Steve Washburn, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, remembered something of Beirut?albeit through photos and news reports. It was the bombed-out shell of the United States Marine Corps barracks in October 1983 after a suicide bomber drove his truck into the compound, killing himself and 241 Marines and Sailors.

Today, Beirut’s smartly designed downtown buildings, trendy sidewalk cafes, McDonalds, Burger King and Starbucks?and a slew of BMWs and Mercedes Benzes?all attest to a largely affluent, educated and Westernized culture. It’s not what Washburn expected of a city ravaged by 10 years of civil war that ended 13 years ago.

Muslim women there dress with Western style minus traditional veils. Muslims comprise about 2/3 of the populace and are often open to dialogue with evangelical Christians and very hospitable, as Washburn learned through door-to-door Bible distribution.

As pastor of First Baptist Church of Pflugerville, Washburn was part of a Southern Baptists of Texas Convention contingent in Beirut over the Christmas holiday to investigate a potential missions partnership with Baptists there. He left with his appetite whetted for more, he said.

“I was surprised to find out how many Baptist churches there were,” Washburn said. There are about 20 Baptist churches meeting. “I did not know prior to gathering information about the trip that Lebanon, and Beirut in particular, has a strong Christian element.”

Jim Richards, SBTC executive director, said a partnership could include cooperation between the Lebanese Baptists, the International Mission Board and the SBTC to strengthen existing churches, plant new ones, bolster the work of the Baptist seminary there, and aid Bible distribution and evangelism.

“Lebanon is the gateway to the Middle East,” Richards noted. “If we want to change the mindset in the other Arab nations, we can do it through the work in Lebanon.”

Mac Brunson, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, took about 20 church members with him on the trip and said the experience changed many of them.

“They loved it,” Brunson said. “I have never taken laypeople on a mission trip that it did not dramatically change their lives in a number of ways. One is their personal relationship with the Lord (is strengthened). I think two is an appreciation for what we have here in our church, certainly our country, but in our church. And a love for people and a hunger and a desire to be more a part of missions.”

Brunson said he was blessed to preach at a church plant comprised of mostly young, English-speaking people in a very upbeat, contemporary setting. First Baptist will likely continue work there through partnerships with the SBTC and The Criswell College, he said.

Terry Coy, SBTC ethnic church planting strategist, said the IMB volunteer coordinator there hopes SBTC churches will adopt Beirut neighborhoods and return several times to do gospel work in the same areas with the end goal of starting churches.

“Currently, the SBTC and IMB are in a three-year partnership assisting “Beruit & Beyond,” as the IMB endeavor there is known.

“Expanding the partnership would strengthen existing churches there, plant new churches and impact the Muslim world through the training of Baptist pastors, many who are former Muslims, at the Arab Baptist Seminary,” Coy said.

Washburn said he is particularly excited about potentially partnering with the seminary, which trains Arab men and sends them to do gospel work in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Egypt and Jordan.

Ergun Caner, former professor at The Criswell College and an expert on Islam, will be a featured speaker at the emPOWER Conference, sponsored by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Feb. 9-10 at the Arlington Convention Center.

Caner will join Christian leaders such as Henry Blackaby, Jack Graham, Zig Ziglar and Larnelle Harris at the conference?formerly the State Evangelism Conference.

Caner and his brother, Emir, who were born into a Sunni Muslim family, have co-written several books on Islam. Ergun Caner is now professor of theology and church history at Liberty University and is a highly sought-after speaker who has been interviewed by CNN and the BBC.

For more information on the emPOWER Conference, call the SBTC office at 972-953-0878 or toll free at 877-953-7282. For lodging group rates, see the hotel list below and state that you are attending the emPOWER Conference when making reservations. (See emPOWER Conference schedule on this page.)

The conference hotels are as follows:

• Wyndham Arlington, 1500 Convention Center Drive, Arlington, Texas 76011. Call 1-800-442-7275 for reservations or go to www.wyndham.com. Use group code: 0208650SB.

• La Quinta Inns, 825 N. Watson Rd., Arlington, Texas 76011. Call 1-800-453-7909 for reservations.

• Baymont Inn & Suites, 2401 Diplomacy Drive, Arlington, Texas 76011. Call 817-633-2400 for reservations.

Parking at the convention center will be $5 per day and includes come and go privileges.

The lead church planting coordinator for Southern Baptists spent several days with his staff at the North American Mission Board developing a definition of a church. In the end, he found the best definition in the language of the SBC’s faith statement.

“Where we define a church you could almost look at the Baptist Faith and Message,” stated Richard Harris, vice president for church planting at NAMB. “That’s not said lightly. It’s going to tell you basically the definition of a church and how it functions.” (See page 8 for BF&M Article Six on The Church.)

In a practical sense, Harris said a church is recognized by the functions it performs. “If a group of people meet to minister, that’s not a church. If they just have a Bible study, that’s not a church. If they meet to disciple a few folks along the way, that’s not a church. But if they meet to do what we believe are the functions of missions and evangelism, worship, fellowship and discipleship?and we think stewardship is a crucial element, then these folks are meeting for the purpose of the church. Then it doesn’t matter if there are five, 50 or 500 people. If they’re fulfilling those functions then it’s a church.”

Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Missions Director, Robby Partain, credits Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., with giving clarity on the definition of a church through his emphasis on the five purposes.

“A New Testament church is a group of followers of Jesus who have covenanted together for the purposes of worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry in the church and mission in the world,” he quoted. “Whether they use these terms or not, I want to see SBTC church planters incorporating these five purposes into the strategy for their plants,” Partain said, drawing on his experience as a church planter in the Northwest.

For a group to be a new church plant supported by the SBTC, they must go beyond simply being a New Testament church, Partain added. “They must be a New Testament church that desires to be a cooperating and contributing Southern Baptist church through affiliation with the SBTC. They must also be accountable to a sponsor church until such time as they are ready to stand on their own financially and governmentally.” That process may happen very quickly or it may take a few years, he added.

“The current model of church planting recognizes that we are starting new churches that, although accountable to a sponsor for a period of time, are biblical churches from the start. We want to see them reach self-sufficiency and governmental autonomy as quickly as possible.” That approach represents a shift from an earlier era in Southern Baptist life when a mission begun by a sponsoring church remained an appendage indefinitely. “We want to plant churches with an intentional strategy of moving rapidly toward self-sufficiency and autonomy,” Partain said.

One hurdle SBTC church planters try to avoid involves the polity of the new church. “I encourage planters to have a clear idea of what polity they want from the beginning and develop that structure early on, but to be slow about formalizing that polity.” Partain sees the period of accountability to the sponsoring church as a time to develop the leadership infrastructure before polity is firm.

Harris has found that many church planters launch a congregation too quickly. “They are so anxious to have a presence and prominence in the community that they don’t do the groundwork.” He cited several successful church plants that devoted nine months to establishing a vision for ministry. Rushing the constitution of a church should also be avoided, he said. On the other hand, some sponsoring churches keep new congregations as missions in order to feed their own numbers, he said.

Ed Stetzer, director of NAMB’s Nehemiah Project church planting effort, has planted churches in New York and Pennsylvania and trained church planters across the United States and on five continents. In his comprehensive book on church planting, “Planting New Churches in A Postmodern Age,” Stetzer wrote, “The typical church planter thinks a great deal about the new church’s first service?envisioning the crowd and great attendance, rehearsing preaching, and ‘pre-living’ the church’s first service of worship. Most planters, on the other hand, have not considered the nature of the congregation’s underlying governance or structure.”

Stetzer learned that lesson the hard way. During his first effort at planting a church, members reorganized repeatedly, responding to the priority of the last conference he attended or an influential book. “I was unsure of what approach to governance was best,” he added, admitting ignorance as to the Bible’s counsel concerning church structure. “About this time in my life, I decided to attend seminary!” he noted.

“Just as changing worship styles can divide churches, changing church structure and leadership styles can divide a congregation and sap morale.” Like Partain and Harris, Stetzer believes more time should be given to such issues before launching the congregation or introducing a constitution. He also warns against planting a church to demonstrate an ecclesiological principle, calling that a sure path to failure.

Some planters downplay the importance of biblical church structures, viewing them as “theological afterthoughts” or “traps to be avoided for the sake of encouraging a streamlined organization,” he wrote.

Where do you go to find the gospel spreading in unprecedented ways? Instead of looking to one of 42,000 Southern Baptist churches, some missiologists point to amazing accounts of church-planting movements (CPMs) overseas.

Mission strategist David Garrison wrote the book on CPMs, serving as an associate vice president for strategy coordination and mobilization at the International Mission Board before his current assignment as a regional leader in South Asia. He defined a church-planting movement as “a rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment.”

Garrison believes the goal of all efforts is for God to be glorified, a natural result of individuals entering into right relationship with him through Jesus Christ. “As they do, they are incorporated into churches which enable them to continue to grow in grace with other like-minded believers,” Garrison wrote in “Church-Planting Movements.” “Any time people come to new life in Jesus Christ, God is glorified. Any time a church is planted?no matter who does it?there are grounds for celebration.”

The IMB defines a local church as “a group of baptized believers covenanted together into a community by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of worship, fellowship, nurture and ministry, with the following characteristics:

• meet regularly for worship, fellowship, and mutual support in ministry;

• proclaim Christ to unbelievers;

• disciple believers;

• organize and administer their affairs, choosing leadership who may or may not be paid, trained, ordained or one of the members of the group; and

• administer the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Those characteristics fall in line with the terminology of church growth experts who describe the marks of a healthy church by their pursuit of five purposes: 1) worship, 2) evangelistic and missionary outreach, 3) education and discipleship, 4) ministry and 5) fellowship. “In each of the Church Planting Movements we studied, these five core functions were evident,” Garrison wrote.

IMB writer Erich Bridges cited these examples of church-planting movements:

• A new missionary led a local student to Christ. He immediately taught the student not only how to share the gospel with others but how to teach them to share with still others. Hundreds of people became believers within months.

• Another missionary evangelized and trained his language tutor, who in turn led a housemaid to the Lord, who led her husband to the Lord, who led his in-laws to the Lord, followed by a dramatic physical healing and stiff persecution. The eventual result: Within six months, a tribe that once had no Christian believers had churches in more than 20 villages.

? In a third case, a missionary worked with several cycles of church planters who began a cluster of congregations among a tribal group. Six months later a second generation of churches was born. They also began reproducing, and within 18 months a third generation emerged.

Southern Baptists have one missionary unit [or couple] for every 1.8 million people, according to IMB President Jerry Rankin. That figure expands to one unit for every 9.6 million people in South Asia.

“Even the most effective personal witness would never be able to touch such a large population segment,” he said. As a result, Rankin and other IMB leaders look to church-planting movements as the best way spread the gospel. “A network of local churches potentially makes the gospel accessible to an entire people group, a nation and the whole world,” he told IMB trustees last fall.

Recognizing that the grassroots phenomenon of CPM can be fertile ground for heresy, Garrison believes the key to sound doctrine is God’s word. “In the explosive church growth environment of the first century, there were no seminaries, simply a practice of ‘teaching them to observe whatsoever things I have commanded you,'” he said, citing Matt. 28:20. “Out of this mandate grew a number of approaches to discipleship and training. The challenge of the first century has changed little for us today and invites the same types of creative responses to ensure a continued faithfulness to Christ’s teachings.”

One of the best ways to stifle such incredible growth is to impose extra-biblical requirements before viewing a group of believers as a church, he warned. “When a mission, union or convention attempts to require a congregation to have extra-biblical things such as land, a building, seminary-trained leadership or paid clergy before granting them full status as a church, a church planting movement is obstructed,” Garrison wrote.

“Christians may have the best of intentions when they impose preconditions before officially constituting a church?preconditions usually aimed at ensuring viability of the church before leaving it to its own devices. However, requirements such as building, property and salaried clergy quickly can become millstones around the neck of the church and make reproducing itself all th