Church Planting - Totally Cockeyed!

Jesus never told us to plant churches. He said he will build his church. He told us to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness (i.e. justice, not piety) and the Great Commission he gave us is a command to disciple nations, not plant churches. Churches are a consequence of the Great Commission not its goal. The goal is all nations embracing the kingdom of God and living according to his covenant. For nigh on two thousand years Christians, at the behest of self-appointed clergymen, which are nowhere to be found in the New Testament Church, have been reversing this order, insisting that we should do Jesus’ job and that he should do ours. Is there any wonder that the Church across the board is in such a dysfunctional and paralysed state? We should do what Jesus commanded us to do and let him do what he promised he would do. Our first priority is the kingdom of God and Christian nations, not churches, and until we stop idolising the Church, which John Owen so aptly described as the greatest idol that ever was in the world,* and obey the Lord Jesus’ command to disciple nations things will continue to go wrong, as they are so evidently doing now.

Of course these “Churches” are not what the New Testament means when it talks about the ecclesia. The institutional Churches are networks of mere Christian mystery cults, not communities of God’s people living as a Christian social order and discipling the nations by modelling to the world what true society should be. The word ecclesia is a political term, not a cultic term. There were words that could have been used in the first century to describe the meetings of Christians as essentially devotional mystery cults, which is what the Churches are today. But the Bible avoids these terms like the plague, and uses instead an intensely political term that was guaranteed to provoke the Roman political authorities like a red rag to a bull. The ecclesia is the assembly of the demos  (the people) for political purposes, in other words it is the parliament of another political order, the kingdom of God.

The Church has become a second rate alternative to the kingdom of God, and Church planting a third rate alternative to the Great Commission to make Christian nations. Jesus never commanded us to make disciples of all nations. He commanded us to make all nations his disciples.

All men and nations must and one day will bow the knee to Jesus Christ and acknowledge him as the ruler of all nations. Our job, our Great Commission, is to seek and work for this now on earth. The Lord Jesus Christ will not return until all nations have submitted to him and this vision has become the reality of life on earth.

“Go therefore and make all the nations my disciples [i.e. disciple all the nations], baptizing them [i.e. all the nations] in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them [i.e. all the nations] to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:18-20).

“And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).

This is the alpha and omega of eschatology.

 * An Inquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Powers, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches in Works (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust [Goold Edition, 1850–53], 1965), Vol. XV, p. 224f.