It seems that almost every week I receive good news about the growth of the church. Today, I spoke to a friend who is familiar with some of the churches in Colombia. He told me of a church that had recently appointed elders, and that the church now had three new “church plants” in surrounding towns. This news reminded me that the first step in church growth is establishing strong leaders. Churches are seldom self-propagating until a strong leadership is in place.
In June I visited a new church plant in Honduras that is less than a year old but has about 60 in attendance regularly. Churches across Latin America are learning to reach out on their own power and with their own resources, becoming less and less dependent upon North American resources. That reminds me that strong leadership in the local church also precedes churches becoming self-sustaining and self-supporting.
I recently heard of a preacher who began working with a church and immediately decided that no one else in the church was capable of teaching and preaching except him. The brother sharing the story told me of how disheartening this was for the local church. The same brother told me of a church that had recently split–the remnant that remained was being held together by a single “pastor” leader who was doing all of the preaching and teaching. One can only wonder if the single leader model is a part of the reason the division came in the first place.
I applaud all efforts to plant new churches. As we seek to strengthen and establish those efforts, let us remember that an essential part of the process is establishing strong, biblical, spiritual leaders in those churches. Churches with good spiritual leadership accept their responsibility before God, not only at the local church level, but also in the Great Commission obligation to go into the world preaching the gospel.