Church Planting: A Reformed View
As Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8), the need for church planting remains constant. Since its inception, Covenant Seminary has been steadfastly committed to raising up church planters. Jesus told his disciples that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, and that we ought to earnestly pray for workers to be sent into the harvest (Matt. 9:35–38). In keeping with the Seminary’s emphasis on church planting, Dr. Phil Douglass taught here for 32 years, beating the drum and advocating for church planting all the while, and praying that students would respond to this great need. By God’s grace, and through the tireless efforts and enthusiastic influence of Phil and his colleagues, Covenant Seminary alumni have planted over 325 PCA churches and more than 400 churches total.
This tradition continues with the Church Planting Track, a specialized addition to our MDiv and MABTS degree programs, along with a new Church Planting Scholarship for qualified students. Thanks to a recent grant from the Association of Theological Schools, Covenant will expand its efforts to recruit and train church planters, while working in close partnership with Mission to North America (MNA), our denominational church planting agency, and other ministries to help build Christ’s church within the PCA and beyond. In the timeless article posted below—originally published in Covenant Magazine several years ago and adapted here, Dr. Douglass proposes that a Reformed view of church planting is rooted in the gospel of grace. From Calvin’s students at Geneva in the mid-1500s to Covenant Seminary students today, church planters set forth with confidence in God’s unchanging grace and the Spirit-empowered courage to endure laboring in God’s harvest fields.
– Dr. Robert Kim
The Grace-Centered Heart of Church Planting
What is it about the teaching and training provided at Covenant Theological Seminary that compels a growing number of our Master of Divinity (MDiv) graduates to plant PCA churches in both North America and overseas? It is the same theology that, in the 1500s, empowered graduates of theologian John Calvin’s seminary in Geneva, Switzerland, to plant thousands of churches in France, Holland, Scotland, and throughout the rest of Europe. It is the grace-centeredness of our Reformed perspective.
Most of Calvin’s students came to Geneva during the mid-1500s as refugees fleeing religious persecution. Yet, after Calvin equipped them by teaching them how to study the Scriptures, grow in godly character, and proclaim the gospel, they returned to the same hostile countries from which they had fled with the goal of planting churches. In 1555, there were five Reformed churches in France (in Paris, Meaux, Angers, Poitiers, and Loudun); in 1559, there were almost 100 planted. In 1562, the number of church plants reached 2,150. The total membership of these churches in 1562 was 3 million (out of a total French population of 20 million). By any historical comparison, these churches mark an astounding evangelistic and church-planting effort. What did Calvin teach his students that compelled them to face great dangers and deprivations? It was the same timeless message we teach our students at Covenant Seminary today—the gospel of grace.
Keep the Indicatives and Imperatives in the Right Order
A primary way we communicate these grace distinctives to our students is through our focus on the “indicatives” and the “imperatives” found in almost every passage of Scripture. As taught by the great Reformed theologian Herman Ridderbos, the indicatives are a declaration of God’s nature, of what he has done for us in Christ, and who he has made us to be in union with Christ. The indicatives empower the imperatives of Scripture, which challenge and guide us in responding to the ways God has blessed us in Christ. The indicatives are the basic theological truths of a biblical passage; the imperatives are the “therefores” that command us to act in like manner toward others.
This scriptural pattern communicates what I call the “platinum rule”: “Do unto others as the Father has so graciously and lovingly done unto you in Christ.” And the corollary to this rule is: “To the same degree that your heart is gripped by the Lord’s gracious and loving work done on your behalf, you will be motivated and empowered by the Holy Spirit to go and do likewise unto others.”
This is why the apostle John tells us, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). In other words, if we truly know God in the ways he blesses us, then we will relate with the same sacrificial love to others through obeying his imperatives. In Sin and Temptation, John Owen, the great Puritan theologian, explains that we need to
keep the heart full of a sense of the love of God in Christ: this is the greatest preservative against the power of temptation in the world. . . . Fill your heart with a sense of the love of God in Christ, and apply the eternal design of grace and shed blood to yourselves. Accept all the privileges of adoption, justification, and acceptance with God.
Because Calvin’s church planters were so impacted by the blood Jesus shed for them, they too were willing to shed their blood for others.
The Way Jesus Did It
Perhaps the most famous example of the indicatives empowering the imperatives of church planting is Matthew 16:15–19, where Jesus said to his disciples:
“But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” [an indicative]. And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven [an indicative]. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock [of the two indicatives] I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven [indicative], and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” [imperative].
Jesus plants his church through the power of the Father’s revelation of him as the Christ—the one who raises people from spiritual and physical death. These grace-oriented indicatives serve as the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. In other words, people enter into heaven through the Spirit of the Father bringing them into union with the resurrected Christ through opening the eyes of their hearts to believe that Christ was crucified for them. Through evangelism and church planting, Peter and the apostles responded to Jesus’s imperative instructions by setting “loose” this gospel unto others as the Father had graciously set it loose in their hearts by revealing Christ to them.
As a result, we see in the book of acts an outburst of evangelism and church planting in Jerusalem:
Acts 2:41: So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Acts 4:4: But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.
Acts 5:14: And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women . . .
It is estimated that within a just few years, the number of believers in Jerusalem grew to 20,000 men, women, and children. Because the average home at that time could hold no more than 40 people, this means that approximately 500 churches would have been planted. Jesus plants his church today in the same way he built the first-century church and the churches of the Reformation—through the Father granting faith to spiritually dead people to see Jesus as the Christ, raising them from spiritual death, and baptizing them into union with Christ. Because of this gospel pattern, we send our graduates out to plant churches with the confidence that as many as are appointed to eternal life will believe (Acts 13:48).
Grace-Centered for the Future of Christ’s Church
I am often encouraged by the grace-centeredness of our students and graduates. My heart has been warmed by students remarking that they consistently hear the message of grace from all of our faculty members in ways they never previously understood. I have also heard an associate pastor at our church clearly communicating the scriptural indicatives as empowering the imperatives as he administers communion. This man helped me plant a church in St. Louis when he was an MDiv student intern; he is now a key church-planting leader in our presbytery. In these and many other ways, Jesus continues to build his church through the grace-centered gospel taught at Covenant Seminary.
About Our Authors
Dr. Philip Douglass, Professor Emeritus of Applied Theology, retired from Covenant Seminary in 2018 after 32 years of teaching and mentoring generations of students and church planters for the PCA. He was also instrumental in establishing Mission to North America’s Church Planting Assessment Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He now coordinates the church planting efforts of Missouri Presbytery and continues to consult and serve at the denominational level.
Dr. Robert Kim, Associate Professor of Applied Theology and Church Planting, is also the Philip and Rebecca Douglass Chair of Church Planting and Christian Formation at Covenant. A seasoned church planter himself, Dr. Kim ably carries on the work begun by Dr. Douglass as he trains and mentors students, recruits church planters, and oversees the Seminary’s Church Planting Track for the MDiv and MABTS degrees.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Covenant Seminary is working with the PCA’s Mission to North America and other ministries as we aim to recruit, train, and send the next generation of leaders who will plant and grow more biblically sound, confessionally Reformed churches in the US and across North America. You can help to make this vison a reality by ensuring that our Church Planting Track and Church Planting Scholarship remain strong and vital. How can you do this?
Pray for us and our partners and support us financially.
Refer potential church planting students to us.
Connect us with influencers and others who can have an impact on our efforts.
We value your partnership in our ministry!