Focus on Reproduction, Mentor's Guide, MG12

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F O C U S O N R E P R O D U C T I O N

The final “E’ of effective urban church planting refers to the concept of Empowerment , that process which seeks to help the emerging church become sufficient to work with other congregations as leadership authority is given over to the church in order that it may become a self-governing, self-supporting, and self-reproducing church. Raising up godly leaders who faithfully and responsibly shepherd and protect the church is the single greatest responsibility of effective urban church planters. Without these gifted leaders, urban churches will be subject to division, heresy, and stagnation. In order to ensure a dynamic, healthy urban church, the church planter must do all that he or she can in order to invest into a leadership team who will have the authority, character, competence and membership support necessary to cause it to grow and mature in Christ. Effective Empowerment demands that we overcome the ever-present challenges to transferring authority to the leaders and members. These include the issue of authority, avoiding dependence while ensuring friendship and connection, and encouraging the church to not merely survive but reproduce itself for Christ. The leaders who can effectively lead emerging urban churches must be commissioned, i.e., persons of a distinctly recognized call, of character , i.e., persons of proven experience; of competence , i.e., persons of gifting and skill, and persons of community, i.e., persons committed to serve and sacrifice on behalf of the members of the body. An urban church is being empowered for ministry in Christ if we are enabling the church to run its own affairs and so transition to independence, ensuring that the church is connected to other assemblies in godly association, and being encouraged through its giving, service, and mission to reproduce itself, advancing the Kingdom of God in the ways that God leads. A newly planted urban church is empowered for reproduction when a faithful group of converted, gathered, and maturing disciples of Jesus function together in worship and fellowship, and is governed by its own pastors and leaders under its own processes. Such a fellowship no longer functions in dependence upon the missionaries and workers who help to found it, and it encourages and spawns unique, burden-driven, gift-oriented ministries carried out by its members. An empowered church generates its

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