“Church Planting as Improvisation”: Learning Spirit-led, Principled Flexibility from Effective Practitioners in the Middle East

Abstract

The frontier mission community has often debated various models of contextualization and church planting, with vigorous advocacy, and equally-vigorous criticism, of specific models to reaching the unreached. However, such debates have often neglected the diverse and changing contexts across the globe—and sometimes within the same country or city—which requires a more flexible, adaptive framework for participating effectively and faithfully in God’s mission among the least reached. This paper draws upon analysis of my research on five recent examples of church plants among BMBs (Believers of Muslim Background) across diverse contexts in the diverse, dynamic region of the Middle East. These diverse examples of contemporary church formation in difficult contexts suggest to us a picture of church planting, not as a formula or model to be implemented, but rather as an activity of collective improvisation. Drawing upon jazz theory and the reflections of fruitful church planters in the Middle East, I argue that skillfull participation in the mission of God among the least reached is best conceived of as the collective, improvisational synergy of the Holy Spirit, initiative of local believers, and wise outside disciple-making within a principled framework. Replacing a “church
planting as formula implementation” image with “church planting as collective improvisation” image better assists us in learning from church-planting trends, effective local-expat partnership, partnership with local believers, and effectively adapting our church-planting efforts to diverse and rapidly changing frontier people groups.