How you can help to plant a new church

By NORMAN WONG

THERE are several ways you can help to plant a new church.

1. You can contribute financially to help support a national church planter – for example, for just $120 a month, we can empower a pastor in China to plant a new church.

Our current policy is to support such a person for three years, after which we trust he will be able to be self-supporting. Or for just $100 you can sponsor a pastor to attend an intensive three-day training programme which will equip him to plant a new church.

2. You can coach a pastor to grow his church and plant a new church. If the Lord has given you the gift of leading a small group – and that small group has grown to the point where you became two small groups – I believe you have the gift of church planting. 

A church is a gathering of believers who spur one another to obey all the Lord’s commands. Your small group is the basic building block of the church. So if you can plant a new small group – you can plant a new church.

At the Methodist Missions Society (MMS), we have developed a handbook to help you grow your small group. We use the same handbook to help our missionaries and national pastors to plant new churches.

Please contact me (email: mms@methodist.org.sg)  if you would like to buy a copy – all proceeds from the sale of this handbook will go towards the MMS church-planting ministry.

You can take this handbook into the mission field – we are currently getting the handbook translated into the languages of the various countries we are working in – and use it to coach a national pastor to grow his church by teaching him how to grow a small group. If you would like us to train you to do this please get in touch with me.

3. You can organise your small group or church missions committee to plant a new church. If you are interested I will be happy to meet up with your group or committee to discuss possibilities.

4. You can plant a new church in the mission field yourself. As part of your work, you may travel regularly in the region or be posted overseas for an extended period of time.

Consider starting a small group in that country. Very soon after that group begins to grow and multiply, you will have a small church on your hands. Our church-planting handbook will help you get started.

We have 43 Methodist local churches in Singapore. I believe if we harness our resources properly, each church can plant 20 new self-supporting, indigenous churches in the region by 2020. The MMS is committed to help you plant new churches.

On behalf of the MMS missionaries and staff, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a blessed Holy Week.

Norman Wong is the Executive Director of the Methodist Missions Society.