At its core, every church residency should exude the mission of the local church it serves. Certainly, every biblically faithful local church lives out the Great Commission that Jesus gave to us in Matthew 28, but not every local church does so in the same way. Just as every church’s uniqueness reflects a different mission, every church’s residency will be structured differently to reflect that mission.
At Mercy Hill Church, we believe that Church Planting is God’s Plan A for reaching the world…and there is no Plan B. Consequently, our unique mission is to “Make disciples and multiply churches.” Grammatically, our mission is a compound imperative sentence, meaning the mission statement combines two imperatives: make disciples and multiply churches. South African Missiologist David Bosch said, “God’s mission has a Church.” His statement is often rephrased as, “The Church doesn’t have a Mission; the Mission has a Church,” emphasizing the Church’s existence is derived from her purpose in the Mission of God. We see this play out in the book of Acts. In Acts 1:8, Jesus gives his remaining disciples a mission. “You will be my witnesses,” He says, “in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” For the rest of chapter one, the mission lies dormant while the eleven become distracted by choosing someone to replace Judas. Then, in chapter two, the promise of Jesus is fulfilled as the Church is born at Pentecost, resulting in 3,000 people being saved. And suddenly, they begin to behave as the Church. Make no mistake: the mission was given before the Church was born. The Church was born to fulfill the mission.
The first imperative – make disciples – simply restates the heart of the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). Clearly, Jesus means for us to do something that is more than a monastic expression of faith. Jesus intends for his followers to pass on the gospel message. We like to say at Mercy Hill, “The gospel came to you when it was on its way to someone else.” Jesus intends us to be rivers of living water rather than reservoirs of stagnant holiness. Consequently, Mercy Hill’s church residency places emerging leaders into environments where disciples are being made. In some contexts, residents are participants in that process of being formed. In some environments, residents are the ones making disciples!
The second imperative in Mercy Hill’s mission statement, however, comes from a conviction that the best way to go about making more disciples is by planting more
churches. We send missionaries to plant churches all over the world, even the most difficult places on earth. We do that because we know that the Church is the chosen catalyst for God carrying out his mission in the earth and among the nations. We plant churches domestically because more people are saved in church plants than in any other context. As a matter of fact, research shows that church plants have a 67% higher attendee to baptism ratio than established churches do. And with more baptisms come more people who are called to take the gospel to the nations. If the Mission is going to be fulfilled, local churches must multiply by planting more churches.
Mercy Hill’s church residency is baked into this conviction. Residents work within a culture that believes this deeply. They rub shoulders with church planters. They discuss church planting. They envision their role in church planting. And some are called out and developed to lead in the planting of churches. Yes, many residents come thinking they are getting some much-needed training in ministry only to find themselves surrendered to God’s call to plant a sending church here in the North America or to go plant a church among the nations.
It’s why the Church exists at her very root. And if we believe that, we would not be living out that conviction if our church residency didn’t reflect it at its core.
– Jonathan Yarboro, Executive Pastor of Sending at Mercy Hill Church