Church Planting Worldwide Through Big Cities

How do we look at church planting? What's our vision? 

From the basic premise that God wants all men to be saved (1Tm.2:4), and considering that the majority of Christ-naming groups in the world are preaching works for salvation, I have come to believe that for the world to be saved we need many more preachers of the gospel of the grace of God. We can't count on other Christian organizations. "Other gospels" (Gl.1) are being preached in the name of Christ, and they are false, so we need the grace message to spread, and that worldwide! 

How do we go about reaching the whole world? From God’s desire to save all we learn to value population, so we must seek to reach the most populated places first. From Paul’s travels we learn not to stay put in one place forever, but to expand, always looking to share the light in another city: all our churches must be senders. From Paul’s years in Ephesus and Rome we learn to take advantage of the great international cities. Today we can save time and resources by sending missionaries to such global metropolitan cities with the goal of working with people groups from around the world (different nationalities) – all in one place, and already speaking our language! Then there's no need for language school or huge cultural adaptation (which takes a lot of time)! Let’s take a look at some of the most populated urban areas in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_population

Of the top twenty above, some (red arrow) have already been reached with the grace message, praise God! China and India both have three each of the top twenty, and with Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico, they hold the top ten most-needy-of-the-gospel-of-grace cities in the world. Personally, I'd like to see one church per million people in each such city. If 38 grace churches in Tokyo were to work together, could they start more churches in Japan and other surrounding countries?? Why, sure!!! 

We believe each church should have a plan for outreach locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. A church in the south side of NY, for example, should have a plan for reaching neighborhoods in the east side, north side, and west side. That same church should also have a plan for reaching other big cities in the northeast, like Boston or Philly. That's the regional plan. Then the church should have a plan to reach other places in the nation like Frisco (national plan), as well as foreign cities in great need, like Tokyo (international plan). Local outreach can be done by the church alone, though it may be a good option to do it in partnership with other local churches. Regional, national, and international outreach should obviously be done in partnership with as many other churches as possible.

This sums up the basics of our vision for church planting, which are further expounded and applied to specific target countries on the other tabs of this blog (Brazil and South Africa). Check out the other tabs!