as the Scripture testifies of his development, “[He] kept increasing in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). He trained his mind, dialogued with the best teachers, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction: Why I Wrote This Book
• FOUNDATIONS
• PHASE 1—Conception (Leader)
• PHASE 2—Construction (New Plant)
• PHASE 3—Disruption (Global Impact)
• CONCLUSION
• MINI-BOOK
• References
• Index