New Churches Podcast | Season 1 | Episode 701

Engage the City, Make Disciples, Build the Church

Clint Clifton, Vance Pitman & Trevin Wax

Episode 701

Most, if not all, church planters aspire to start a multiplying church. Yet often that doesn’t happen because we have our missiology backwards. Host Clint Clifton talks with Vance Pitman and Trevin Wax about what they see as a more biblical approach.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

  • Vance Pitman’s “inverted” church planting missiology
  • Scheduled activities that will help a church planter engage their city and make disciples
  • The difference it makes to start with a city, rather than a service
  • Leadership principles for planting churches that multiply
  • Steps that set up a church for long-term success in multiplication

Helpful Resources:

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Sharable Quotes (#NewChurches):

The starting point is wrong when we start with the church. The starting point is the city and gospel engagement. The Great Commission is to make disciples. Jesus never said, “Go plant churches.” @VancePitman

When when you take the gospel to the city, the Gospel doesn’t skip over cultures. One of the reasons we have so many homogenous churches in North America is we start with a church service. When you start with a church service, you start with a culture that attracts people like itself. @VancePitman

It’s wisdom for a church planter to spend the majority of discipleship time with the most mature in his congregation, helping them become really effective leaders. It’s not so much about if a person is new to faith in Christ or if they’ve been a Christian for a long time. It’s about their trajectory toward leadership. @ClintJClifton

You’re basically focusing on making disciples who will then make disciples. @TrevinWax

When we talk about multiplication, often we limit that to talking about multiplying the church. But if you’re going to see churches multiplied, you have to think multiplication at every level. That starts with multiplying disciples. @VancePitman

In the beginning it feels like you’re doing it poorly, but you basically have to make the choice to go ahead and do it, even though all your ducks, proverbially speaking, aren’t in a row. That’s a hard thing for a conscientious pastor to do. @ClintJClifton

Jesus focused more on succession than he did on success. He planned for succession. He planned for the generation beyond him. Unfortunately in the local church in America, we spend 99% of our time focused on success. @VancePitman

Published on September 15, 2022

About the Podcast

New Churches Podcast

The New Churches podcast offers practical answers to your real ministry questions. We aren’t going to provide lofty pie-in-the-sky theories. Instead, we are going to help you in your real ministry context, with your real thoughts, questions, and issues.

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Meet the Authors

Clint Clifton

Clint Clifton passed away on January 12, 2023, as a result of a small plane crash. Clint and his wife, Jennifer, had been married since 2000 and have five children. He completed a B.A. from The Baptist College of Florida and an M.A. from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Clint founded Pillar Church in Dumfries, Virginia, in 2005. He oversaw the fruitful church planting efforts of Pillar Church and served as Senior Director of Resource and Research Strategy for the North American Mission Board.

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Vance Pitman

President Send Network

Vance Pitman is president of Send Network, founding pastor of Hope Church, and author of UNBURDENED: Stop Living for Jesus So Jesus Can Live Through You and The Stressless Life: Experiencing the Unshakable Presence of God’s Indescribable Peace. As a seasoned church planter and now leader of the largest church planting organization in North America, Vance seeks to inspire people to join in God’s eternal, redemptive mission of making disciples, by multiplying the Church all over North America, that the nations may come to know Him.  Vance and his wife Kristie have four children and four grandchildren, and live in Georgia.

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Trevin Wax

Vice President, Resources & Marketing NAMB

Trevin Wax is Vice President of Resources and Marketing at the North American Mission Board and a visiting professor at Cedarville University. A former missionary to Romania, Trevin is a regular columnist at The Gospel Coalition and has contributed to The Washington Post, Religion News Service, World, and Christianity Today. He has taught courses on mission and ministry at Wheaton College and has lectured on Christianity and culture at Oxford University. He is a founding editor of The Gospel Project, has served as publisher for the Christian Standard Bible, and is the author of multiple books, including The Thrill of Orthodoxy, The Multi-Directional Leader, Rethink Your Self, This Is Our Time, and Gospel Centered Teaching. His podcast is Reconstructing Faith. He and his wife, Corina, have three children.

More Resources from Trevin