Passing the Baton: A Review

A friend of mine told me about a book several years ago after he went to a missions conference out West. The content sounded great when he told me and I mentally put it on my list to read.

Over time, I forgot about the book. It was only just recently I remembered the book, bought it, and began reading it for myself. I am SO glad I did.

The following is a short review of the book and what I found helpful in its contents.

PASSING THE BATON: Church Planting That Empowers
by Tom A. Steffen
La Habra, CA: Center for Organizational and Ministry Development, 1997.
The Short Summary: Steffen, a missions prof at Biola, says that since effective leaders start with the end in mind, missionaries need to think through the phase-out process before the church plant begins. Steffen draws on lots of experience and bad stories to teach missionaries some valuable lessons.

---------------------------------------

After a short introduction, the author divides the book into 6 parts:

In each part of the book, he gives definitions of each phase of the church planting process, he gives illustrations, and uses helpful charts.

Part 1 - Phase-Out
Part 2 - Pre-Entry
Part 3 - Pre-Evangelism
Part 4 - Evangelism
Part 5 - Post-Evangelism
Part 6 - Challenges and Conclusions

At the back of the book there are helpful Appendixes A through O.

The most helpful Appendixes (to me) were:

Appendix A - Evidence Why Church Planters Often Fail to Empower Nationals

Appendix B - A Five Stage Phase Out Oriented Church Planting Model (Chart)

Appendix F - A Checklist For Church Planters (A list of questions one should ask himself during each phase of the process)

A few quotes from the book that were impacting to me:

"Closure must be designed before their (church planters) ministry starts, because a planned phase-out affects all the steps in church planting: preentry, preevangelism, evangelism, and postevangelism. Such planning provides team members a global picture, direction, and a checklist toward closure."

"...a comprehensive organizational approach that starts with the end product and works back to those who are responsible for producing it. It affects everything: how candidates are recruited, selected and trained, how they plan, form teams, handle social programs, evangelize, develop leaders and curricula. When a mission agency works with such a definition of phase-out, it is not likely to wait 40 years to achieve its first phase-out from a new group of believers."

"If church planting is to become a way of life within and without a particular people, national believers must own this vision and be trained to accomplish it."

I would highly recommend reading this book to know how to better pray for our family in the cross culture church planting process.

Supporting pastors and deacons, current and future co-workers, those interested or going into missions should read this book. It will challenge you to think ahead and develop a plan of action from the beginning to know of the end goal: A national church lead by trained national believers, who are reaching other nationals on their own.