International Church Planting Should Be In Our DNA

We believe God has called us, the Summit Church, to plant 1000 churches in 40 years. We believe that many, if not most, will be overseas. Currently, we have plants in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Africa. We insist that every domestic church we plant incorporate into its DNA, from the beginning, international church planting. I have been told by some that a new church should wait until it establishes itself, grows to a healthy size, and has planted a few domestic churches before it engages in international church planting. I do not agree with this at all. God has clearly told us, from the beginning, to go to all the nations. We talk about "finding God's will," but it's not lost! God's will is for every believer to be involved, in some way, in seeing his fame known in all the earth. International church planting, just like church planting in general, needs to be part of a church's DNA from the beginning. After all, it was part of the original Great Commission. For more on this, check out John Piper's classic, Let the Nations Be Glad! It is, I believe, his best book! On a practical note, one of the things we did at the Summit recently, that really got everyone totally jacked up, was to trace the history of church planting "from Jerusalem to RDU." Doing so showed our congregation that we are part of a church planting movement larger than ourselves! To see what that would look like, I put it in script form here.