by Jim Roché
How would you define an “audacious goal?” I’ve seen definitions of “audacious” that mean “invulnerable to fear or intimidation, unrestrained by convention or propriety, disposed to venture or to take recklessly daring risks.” Crossover defined its Phase 2, “Mission Black Sea,” as an “audacious goal” eight years ago. “Plant 100 churches within the countries of the Black Sea.” Why was it called “audacious?”
Crossover had just completed Phase 1, Mission Moldova: the goal to plant 5 churches in 5 years (by 2000). We didn’t want to think that we would remain at the same pace so that the 100 churches would be reached in 100 years! But a deadline wasn’t attached to Mission Black Sea; frankly, we didn’t know how long it would take. Did we believe that God wanted to see 100 new churches planted? Absolutely! Were we “invulnerable to fear or intimidation?” Yes! Were we “recklessly taking a daring risk?” Well, all that we were risking was a reputation that might reveal the presumption of an agency with only five years experience in Moldova. Did we have enough faith in our God, His resources, and the ministry skills and church planting processes we were learning and applying that would result in increasing God’s fame in the land? That was where it was audacious to us… but not to God! It was our test of faith, our test of resource stewardship, and our test of faithfulness. We felt we were going beyond conventional and proper expectations of a new agency. Only 20% of church plants in the United States succeed; did we really believe we could improve upon that overseas?
The past eight years did not begin with the understanding and lessons we now have in 2008. There were lessons that we had to learn in the process. Six of the first twenty churches did not survive by 2003. But then only one in the next 32 churches over the next two years didn’t succeed. And as we conclude our 100-church goal, we only have 8 that have not succeeded. We still have 44 churches whose planters are still receiving some financial support (they receive financial support for three years while planting their church), so we cannot claim they are yet self-sufficient, but they’re on their way.
And we are also very aware that what we have learned to date—though good and valuable principles—are partial and incomplete and will still need refinement in the future. Church planting is not a formula that, once learned and applied, will always bear the same result! Nonetheless, we have learned some essential ingredients within the formula that have increased the potential for a successful new church. Of course, we will make mistakes in the future as we have in the past, but as long as we can maintain a posture of a learning organization that can learn from our errors, by the grace of God, we should continue to glorify Him. You might be interested in some of those ingredients.
The primary ingredient is the selection of the church planter, and the catalyst to identifying the church planter is to have selected an outstanding and perceptive leader. Our first Crossover missionary to Moldova, John Putman, trained some key men during our first phase. One of those men now serves as the president of Crossover-Moldova. He is an unusual leader in the region for he matches a wonderful understanding of the grace of God with a firm hand requiring accountability. Under the persecution of the Soviet domination, the churches had begun adopting more legalistic characteristics to control and protect their small flocks. Also due to the Soviet domination, leadership potential among the people was discouraged; unquestioned obedience to party leadership was the norm. Thus, to find such a grace-filled leader was essential, and his church plant became the fastest-growing church within the Moldovan Baptist Union.
In order to find other church planters, John and Crossover missionary Richard Wooton developed a Christian Leadership Training Institute. Participants had to be recommended by their local pastors to attend and all expenses were paid by Crossover through its generous donors. Attending sixteen courses in one-week intensive formats over a two-year schedule produced valuable lay leadership as they returned to serve their home churches more effectively. But during those two years, the Moldovan Crossover leadership team was able to identify those who showed potential as church planters among those attending, and a select few were invited to the Church Planters Training Institute (CPTI).
The CPTI took just a few months of initial training. A second ingredient to the church planting formula was to realize that church-planting involved both husband and wife so the wives were also included in some of the training retreats. The president and his team would carefully interview the participants and select those in order of their greatest potential for Crossover could not afford to support all the participants. Fyodor would conduct several, rigorous interviews before asking the students with the greatest potential if they would be willing to relocate their family into the village. We had found that church planters who tried to commute into the village while living outside were not going to be successful. We also secured a commitment from them that they would not emigrate for at least three years.
Finally, the president would compile his final list of church planters and would then check with Crossover-USA to determine how many church planters could be financially supported. We had learned that we would need to pay them just enough each month for the next three years to free them up to do the work of evangelism and to begin the church. The amount would vary each of the three years. After completing the third year was completed, the church planter would find sufficient personal income to serve as a bi-vocational pastor in the village. There were times when Fyodor had more church planters selected than could be afforded, so sometimes the church planter would need to wait for awhile.
Another ingredient to the formula we discovered was accountability. Each month, the church planters would gather together, and then twice a year a mentor from Crossover-Moldova’s staff would visit the church planter in the village. These would be times for encouragement, guidance, and accountability. If insufficient progress was revealed, the church planter might be put on probation for a couple of months and then, if no improvement, the church planter would be counseled that perhaps a different way of service would be more appropriate and he would no longer be supported. Obviously, this would rarely happen because the selection process had been so rigorous and effective.
What has been most exciting about the process was to see Crossover-Moldova become a cross-cultural sending agency, now training fourteen church-planters in Siberia now engaged in planting their own churches, and a Moldovan church planter now in a Central Asian country! Thirteen years after John Putman planted the first church in Chisinau, Moldova, we are seeing the second generation of churches growing in other countries! A principle has been transferred; churches are manifesting the DNA of responsibility to plant their own churches! And we didn’t do this by sending over 100 church planters from the United States to Moldova; actually we only sent over three USA missionary couples. Instead, we trained the Moldovans how to plant their own churches in Moldova and to catch a vision for their responsibility to the world! Crossover-initiated churches account for 16% of the churches begun in the Baptist Union since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, but the most recent figures from two years ago reveal that those churches accounted for 23% of the baptisms within the Baptist Union. These churches are being effective in their outreach and ministry!
Therefore, we invite you to join us in thanking the Lord for His grace and blessing in establishing these churches for His glory. Perhaps we did, indeed, succeed in our “audacious goal.” But isn’t the purpose of passing the test of a goal to be encouraged to try something even greater? And so we continue to extend His fame and glory… “To the ends of the earth!”