Christians can rejoice in the increasing emphasis on planting or establishing new churches, especially in mission areas. New churches generally grow more rapidly than older churches; they are more open to new members and that openness makes them attractive to seekers. New churches also have a greater potential to escape traditions that tend to anchor the church in a culture and worldview that is either passing or is already gone. The down side is that the openness of new churches can also diminish ties to the healthy biblical teachings and traditions of the past.
This latter factor points to the need to establish healthy, biblical leadership as part of the church planting process. Students of missions churches sometimes cite the goal of establishing self-governing, self-sustaining, self-duplicating churches. The sequence of these goals is important. Few newer churches become self-supporting before they are self-governing. When a church is not self-governing church, members often perceive that contributions are merely going to minister or pastor. A church that has not developed a self-governance system must be overseen from without–most often by a ‘sponsoring’ church that may be a long way away, without understandings of the local culture and context, and often incapable of communication because of language barriers. At worst, the church that has not developed indigenous leaders is governed by one individual who often receives his “support” from a source outside the local church.
For these and other reasons, self-governance is an essential factor in effective church planting, and the development of indigenous leaders is imperative. Developing effective local leadership must be seen as the first step toward a fully-functioning, healthy church. Effective, biblical leaders will lead the local church to become self-supporting. Such leaders will lead the local church to look beyond itself in a spirit of evangelism and outreach. Biblical leaders will help the local church escape provincialism and see a world without Jesus, focusing the need to be involved in additional church planting efforts so that the church becomes self-duplicating or self-propogating.