The Lausanne Global Conversation is on the World Wide Open Network
Author: Cody C. Lorance
Date: 02.05.2012
Category: Diasporas
Not long ago, I was asked to speak on the topic of “Starting Church Planting Movements among Diasporas”. Oddly enough, though I have been well immersed in both the church planting and diaspora missions worlds for some time now, I have never considered this particular hybrid. As far as I know, the concept of a “church planting movement” was rather popularized (if it is possible to popularize a topic of missiology) by David Garrison in his writings on the subject about a decade or so ago. Diaspora missiology is a comparatively younger field of study – at least in the sense that relatively few people were talking much about it prior to Cape Town 2010. Ralph Winter was certainly correct in his analysis that diaspora missiology “may well be the most important undigested reality in missions thinking today.”[i] So, when I was asked to look at this issue of “diaspora church planting movements”, I realized that my task was to “digest” church planting movements from the perspective of diaspora missiology.
Today then, will be the first of what will likely be several installments on the subject. I earnestly invite your interaction. What I hope to do is to explore the issue with you using my own working presentation on the topic as an outline. Eventually, I hope to arrive at some solid insights that could be put into a meaningful article or book chapter. So, let’s dig in.
Keywords: church planting
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United States
I too had never previously thought about the diaspora perspective on church planting until I entered into a seminary class that required me to do so because my professor had been a part of Cape Town 2010. I have, however, found it very interesting to learn more about and have also found that the very idea of church planting should first include a group of diaspora people because they are the ones who most likely do not have a church home as the other people who have lived in a certain place their entire lives. When a church plant starts with a group of diaspora people, it can help those people assimilate into the population that they live in without giving up their own heritage and traditions so that they can feel comfortable going out and making disciples out of their neighbors or returning to their home country to spread the Good News.
03.12.2012
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