Who can pioneer a church?

"God really can use all sorts of people to do it"

For lots of people today, the idea of pioneering a church seems way beyond them. They think of it as either the calling of a few reckless enthusiasts or the result of a few guys strategising from behind locked doors.

This is definitely not the case – if we take the briefest look at the book of Acts we can see how in the early church, new churches were planted by many different people, for many different reasons, employing many different gifts and many different methods. And despite what you may think, there is no spiritual gift of church planting!

Churches get planted by a variety of people with a variety of different gifts.

On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out on the believers in the upper room. Their actions, and Peter’s wonderful sermon attracted a large crowd, and 3,000 people were saved and added to the first church plant recorded in the book of Acts.

But in chapter 8, we read how Philip, a healing evangelist, was himself used to bring about a church in Samaria.

Reading on into chapter 11 shows how a team of people who were prepared to share the message with the Greeks, and as a result, planted a church in Antioch.

In chapter 16, a hospitable woman called Lydia helped to pioneer a church in Philippi by opening up her home.

And in chapters 17, 18 and 19, Paul and his apostolic team were used to pioneer churches in Thessalonica, Corinth and Ephesus, with examples such as Apollos who used his teaching gift to encourage the new church plant.

While some people might be temperamentally more inclined to be the kind of people who plant churches, God really can use all sorts of people to do it.

Who can pioneer a church?

For lots of people today, the idea of pioneering a church seems way beyond them. They think of it as either the calling of a few reckless enthusiasts or the result of a few guys strategising from behind locked doors.