25-26 May 2007

This was organized by TRAC Boards of Evangelism and Missions, the two day conference explored the current perspectives on church growth and church planting.

To do this the organizers invited Dr. George Hunter III from Asbury Theological Seminary, USA, as the main resource person. He has written much on church growth and evangelism, and is the co-founder of the American Society for Church Growth.

Dr. Hunter shared four seminars on “changing perspectives” related to church growth and new congregations. Admittedly, these observations were drawn from the development of new churches in the West, particularly the United States. Nevertheless they give much input to think about, and in some cases we see similar trends emerging in our own context, especially in the urban setting.

Although perspectives and practices may be changing, yet they are based on an unchanging conviction that “the main business of Christianity is apostolic” by which he means being “sent out” into the world. While the church, the ecclesia, is the “called out” people, it has an apostolic mission to the world. And part of this mission is to turn people and welcome them into the Body of Christ.

In his on-going examination of the church scene Dr. Hunter noted that the kind of churches we are to set up, and the way we “do church”, is largely shaped by the diversity of target populations that now need to be reached. He notes six characteristics that growing churches have.

Cultural relevance – there is an indigenous policy not to impose foreign cultural forms on anybody.
Emotional relevance – engaging people on the emotional level, addressing the range of emotions that usually drive their lives, and enabling them to receive the gospel emotionally.
Small groups – enabling a communal faith, where people minister to each other and deep needs are met.
Lay ministries – where lay people are involved in teams working together.

Outreach ministries – that go to where the people are and therefore can be in a variety of forms and programmes. These increasingly are the “side doors” by which people enter the church.

World mission involvement – not necessarily going beyond the borders but to have a world perspective, and welcoming people across the cultural and language barrier.

Current trends in the urban and suburban setting also suggest that future new churches will have “proliferation” growth. That is, like the analogy of a tree spreading its branches in all directions, churches will proliferate all kinds of small and large groups, teams for ministry and mission, a variety of outreach ministries, and have specialized leaders for these tasks and programmes.

As a result of “proliferation” growth Dr. Hunter sees that new churches are more likely to consist of multiple congregations and even multiple sites for their worship and ministry. These emerging characteristics of new congregations are the outcomes of answering two strategic questions that churches ask when they seek to extend
their growth:

What constituencies (or target populations) are we called to reach that our present churches, with their present groups, ministries, and congregations cannot reach in substantial numbers?

What types of NEW groups, ministries, congregations, and churches will be required to reach them in substantial
numbers?

These were among a number of interesting and important analyses Dr. Hunter presented.

Part of the conference was also given to local church planting experience. Rev. Ong Sek Leang, Senior Pastor of Metro Tabernacle, Kuala Lumpur and Rev. Lawrence Chen, Group Executive Pastor of New Life Restoration Centre Churches were invited to share their experience, principles and practice of church planting. Newly constituted TRAC churches – Trinity Methodist Church, Sungai Buloh and Life Methodist Church, Puchong – also shared their model of a newly planted church.

It was evident that some of the emerging trends and perspectives on new congregations were part of their experience and/or were factors increasingly coming to their attention in planting new churches.

The conference highlighted some of the important factors and strategic questions that confront the modern church in her calling to be an apostolic church, sent out to reach the peoples of the world. This is a challenge for Methodist churches to take to heart.

Christopher Cheah