Church Planting vs making Disciples

• Church-planting takes a group of people (usually fifty or so) from one church-service and places them in a new service, which is more like a church-plop than a church-plant. Disciple-making is about taking a small core group of people and planting seeds of the gospel in them so that they will grow and plant more seeds.

• Core groups: Jesus started with a ragtag crew of twelve Jewish dudes.

• Church-planting is focused on people ‘going to’ church. Disciple-making is focused on people being the church.

• Church-planting is centralized with the focus of filling a weekly Sunday worship event at a church-building. Disciple-making is decentralized with the focus of filling every place with the presence of Christ, as it is lived and spoken by his disciples every day, 24/7.

• Church-planting is about multiplying services. Disciple-making is about multiplying disciples who multiply disciples who multiply disciples...

• Church-planting is usually a ministry-attraction--get people to come to something in order to preach the gospel to them. Disciple-making is a ministry-incarnation--send disciples to declare and demonstrate the gospel in the lives of other people.

• Successful church-planting usually takes three main ingredients: a gifted teacher, a gifted worship-leader and a gifted kids' ministry worker. Successful disciple-making takes one main ingredient: a disciple whose heart is obsessed and enthralled by the gospel as the only hope for lost people (gifting doesn’t matter as much).

• The movement of a church-plant is usually to get as ‘big’ as possible, in a vertical sort of way. The movement of disciple-making is also to get big, but in a horizontal sort of way (see decentralize and multiplication above).

• Church-plants usually launch within a year. Disciple-making takes more time to launch. Jesus worked for three years and then died as a sacrifice—then his disciples were launched.

• Church-planting is never commanded in the Bible. Disciple-making unequivocally is.

 Derek Hiebert