Indigenous Church Planting in Post Christian Europe: A Case Study of Belgian Pioneers

Abstract

Based on the findings of 22 in-depth interviews, Colin Godwin describes the missiological conceptions of church planters working in francophone Belgium. The interviewees, pioneers of church planting in francophone Belgium, have worked with a variety of Protestant and Evangelical groups. In this article, Godwin paints a portrait of such indigenous church planters who succeed in planting churches in a context of slow growth, few resources, limited strategic planning, and general religious decline. The main challenges of their ministries are described. Godwin criticizes aspects of Anglo-Saxon church planting methodology as applied to the Belgian context and proposes three communities of support, which can both increase the perseverance of pioneer church planters and aid the contextualization of the Christian message in the new churches these pioneers have begun.