I want to start by saying I appreciated Rev. Knowles’ emphasis on spreading the Garden-Sanctuary by planting churches. The church is, after all, the center of action on earth in the New Covenant, and it must have a starting point in the lands where the garden is extended. I’d like to draw this out a bit and put some more flesh on the bones.
The Mission
There is a mission, and there is a trajectory to church-planting. It is on a continuum that has a telos, and that telos is worldwide conquest. The church is the embassy of an empire and church-planting is the planting of embassies.
It was warm spring day in the 1970s as we drove across Munich Germany to visit the U.S. Consulate. Though Germany is a western nation, it was foreign enough to feel distant to an American. As we entered the facility it seemed profound how it was intentionally structured to be a replication of all the United States embodied. As part of the embassy system, it was a miniature preview of the nation it represented. Likewise, the church is a preview of the empire it represents – an empire that has a garden at its center.
The Trajectory
As Rev. Knowles notes, the world begins as a Garden-Sanctuary. The fall occurs, but this impulse to spread the garden continues, although it now includes the element of restoration. In order to understand the mission of church-planting, we need to look where it started. In the Old Covenant, this Garden-Restoration project looks like this: Garden –> Fall –> Garden-Temple. Rather than being open to the human race, the Garden germinates within the protective walls of Israel’s temple. One must travel to an exclusive location and pass through various ascending sanctuaries to gain provisional access to the Garden. In the end, an outsider is progressively drawn near but stops at the doorway to the Temple where the priest, acting as an intermediary, represents the stranger – now a friend – within the Holy of Holies Garden. This is done within the context of a geographical kingdom.
There are provisional ambassadors who go out before and after the destruction of Israel’s Garden-Temple (Jonah, the Babylonian captives) which give us a tantalizing foretaste of the church-planting to come. With the coming of the King and his finished work on the cross, the kingdom transforms into an empire. A King of Kings and Lord of Lords, a high king, is what we call an emperor. The doors to the Garden-Temple are blown off and the veil to the inner sanctum is removed. The table of feasting is now active and the Holy of Holies begins operations in the heavenly control room with a real man at the helm. A localized kingdom is too small and an empire requires embassies and ambassadors. The trajectory of the New Covenant can be represented thus: Garden-Temple –> Garden-Embassy –> Garden-City Cosmos.
We are now in the midst of the age of embassies. To enter an embassy is to enter a scaled-down replication of the nation it represents. An embassy is staffed with ambassadors who seek to spread the influence of the nation that they represent. Contrary to the work of modern ambassadors, ancient ambassadors had a more thorough vocation of spreading the influence of their empire. Their message was often, “Join our empire or perish.” It is no small thing that St. Paul calls Christians ambassadors in 2 Corinthians 5:20 and that he refers to himself as an ambassador in chains in Ephesians 6:20. Though the Christian ambassador may seem lowly, he is backed by the power of a cosmic empire, and his message is, “Join our empire or perish.”
The ambassador is a staff member of an embassy, and churches function as embassies in the midst of foreign cultures. A growing empire is always multiplying its embassies. Thus, it is with the Church as she stands in the midst of the first quarter of the 21st Century. We constitute the most extensive and diverse empire the world has ever and will ever see. So, how do embassies expand in influence and numbers? Through church-planting. Every basilica and cathedral once existed as a church-plant.
Establishing an Embassy
Rev. Knowles mentions that church planting generally attracts “young, driven, ambitious, independent-minded, and self-confident leaders.” He also discusses the preparation necessary to ready such a man for the work. To this, I would add that perhaps the most important factors I’ve found among successful church-planters are time and grit. This is because church-planters are ambassadors of new embassies that are engaging in the challenging work of frontier ministry.
The church-planter (and his family) are on the burning edge of a Post-Christian culture in the West. They are often extending the Garden-Embassy into regions that once contained flourishing and established embassies. As they survey their sector of the frontier, they will see the abandoned buildings of a long-gone generation of ambassadors and see the overgrown fields of long-dead gardeners. They are seeking to reach the grandchildren of these departed gardeners who have forgotten the master who sent their ancestors to garden. It is challenging to walk into the ruins, assess its depressing state, and begin the seemingly impossible task of making the wasteland live again with Word and Sacrament. This takes time and grit. The ambassador and his family need to be people of vision who are ready to put in the time and the work.
It is often forgotten that a church-planter is also a pastor. Though his work is peculiar, he is not less than a pastor. He needs to know the scriptures and be well-trained for the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. His calling is to be a visionary who sees a well-established church that will one day be a bustling embassy bringing the influence of the Kingdom of God to bear on his sector. In short, he sees the telos, a Garden-City that covers the world, as well as his piece of this great tapestry in time and space. Executing this vision takes time and grit.
There is no greater resource for a church-planter than time. All the resources he raises and cultivates are for one purpose – buying time. He is a gardener who is seeking to plant at the right time and harvest at the right time. Every new person in the pew, every new baptism is buying time, buying time until the church-plant becomes self-sufficient and is functioning as a regular church – a fully-staffed embassy.
Church-planting also takes grit. Grit is a type of courage borne of implacable resolution. No man should enter into the vocation of church-planting unless he is sure God has called him to this work and to this place. Then he places his hand to the plow and doesn’t look back. There will be times when it seems the seed won’t take, times when weeds seem to be cropping up among the new sprouts, times of great disappointment. But there are also times of great growth and encouraging signs of life. The church-planter must see the harvest and keep the great gardener, Jesus, before his gritty eyes.
So, in conclusion, we are now in the age of empire and are ambassadors of this great domain. Its frontiers are constantly moving forward. New embassies must be established by men of holy vision, men of grit who are willing to till the soil of a difficult but most consequential garden, men who will take their place among the garden-ambassadors who have gone before and are yet to come as we advance toward the Garden-City Cosmos.
Garret Craw is the Pastor of King’s Cross Reformed Church in Austin, Texas.
I want to start by saying I appreciated Rev. Knowles' emphasis on spreading the Garden-Sanctuary by planting churches. The church is, after all, the center of action on earth in the New Covenant, and it must have a starting point in the lands where the garden is extended. I'd like to draw this out a bit and put some more flesh on the bones.
The Mission
There is a mission, and there is a trajectory to church-planting. It is on a continuum that has a telos, and that telos is worldwide conquest. The church is the embassy of an empire and church-planting is the planting of embassies.
It was warm spring day in the 1970s as we drove across Munich Germany to visit the U.S. Consulate. Though Germany is a western nation, it was foreign enough to feel distant to an American. As we entered the facility it seemed profound how it was intentionally structured to be a replication of all the United States embodied. As part of the embassy system, it was a miniature preview of the nation it represented. Likewise, the church is a preview of the empire it represents - an empire that has a garden at its center.
The Trajectory
As Rev. Knowles notes, the world begins as a Garden-Sanctuary. The fall occurs, but this impulse to spread the garden continues, although it now includes the element of restoration. In order to understand the mission of church-planting, we need to look where it started. In the Old Covenant, this Garden-Restoration project looks like this: Garden --> Fall --> Garden-Temple. Rather than being open to the human race, the Garden germinates within the protective walls of Israel's temple. One must travel to an exclusive location and pass through various ascending sanctuaries to gain provisional access to the Garden. In the end, an outsider is progressively drawn near but stops at the doorway to the Temple where the priest, acting as an intermediary, represents the stranger - now a friend - within the Holy of Holies Garden. This is done within the context of a geographical kingdom.
There are provisional ambassadors who go out before and after the destruction of Israel's Garden-Temple (Jonah, the Babylonian captives) which give us a tantalizing foretaste of the church-planting to come. With the coming of the King and his finished work on the cross, the kingdom transforms into an empire. A King of Kings and Lord of Lords, a high king, is what we call an emperor. The doors to the Garden-Temple are blown off and the veil to the inner sanctum is removed. The table of feasting is now active and the Holy of Holies begins operations in the heavenly control room with a real man at the helm. A localized kingdom is too small and an empire requires embassies and ambassadors. The trajectory of the New Covenant can be represented thus: Garden-Temple --> Garden-Embassy --> Garden-City Cosmos.
We are now in the midst of the age of embassies. To enter an embassy is to enter a scaled-down replication of the nation it represents. An embassy is staffed with ambassadors who seek to spread the influence of the nation that they represent. Contrary to the work of modern ambassadors, ancient ambassadors had a more thorough vocation of spreading the influence of their empire. Their message was often, "Join our empire or perish." It is no small thing that St. Paul calls Christians ambassadors in 2 Corinthians 5:20 and that he refers to himself as an ambassador in chains in Ephesians 6:20. Though the Christian ambassador may seem lowly, he is backed by the power of a cosmic empire, and his message is, "Join our empire or perish."
The ambassador is a staff member of an embassy, and churches function as embassies in the midst of foreign cultures. A growing empire is always multiplying its embassies. Thus, it is with the Church as she stands in the midst of the first quarter of the 21st Century. We constitute the most extensive and diverse empire the world has ever and will ever see. So, how do embassies expand in influence and numbers? Through church-planting. Every basilica and cathedral once existed as a church-plant.
Establishing an Embassy
Rev. Knowles mentions that church planting generally attracts "young, driven, ambitious, independent-minded, and self-confident leaders." He also discusses the preparation necessary to ready such a man for the work. To this, I would add that perhaps the most important factors I've found among successful church-planters are time and grit. This is because church-planters are ambassadors of new embassies that are engaging in the challenging work of frontier ministry.
The church-planter (and his family) are on the burning edge of a Post-Christian culture in the West. They are often extending the Garden-Embassy into regions that once contained flourishing and established embassies. As they survey their sector of the frontier, they will see the abandoned buildings of a long-gone generation of ambassadors and see the overgrown fields of long-dead gardeners. They are seeking to reach the grandchildren of these departed gardeners who have forgotten the master who sent their ancestors to garden. It is challenging to walk into the ruins, assess its depressing state, and begin the seemingly impossible task of making the wasteland live again with Word and Sacrament. This takes time and grit. The ambassador and his family need to be people of vision who are ready to put in the time and the work.
It is often forgotten that a church-planter is also a pastor. Though his work is peculiar, he is not less than a pastor. He needs to know the scriptures and be well-trained for the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. His calling is to be a visionary who sees a well-established church that will one day be a bustling embassy bringing the influence of the Kingdom of God to bear on his sector. In short, he sees the telos, a Garden-City that covers the world, as well as his piece of this great tapestry in time and space. Executing this vision takes time and grit.
There is no greater resource for a church-planter than time. All the resources he raises and cultivates are for one purpose – buying time. He is a gardener who is seeking to plant at the right time and harvest at the right time. Every new person in the pew, every new baptism is buying time, buying time until the church-plant becomes self-sufficient and is functioning as a regular church - a fully-staffed embassy.
Church-planting also takes grit. Grit is a type of courage borne of implacable resolution. No man should enter into the vocation of church-planting unless he is sure God has called him to this work and to this place. Then he places his hand to the plow and doesn’t look back. There will be times when it seems the seed won't take, times when weeds seem to be cropping up among the new sprouts, times of great disappointment. But there are also times of great growth and encouraging signs of life. The church-planter must see the harvest and keep the great gardener, Jesus, before his gritty eyes.
So, in conclusion, we are now in the age of empire and are ambassadors of this great domain. Its frontiers are constantly moving forward. New embassies must be established by men of holy vision, men of grit who are willing to till the soil of a difficult but most consequential garden, men who will take their place among the garden-ambassadors who have gone before and are yet to come as we advance toward the Garden-City Cosmos.
Garret Craw is the Pastor of King's Cross Reformed Church in Austin, Texas.
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