While I’m prone to talk about worship resources, the details of church polity or the importance of church history, I don’t think that any of these things are the most important resources to start or sustain new churches.
Rather I would think that an assortment of the following documents — expressing a variety of well-crafted and tested views — would go a long way in helping. Something overburdened evangelists needn’t create from scratch, but liberally-licensed so that he or she might adapt them for local use. (I’m a believer that you should learn the rules before you break them.) Each of these would be a theoretical document with a brief synopsis useful for explaining our intentions to the general public.
- A good answer to the question, “What is a church?”
- A good answer to the question, “Why the church and not some other entity?”
- A good answer to the question, “Why do we worship?”
- What we can do, what we cannot do and how this changes with different levels of people, money and interest.
Thoughts? Additions?
This is about theory; I have some ideas about the nut and bolts which I’ll keep for another post.