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Historical Profiling: Missionary Toolbox Part 2

Last post was about a useful instrument for a missionary - the Profile. This post continues that discussion with another dimension within that instrument: Understanding the History of your people group.

In order to find out more about the current status of your people group and their current worldview, it is helpful to look at their history. Here are some questions to consider *Adapted from Dr. Bob Brown of the International Mission Board (name changed for security purposes):

1. Write a brief narrative of how your people group came to their current geographic location.

*Bob Brown says that history is written not with ink but with blood. Take a careful note of where battles or assassinations occurred. 

2. Describe the most significant events for your people group or their country (ie. specific geographic segments, who was involved, cultural practices that continue to this day as a result). Paint a word picture of the story of the people group's salvation/victories through these events. Try to come up with the 5 most important stories of this people and contemplate any insights this has for your ministry. How can you start in conversation about these events to move to a spiritual conversation?

3. From the info you discover in these stories, identify any bridges and/or barriers to sharing the gospel of Jesus.

4. How does this historical information shape how a New Testament church would look and function within this people group (size, location, leadership, practices)?

Moscow: Missions in the Context of Urban Need

An Article from Evangelical Missions Quarterly, April 2013

Many evangelicals are beginning to engage a cultural strategy (A-E-I-O-U) that touches five cultural issues in Moscow. Buck Burch talks about how Evangelical Christians in Russia's capital have crafted a strategy for meeting needs as a part of their emerging urban missiology. 

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ECMU's Church Planting Model for Urban Russia

Specifically in Russia the C&MA has partnered with ECMU to “cultivate an Evangelical missionary church movement in key cities and regions of Russia and among their under-reached peoples.”[1] C&MA believes four key initiatives based upon its four-fold gospel foundation will complete that task. By planting new churches in seven of Russia’s largest cities, C&MA hopes reach a significant population of Russia’s “least-well churched”[2] through meeting real human needs. This is an important feature for a workable urban church planting model.

            Meeting real human needs means establishing a missional presence in places where people congregate. Michael Frost sees this as reflective of healthy modern churches.

           

We are now seeing the emergence of churches that are meeting in houses, cafes, workplaces, dance clubs, nature parks, online, and other venues. Most of the emerging church we have been able to uncover are quite intentional about developing smaller communities and are attempting to fulfill the Great Commission by doing church planting rather than church growth. Not only is this more missionally responsive in the new context but, we believe, it is also much closer to New Testament ecclesiology and missions practice.[3]

In order for mission to happen in the way it desires, C&MA has established a needs-based community outreach aspect for each of its new churches. It believes this will work

to establish a credibility for the Evangelical church that is rooted in service. Therefore we are using need-meeting and interest-serving ministries such as family services, sexual abstinence presentations in schools, counseling for post-abortive women and for substance abuse, rehabilitation work with addicts, as well as sports camps, English language instruction, healthy living courses and handicraft hobbies.[4]

Each of the new church plants is instructed by missionaries to seek out ways to reach out to the community.

C&MA teaches that those churches are then responsible for sending out their own missionaries. A stated goal of ECMU is to “help key churches clear growth barriers and send out their own daughter-church planters.”[5] Although various church growth models are being individualized and crafted for each situation, one particular pattern being promoted for urban church planter support is a program of small-business development whereby the church planter and the church plant are self-supported from the first day.

Because theological education is important to leadership development in the local church, C&MA has also invested a significant amount of energy into crafting an ongoing instructional program at the Kuban Evangelical Christian University (KECU). As one of only two accredited Christian colleges in Russia, KECU hopes to train “the nation’s most progressive leaders in the emerging Evangelical missionary church movement.”[6] This, the C&MA hopes, will supply ongoing visionary leadership for a healthy church planting movement with sound urban ecclesiology.

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[1] The Alliance Russia Field, “Four Key Initiatives.”

[2] The Alliance Russia Field, “Key City Church Planting,” (2007). http://www.cmainrussia.org/go/number1 (accessed August 1, 2009).

[3]Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the

21^st Century Church. Peabody, Mass.: Hindrickson and Erina, NSW, Australia: Strand, 2003.

[4] The Alliance Russia Field, “Creative Need-meeting and Interest-serving Outreach and Service,” (2007), http://www.cmainrussia.org/go/number2 (accessed August 1, 2009).

[5] The Alliance Russia Field, “Growing and Multiplying Churches Planted in the 1990s,” (2007), http://www.cmainrussia.org/go/number3 (accessed August 1, 2009).

[6] The Alliance Russia Field, “Raising Up a New Generation of Visionary Missionary Leaders in Russia,” (2007), http://www.cmainrussia.org/go/number4 (accessed August 1, 2009).

THE GREAT CENTURY IN EUROPE AND AMERICA- A REVIEW

It always fascinates me when people are creative in their blending disciplines, like missions and science or missions and business. Kenneth Scott Latourette was a pioneer in integrating the fields of missiology and history to deliver a global history from a Christian perspective.[1] He studied science in Oregon and history at Yale University. These two fields became a passion for him that he shared with his missions and history students at Yale from 1921 to 1957. He also held a professorship at Reed College and Dennison University. Before he became a professor, he served briefly as a missionary in China through an initiative out of Yale University. He was also an ordained Baptist preacher.

            Latourette was a true missions historian. He is most remembered for his multi-volume works, including A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, and A History of Christianity. Andrew Walls calls these works “the most comprehensive attempt to cover Christian history in all parts of the world and in all its traditions.”[2]

            For my next few posts, I will review Latourette's volume on Europe and America that he uniquely identified as great. I wonder how many others are out there that are using a variety of tools from the toolbox in the workshop known as missions.

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[1] Most of this biographical information about Kenneth Scott Latourette has been adapted from  information provided by Andrew Walls in his article, “Modern Pioneers: Kenneth Scott Latourette,” Christian History 20. (November 2001): 44–45.

[2] Andrew F. Walls, “Modern Pioneers: Kenneth Scott Latourette,” 44. 

Potential Dangers of Formal Theological Education

"Don't let him go to the seminary! It'll ruin him." This was an oft heard comment about newly-called preachers in parts of South Georgia when I was growing up. For some reason, folks had a critical view of formal theological education, and I really never understood why. However, when I started working in Russia as a mentor to newly-called pastors, I began to see that there are some potential pitfalls to a theological training program independent of the local church.

            If the local community of faith is the biblical locus where discipleship takes place, and if pastors are the end result of discipleship for some in the church, there should be no question as to the validity of pastoral training in the context of the local church. There is still a question as to the role of formal theological education in pastoral training though. Institutions of formal theological education should still serve the local church if they can be redefined according to their purposes and parameters. Perhaps the real quandary is not about pastoral training but about theologically equipping the entire church. There has been over two hundred years of formal theological training of American pastors, and churches are still ill-equipped to train their own pastors because of several dangerous areas.

Perhaps part of the problem with educating pastors is that the church has chosen to outsource part of its discipling commission to parachurch institutions. Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson says that

Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability, and there’s a reason…Around the world, there were no systems of public education really before the nineteenth century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas: 1) that the most useful subjects for work are at the top....

And 2) academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance.[1]

His comments reflect a teleological problem that modern secular systems of education have in common with formal institutions of theological education, namely the prioritization of academic ability as prerequisite to vocation. Institutions of higher learning should not serve themselves.

Mark Dever says that seminaries “are ‘usually’ used for the wrong purposes” because they are “not made to make pastors. Churches make pastors.”[2] He explains that in an urban context especially, seminary is “certainly not necessary. And it is not necessarily advisable.”[3] Instead, he advocates that younger men delay any seminary training and spend more time with the local church as training ground for overseer preparation.

For the church that needs to make the transition into becoming a training center for pastors, Dever offers practical advice for equipping future leaders. He begins with a call to prayer for “raising up elders.”[4] Then he advocates a dedication of time for potential pastors to preach on certain Sundays. Finally, he encourages a deeper understanding of discipleship as a local church’s responsibility and assigns Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism as a resource. Anything outside of this ecclesiocentric praxis is what Bill Hull calls “artificial training”[5] and should be rejected.

            A second area of danger is the subtle institutionalism that evolves over time. Care must be taken to avoid an institutionalism that so often accompanies structures that move away from their original design. According to the original design, “the apostles felt confident that God had called the ordinary believer to ministry.”[6] Since that time, however, congregations have moved away from all-member participation to pastoral employment in order to “to do numerous ‘holy jobs.’”[7] Instead of a clergy-laity distinction, Hull offers that “a full-bodied ministry will engage clergy and nonclergy alike in such tasks.”[8]Although geared mainly toward a missiological discussion of relationships between missionaries and their national colleagues, Paul Hiebert states that when leadership training becomes institutionalized, there are dangers of a lost “vision”, an unhealthy concern for “self-maintenance”, a bent toward “inflexibility”, and a “shift in focus from people to programs.”[9] The institutionalized structure has certain advantages of efficiency and the ability to mobilize more people than a more organic structure, but Hiebert notes the detrimental factors. Thus, the institutionalization of missional structures, like the institutionalization of leadership development, leads to a showdown in which “institutional needs take priority over human needs.”[10] Unfortunately, this is the current state of affairs in formal theological education in Russia.

In Russia, whereas most Baptist pastors “have taken much responsibility upon themselves for the care of their flock, the negative effect has often been a tendency for leaders to ‘lord it over’ members rather than to be a servant.”[11] Penner believes that holistic education should target

everyone at every level in the church. The Apostle Paul and his mission team modelled [sic] and taught this principle. On the basic level, they taught the fundamentals of Scripture to all members of the church and, at other levels, equipped leaders for the responsibility of training local congregations and promoting theological training regionally.[12]

Instead of a holistic approach to theological training for the entire church, however, most Russian evangelical institutions of higher learning have targeted only the holy man as a separate and disjointed entity from the local church.

            A third trap is a passivity that is indirectly encouraged by formal theological training. It is “a dangerous doctrinal dualism that springs out of the classic distinction between being and doing.”[13] Hull warns agains falling into “the trap of thinking, I must study and meditate for a couple of years before I engage in service. Study and meditation should take place in the context of the pressures and challenges of ministry.”[14] Alan Hirsch admits that one of the main inherent problems in seminary training “is that the in-tray of information is piled high while the out-tray of action and obedience is just about empty. The academy demands passivity in the student, whereas discipleship requires activity.”[15] Harris notes this passivity as “a great lack of deeper spiritual training for Russian leaders, most programs being organized along the lines of an academic American Bible college or seminary model.”[16] He says that “the Russian student often expects to be passive in the classroom, and the teacher will be expected to initiate all communication.”[17] Somehow, for theological training to work in Russia, this passivity must be overcome.

The fourth danger is a general lack of discipleship ethos when there is no true community. Formal training programs may be able to develop some sense of community, but Hiebert warns against the absence of communitas. He notes,

Perhaps the single most significant source of the malaise of leadership in our day comes from the way, and the context, in which we form leaders. For the most part, the would-be leader is withdrawn from the context of ordinary life and ministry in order to study in a somewhat cloistered environment, for up to seven years in some cases. During that period they are subjected to an immense amount of complex information relating to the biblical disciplines, theology, ethics, church history, pastoral theology, etc. And while the vast majority of this information is useful and correct, what is dangerous to discipleship in that setting is the actual socialization processes that the student undergoes along the way. In effect, he or she is socialized out of ordinary life and develops a kind of language and thinking that is seldom understood and expressed outside the seminary. It’s as if in order to learn about ministry and theology, we leave our places of habitation and take a flight into the wonderfully abstracted world of abstraction, we fly around there for a long period of time, and then wonder why we have trouble landing again.[18]

Without the presence of communitas or an informal structure of relationships among equals within a local church setting that by necessity exerts influence on the external environment, Hiebert believes that ritualism begins to take the place of relationships. Hirsch validates Hiebert’s observations when he says that “leadership development must inculcate in the disciples the lifelong love of learning, but this can be done in a way far more consistent with the ethos of discipleship than that of the academy.”[19]

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[1] Sir Ken Robinson, “Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity” (speech presented at TED2006, Monterey, Calif., February 2006), n.p. [cited 2 March 2010]. Online: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says

_schools_kill_creativity.html.

[2] Mark Dever, “Raising Up Pastors is the Church’s Work,” n.p. [cited 25 February 2010]. Online: http://www.9marks.org/CC/article/0,,PTID314526_CHID598016_CIID2463176,00.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Mark Dever, “How Do Pastors Raise Up Pastors?” n.p. [cited 25 February 2010]. Online: http://sites

.silaspartners.com/CC/article/0,,PTID314526_CHID598014_CIID2463178,00.html.

[5] Bill Hull, The Disciple-Making Church (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1990), 46.

[6] Ibid, 90.

[7] Ibid, 92.

[8] Bill Hull, Disciple-Making Church, 92.

[9] Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 163–64.

[10] Ibid, 164.

[11] Mark Harris, “Toward an Understanding of Russian Baptist Preaching,” Paper Presented to Mission Consulting Group, (Pasadena, Calif.: Mission Consulting Group, 1996), 6.

[12] Peter Penner, “Contextual Theological Education among Post-Soviet Protestants: Case Study 1: The Development of a Masters Degree at St Petersburg Christian University,” Transformation 18:2 (2001), 115.

[13] Bill Hull, Disciple-Making Church, 165.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 122.

[16] Mark Harris, “Proposal for a Contextualized Educational Program for the Training of Russian Spiritual Leaders,” Paper presented to Mission Consulting Group (Pasadena, Calif.: Mission Consulting Group, 1999), 1.

[17] Ibid, 8.               

[18] Alan Hirsch, Forgotten Ways, 121.

[19] Ibid.

Ecclesiocentric Discipleship (Training Pastors Discussion Continued)

Sorry I've been unable to put a new post sooner. I'd like to continue the discussion about training pastors in a local church setting by adding another dimension, namely church-centered disciple-making.The church is responsible for making mature disciples out of each of its members. An ecclesiocentric or churchocentric view of discipleship should take into consideration a biblical model of church. Apart from pragmatic problems relating to isolation or reintegration, there are deep theological issues related to the local church’s superiority over any other institution of pastoral training. Millard Erickson sees certain biblical images of the true church in his discourse on the nature of the church.[1] His selection of certain biblical images is both ecclesiocentric and Trinitarian in their approach to the identity, function, and relationships within local church discipleship. Each aspect of the people of God, the body of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit carries an implication for pastoral training as part of the doctrine of discipleship.

            As the people of God, the church is an identifiable assembly having certain cultural expressions and positioned in a loving relationship with God the Father. Erickson cites 2 Cor 6:16 as the primary basis for this positional image, but he also refers to the image as having its base in Old Testament texts whereby God expresses his ownership and nurture of Israel. The identity of God’s people, then, is transferred to include the church in the New Testament, and as such carries the idea of God’s demand for the church’s consecration and devotion. This image sparks an ecclesiocentric view of discipleship that demands total commitment to the group and a placement of leaders within the group whose function outside the group might seem meaningless. In essence, the identity of the leaders, the men of God, is rooted in the identity of the church, the people of God. 

One of the titles used in Scripture for church leader is episkopos or overseer, a positional perspective. It can be argued that the pastor as overseer is theologically reflective of the the oversight and headship of God the Father. In his refutation of Episcopalian polity, John Hammett argues for a plurality of overseers and appeals to Richard McBrien as an authoritative Catholic theologian for the case against leadership singularity.[2] McBrien claims that it is only in the “post-apostolic period that we find evidence for the so-called monarchal episocopate, i.e., a local church presided over by one bishop.”[3] However, it is the very nature of oversight that places the theological role of the pastors into the discipleship process of the local church.

            The church is also described as the body of Christ, a functional image in that it explains the church as the “locus of Christ’s activity now, just as was his physical body during his earthly ministry.”[4] Erickson calls this image “the most extended”[5] and most Christocentric perspective on the church. It speaks to “the connection of the church, as a group of believers, with Christ.”[6] Under the leadership of Christ Himself, the members of the church find their bodily functions per se. Within these functions, “each believer encourages and builds up the others.”[7] There is value in the contribution of each body part toward the function of the whole, so discipleship is a functionary fulfillment of the believer’s life in the local church.

Another title that is contemporarily used for pastor is poimen or shepherd. This is a functional role, as a shepherd keeps his flock, Christologically reflective of Jesus’ function as the Good Shepherd over His flock, the church. Using this functional image, Carl George suggests a new paradigm in his meta-church model for pastoral ministry training. Under this paradigm, the primary care giver is not the pastor himself, but instead the pastor is a shepherd of a shepherding body where each member of the flock exercises her spiritual gifts to lead the rest. It is a functional role “organized around a system of lay-pastoral skills.”[8] Howard Astin believes this requires the “adoption of a new leadership structure” whereby each pastor on a pastoral team functions as a coordinator of cell groups rather than a traditional caregiver to the entire congregation.[9] He outlines three elements to the calling and training of new pastors within a local church ministry, namely, prayer, vision casting, and delegation of tasks.[10]

            Erickson also describes the church as the temple of Holy Spirit. As the relational image, it is also the most pneumatological expression of the local church’s interactions. Citing 1 Cor 3:16–17 and Acts 1:8, Erickson points to the indwelling nature and the empowering activity of the Holy Spirit in the church. Through the presence of the Holy Spirit in each believer and the manifestation of power through spiritual gifts, the church lives out an incarnational expression of the temple, “a holy and sacred place under the old covenant because God dwelt in it.”[11] The local church, then, has a sanctifying work as it makes mature disciples and leaders to minister within the temple.

A final title used to name pastors is the relational title presbyter or older one. Reflective of the Old Testament temple elders, an elder in the New Testament temple community echoes the pneumatological aspect of  interpersonal relationships within the church. The elder brings stability and direction to the group, and together they minister to one another through varied spiritual gifts.

These images are indeed Trinitarian in nature, but they apply specifically to local church discipleship and the pastoral sphere. According to Mark Dever, the church should be the primary disciple-maker and is being “irresponsible by not taking measures for equipping future pastors.”[12] David P. Nelson concurs when he admits that “life in the community of faith, the cultivation of a liturgical life, and the enactment of faith as a way of life is the stuff of real discipleship. And the church should be diligent and intentional about shaping the life of the community to allow for relationships that form mature disciples.”[13] If pastors are best developed in the context of local church discipleship, the local church should have a full-orbed doctrine of discipleship.

Modern practitioners are quick to point out the deficiency in modern local church discipleship programming. Alan Hirsch very explicitly says that “the quality of the church’s leadership is directly proportional to the quality of discipleship. If we fail in the area of making disciples, we should not be surprised if we fail in the area of leadership development.”[14] Neil Cole suggests that “multiplication the continued expansion and reproduction of disciples who are producing other disciples is the heart of any Biblical movement.”[15] David Nelson believes that the New Testament provides descriptive insight into discipleship models for the apostolic era but that it does not prescribe one specific model. He believes that

there simply isn’t a singular pattern in the Scriptures that is monolithic or that is

prescribed as the primary means of discipleship. Jesus taught the masses and discipled a group of men. And even when we find in Scripture those indications of more personal attention given by Jesus, it isn’t strictly in a “one-on-one” relationship. We should not, therefore, read too much into the descriptions of these relationships in the text.[16]

However, he does maintain that “discipleship is best done in the context of the community. The one-on-one model lacks the robust opportunities for the formation of life that is found when a believer is influenced by more than one person.”[17]

By some standards, any discipleship that exists outside the local church might not be considered adequate. According to Hammett, expressions of unity outside the structural sphere of the local church should be considered spiritual in nature and not organizational or institutional.[18] Therefore, expressions as such wherein there is cooperation between or participation among adherents to various denominations could be considered “parachurch”.[19] The question then arises whether bible colleges or seminaries that facilitate the learning of students from various ecclesial backgrounds constitute parachurch activity as opposed to strictly denominational activity. Whatever the answer to that question, it can nonetheless be ascertained that the seminary is not a strict extension of a single local church’s teaching ministry.

Hammett appeals to Baptist ecclesiology as his basis for discipleship within the local church. He presents a strong case for congregational polity as “democratic participation, with every member having an equal voice and vote.”[20] From that political perspective, he sees “no evidence for an authority such as a bishop, presbytery, or general assembly over local churches in Scripture.”[21] Moreover, he argues that the “relationship of the congregation to associations and conventions is not as direct and intrinsic to congregationalism as are its relationships to elders and deacons.”[22] Continuing that thought, Hammett also discusses the ordinances as a strictly local church function demanding the participation of the entire local church and which cannot be administered in isolation by even a subset or “small portion of the church.”[23] Therefore, discipline and discipleship are local church functions within the Baptist theology of the church.

Bill Hull’s theological method for understanding discipleship is four-fold in process: descriptive, modeled, historical, and profiled. Like Hammett, Hull also argues for a “churchocentric discipling model.”[24] Like Nelson, he sees true discipleship as “a churchocentric discipling model required a community relationship, a shared discipling among several people.”[25] As the primary thesis of his teaching, writing, and praxis, he declares that “the church has the responsibility to provide the clear vision and the vehicles that bring Christians into mature discipleship.”[26]

The Bible clearly says that God gave some people to the church to be pastors (Eph 4:11–16). It would then logically follow that the role of pastor is the ultimate end of one branch of discipleship for those who have been thus called and that the Bible would provide some modeling for this type of discipleship. It would also follow that training pastors should be an integral part of discipleship within the local church. Training pastors in the church helps discipleship in the church. By deduction, therefore, removing pastoral training from the local church in fact damages church health.

Nelson argues for a nonprescriptive view of leadership development in the New Testament[27], but Rad Zdero suggests that “although there is no direct evidence concerning the exact way local leaders were developed, several patterns emerge.”[28] Zdero suggests that there are three identifiable patterns. He presents what he calls Apostolic coaching within the local church to describe the Apostles direct method of instruction for pastors. He then classifies a discipleship chain to describe ongoing apostolic teaching within the local church for all members. He then describes an apprenticeship model, the same method employed by Mark Dever in his Capitol Hill Baptist pastoral internship program.[29]

Dever’s model is an alternative to formal theological education in seminary and Bible college. Dever explains that he is

not opposed to seminaries, although they are unknown among Protestants before the

eighteenth or nineteenth century. I’m simply saying that in the Bible, the local church – a community where people are known, their conversion is testified to, and their gifts are witnessed – is the appropriate place to make that kind of heavy statement about God’s gifting and calling in somebody’s life. Raising up leaders is part of the church’s commission.[30]

Dever claims unprecedented success in this model, and he raises it as a biblical standard for

twenty-first century theological education alternatives.

Until the fall of communism, there were no models for formal theological education for pastors in Russia. Instead, any pastoral training was done only within the context of the local church. For that reason,“within a culture that lacked both ecclesiastical and secular traditions of good public speaking, the oratorical art was neither developed nor taught in Russia.”[31] It could be added that no other model for ongoing theological training in local churches has taken root either. Regarding this lack of formal training in Russia, Mark Harris notes,

Within the churches the approach to preacher development made little use of formal methodologies which could have been utilized, such as direct mentoring or the passing on of a set of objective principles by which sermons could be evaluated. Personal gifting and maturity carry much more weight than knowledge of principles learned in a classroom. One cannot assume that all men, especially the older brothers, are even interested in gaining such formal training.Serving to counterbalance the lack of formal training was a strong tradition of brothers meeting together to discuss and deal with biblical ideas and difficulties.[32]

He continues his observations,

Mainly the young men of the churches have been the ones to receive homiletic training, and the results have been mixed. Some have noted that the classroom training has tended to produce very theoretical and often dry sermons, long on intellectual approach to ideas and short on practical application. Some of this can be attributed to the lack of life experience of the young preachers, but at times the bookish training may have promoted a certain youthful arrogance, arising from the possession of knowledge that older preachers have not had.[33]

However, regardless of any homiletical and oratory shortfalls, the Russian evangelical church has modeled a biblical approach to pastoral training as it continues to attach a strong theological significance to the local church as the locus for discipleship.

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[1] See Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 1034–41.

[2] John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations, 140.

[3] Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism  (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994), 867.

[4] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1036.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1037.

[7] Ibid, 1037–38.

[8] Carl F. George and Warren Bird, The Coming Church Revolution: Empowering Leaders for the Future (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1994), 30.

[9] Howard Astin, Body and Cell: Making the Transition to Cell Church – A First-hand Account.

(Grand Rapids: Monarch, 2002), 64.

[10] Howard Astin, Body and Cell, 73–74.

[11] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1041.

[12] Mark Dever, “Raising Up Pastors is the Church’s Work,” n.p. [cited 25 February 2010]. Online: http://www.9marks.org/CC/article/0,,PTID314526_CHID598016_CIID2463176,00.html.

[13] David P. Nelson, “I Was Never ‘Mentored’: A Report from the Field, Part 3,” n.p. [cited 8 February 2010]. Online: http://betweenthetimes.com/2010/02/08/i-was-never-“mentored”-a-report-from-the-field-part-3.

[14] Alan Hirsch, Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos

Press, 2006), 119.

[15] Neil Cole, “Movement Math,” n.p. [cited 26 February 2010]. Online: http://onmovements.com/?p=101.

[16] David P. Nelson, “I Was Never ‘Mentored’”, n.p.

[17] Ibid.

[18] John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations, 53.

[19] Ibid.

[20] John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations, 143.

[21] Ibid.

[22] John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations, 145.

[23]Ibid, 262.

[24] Bill Hull, The Disciple-Making Church (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1990), 18.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Bill Hull, Disciple-Making Church, 33.

[27] David P. Nelson, “I Was Never ‘Mentored’”, n.p.

[28] Rad Zdero, Global House Church Movement (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library,

2004), 41.

[29] See Mark Dever, “Raising Up Pastors,” n.p.

[30] Mark Dever, “Raising Up Pastors,” n.p.

[31] Mark Harris, “Toward an Understanding,” Paper Presented to Mission Consulting Group, (Pasadena, Calif.: Mission Consulting Group, 1996), 6.

[32] Ibid, 8.

[33] Mark Harris, “Toward an Understanding,” 9.