In fact, the congregation housed in a meeting place is often the only part of our vision continuum seen by the world. This fact alone makes the congregation so important. Much of a movement s reputation hinges on the vitality of the visible local church. Weak churches weaken the movement. Normally we think of church planting as the ministry that brings into being visible, local congregations.
Church planting is much broader, however.
It is inconceivable that true church planting be done without thousands of acts of evangelism and disciple making. The ministry that births new congregations is primarily evangelism. We must avoid the temptation to relax in our evangelistic activity once we have a growing number of cells and congregations. It is true that we must now divide our time between nurture and evangelism, but if we teach new converts how to do evangelism, we will also multiply the number of evangelists. A movement will plateau and even decline if there isn t a continual infusion of new life through conversions.