Church Planting

In my experience of over twenty years as a church planter in Germany, I have come to refer to six disciplines of good to great church planting as “G6”. By that I mean that they seem to have six great qualities that set them apart from merely good church planting ministries. These six great qualities of church planting are: timed release, generational distance, discipleship depth, intentional mindset, external focus, and reproducible models. I’ll attempt to explain them in the order listed. These six elements were developed after studying church planting in both the established Protestant Church and the various larger Free Churches in Germany which are reflected in my D.Min. dissertation entitled “Creating and Sustaining a Church Planting Multiplication Movement in Germany”.

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the concept of a church planting multiplication movement in Germany. Some argue that a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches has not occurred in Germany, but that the Bible warrants this viable phenomenon as Christians intentionally seek it under God’s guidance. The thesis of this dissertation, therefore, states: Germany can support a church planting multiplication movement through a bold action plan and a restructuring and reconsideration of current planting methods.

I will attempt to answer the broad question: how effective have missionary church planters been who have initiated German speaking congregations in the last thirty years? I will specifically be looking at three German free church denominations who have profited the most from missionary church planters. It must be pointed out that these three denominations have also planted more churches than all other free church denominations combined. The three denominations in this paper will include the Bund Evangelisch- Freikirchliche-Gemeinden (Union of Baptist Churches – BEFG), the Bund Freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden (Union of Pentecostal Free Churches – BFP), and the Bund Freier Evangelischer Gemeinden (Evangelical Free Church – FEG).