Date of Award

3-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Department

Seminary

First Advisor

Leah Payne

Abstract

In my experience with church planting today, there is a concern for its sustainability due to financial constraints, leadership burnout, and results. The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss the problems therein with traditional church planting and to also lay the foundations for a more sustainable church planting option through the vehicle of missional community. My intentions are for my local Wesleyan conference to benefit from this work as it has been constructed through the culmination of my research and study as well as my own practical ministry experiences as a church planting pastor. While church planting is not new and neither is the idea of missional communities, a methodology of planting new churches missionally through these small communities is, and provides a more biblical and sustainable method for today’s world and economy and reaches a whole crowd of people who are not a part of the body of Christ.

In this work, I have established two major sections. The first is titled “Defining a Missional Church Planting Philosophy.” In this section I discuss three major items: Two different operating systems for church planting, the programing language for a discipleship-based operating system, and a focus on missional communities themselves as a wonderful option for planting new churches.

The second section is titled “Missional-Community-Driven Church Planting.” Here I focus on developing a missional community as the basis for church planting beginning with the foundations needed to do so, the sustainability of planting churches this way, and finally a chapter devoted to missional church planting pastor pre-requisites.

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