The Indigenous Church: Advancing Our Missions strategy for the Next 100 Years

The Assemblies of God enters a new era of world missions service that will look and feel much different than the world of 1914. What valuable lessons can the AG learn by drawing on its missiological knowledge accumulated during our history?

One hundred years ago, the Assemblies of God grounded its very purpose in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. The often-quoted declaration from the second General Council remains quite remarkable: “We commit ourselves and the Movement to Him for the greatest evangelism that the world has ever seen.”

This statement of purpose reflected more than the optimistic exuberance of a small band of Pentecostal preachers. It symbolized their collective calling to take the gospel to the ends of the Earth, daring to believe in Jesus’ promise to enable them, by the Spirit’s power, to fulfill the task (Acts 1:8).

Advancing this vision, the third General Council adopted a formal statement in 1915 urging the movement to “exert all its powers” toward promoting the evangelization of the lost according to New Testament methods.1 To strengthen this commitment, the 1921 Council declared that it would seek “to establish self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing native churches.”2

This statement defined the strategic method by which the Assemblies of God would fulfill its mission of evangelization.

From a fledgling group of 300 people in 1914, the Assemblies of God has grown to more than 67.5 million members and over 350,000 local churches worldwide. One major factor that contributed to the success of our mission is the long-standing commitment to plant indigenous churches and train local leaders wherever missionaries serve. Though some may question whether the philosophy of the indigenous church remains adequate for our contemporary missional context, this method remains highly effective as we seek to fulfill the unfinished task of reaching the lost. Read more

A good introduction to the principles of indigenous church planting. These principles are applicable to the mission field in North America as well as the mission field outside of North America. Canada, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, and the United States and its territories are culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and racially diverse with many unreached and unengaged people groups.