Transcript of a published teaching by David K. Bernard, transcribed from YouTube. An attributed primary source — not Acts 2:38 Life doctrine text.
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Summary
Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.
The question — and the foundation: disciples are made in a local church
- The host's frame, carried from the verbatim layer: the subject is church planting, and why it's important — the occasion is a missions launch conference later this week, where he is one of the speakers, and he is himself a church planter. He sets up the question with a story from a church plant he and his wife were involved in long ago: he invited a lady to church and handed her his invitation card, and she rolled her eyes at him: just what this town needs, one more church. There are already a great many churches — why do we need more? Why is church planting important? Why did you go plant a church?
- The church is God's idea. He's talked in a previous episode about why it's important to have a local church, so start with the very basics. First of all, God wants us to evangelize the world: the Great Commission in Matthew 28 says we're to go to every nation, every ethnicity, and make disciples, baptize converts, and teach them to follow Jesus Christ. So evangelizing and discipling souls is God's plan. But then, from there: what do you do with those people who are evangelized, and how can they be discipled? It has to be in the context of a local church. The Bible does not know of just a generic Christian who has an individual relationship with God that's not associated with a local body, a pastor, and discipleship — and it's not just a mental belief, but a new way of life. We see that in Acts chapter 2: they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, breaking of bread — which includes the Lord's supper and fellowship meals — and prayers. And you can read on and on: they went to the temple, a large venue, and from house to house; they had church in their homes because they didn't have any church buildings.
- So the whole New Testament shows two important things: number one, we're trying to evangelize and disciple everybody; number two, that has to happen in the context of a local church. While you can have a large-scale evangelistic effort, you cannot actually make disciples just through a large-scale effort — it has to be broken down. So why should we plant more churches? Because the local church is the will of God.
Scriptures: Matthew 28; Acts 2
Bring the church to where people are
- Society has changed, but the principle hasn't. In ancient times people had to walk, or ride donkeys, or ride in a cart — even going a few miles was a long way — so they had churches in various homes, and multiple churches in one city, because going five miles would be a very long journey: they brought the church to where people are. Although we're a much more mobile society, the same principle still holds. Even in the US and Canada, with people driving a car or in some cases using public transportation, most people are reluctant to go more than about fifteen minutes to a church. If they're already discipled, already committed, and they move to an area and want an apostolic church, they'll drive an hour to church — thirty minutes, passing up another church, even another apostolic church, if they find one that really fits. But if we're trying to win new people — evangelism and discipleship, Great Commission people — they might visit at a distance, but they're very reluctant to commit to coming more than about a fifteen-minute commute.
- That means it's not enough to have one church in a city, or several churches in a big city: we've got to bring churches to where people are. Instead of trying to make everybody come to us, we have to go to them. Every city, every town, every suburb, every neighborhood, every section of a sizable city needs to have a local church. And then think of the various language groups that prefer or need a language. And each church has its own character, its own personality, its own style of ministry — maybe not better or worse than somebody else's, but it reaches a different network, through family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. Somebody may drive past one church to go to another because their friend or their co-worker is at the other. Churches aren't generically interchangeable: each church has its own unique ministry, its own unique local culture, its own unique personality, and it will fit one person — even if it's the greatest church in the world — while some people may visit and never really stick, and they'll go to another church and get connected. That's just the nature of it. And instead of bemoaning that, we celebrate it. So the solution is multiple churches: not only to cover the geography and house the people, but to reach every type of person, every type of personality or culture or ethnicity or language group. We need more churches to reach the diversity of our population.
His own church: grow it large, multiply anyway — and the second harvest
- His philosophy as a pastor: they grew the church they started in their home; then they moved to a rented building for four years; then they built a first building, a second building, a third building — and now the church seats a thousand people, with room to expand to at least two thousand. When he resigned from the church they had 956 people on the regular attendance roll — a constituency of over a thousand. During that time they started sixteen daughter works, and they also sent pastors from their church, whom they had trained, to take some small existing churches and strengthen them. And under his successor, Rodney Shaw, they've continued to do that: looking in the 2025 directory of the UPCI churches, there are something like twenty — maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven — churches in Austin and Central Texas that either were started as daughter works, or received pastors sent to a small church, or were themselves started by some of those churches. It's perpetuated.
- His goal while pastor was to grow the church as large as they could — not to artificially cap it. People are coming, people are being saved, people like it, people want it: he's not going to say no, go somewhere else. But it did not have to be either-or. Even though that church was successful, and some people drove a long distance to it, there were other people who weren't coming; some who visited but didn't come back; some who got saved but didn't stick; some who fell by the wayside through personal failure — adultery, divorce — and for whatever reason feel embarrassed or intimidated to come back. If his had been the only church in the area, there are a lot of people he'd never reach, a lot of people he'd never keep. What he didn't fully realize until he became general superintendent: going to preach for all these churches on a Sunday — it takes him about two years to get around to all of them, with his other responsibilities — he found in every one of those churches people he had touched before: people who had visited, or received the Holy Ghost, or come for a while but backslid, or just needed another place — they moved a distance, or family, or opportunities for ministry. All these other churches became outreaches to the mother church. The mother church was not limiting its growth — in fact, by planting these other churches, they doubled their growth. Even if one church in a metro area is doing great, if you have twenty churches in that same metro area, the total of the twenty is always going to be greater than just one. The best way to grow the kingdom of God is to grow churches.
- And there's another dimension: some ministers may administratively handle a thousand or two thousand people, but many wonderful ministers are going to be most effective in a smaller group. Why limit it to a few who are super capable? Why not open the door so good ministers and good churches can multiply — without having to have extraordinary talents in certain ways, or extraordinary resources, or extraordinary buildings? The church can multiply organically, whether through homes or smaller buildings, and grow. Over time, many churches are always going to reach more than just one church. And planting multiple churches was also effective in what he might call a second harvest: people that one church could not win or retain, multiple churches were able to glean, so the initial efforts over time became actually more productive. So: we plant churches to fulfill the Great Commission. Planting local churches is the best way to evangelize a community, and the best way to disciple people — and over time, more churches are going to reach more people.
Risk, excellence, partnership — many churches, one body
- Another thought: no matter how great a church is, churches tend to go through life cycles of expansion and decline. Any one church is susceptible to a problem — maybe a catastrophe, an economic or financial situation, a pastoral transition that doesn't go well, or a pastoral failure, which hopefully will be very rare. But if it's the only church in an area, you're putting all your eggs in one basket: if there's a disaster, or even a difficult situation, you're at risk of losing many — maybe hundreds — of good people. If you have twenty churches in the area, or ten, and one goes through a struggle, there are still many other options. And it ran both ways with his church: churches in their area went into decline for one reason or another, and people would come to them; they'd become a safe haven, restore them, provide a place. But then, when that church — which was actually closer to their neighborhood or community — got back on its feet, with new leadership working through the problem, they would send them back. They weren't trying to just keep them; they were trying to help them. Certain people can weather a storm; certain people can't. But if you have multiple options, in the long run you're going to have healthy churches overall.
- And we don't want to compete against other churches — but there's something to be said for the marketplace of ideas. If there's only one church in an area of a certain faith, it's almost like a monopoly: they may not have excellence, they may be a little authoritarian, they may not have good pastoral care — but you're going to go there because you want truth and you want to be saved. If you have ten churches in that area — we want them all to be ethical, we don't want them to steal or solicit from others — it does encourage all of us to be better: more effective ministry, more care for your saints, excellence in preaching and music and whatever you're capable of doing, because they have options. It's not competing, not antagonistic: you have good relationships, but you want to do an excellent job. And other churches not only motivate you to excellence — they can partner with you: share resources, share special events; a smaller church can benefit from the resources of a larger church, and a larger church from a smaller, while maintaining its identity. In fact, the norm in the New Testament: it talks about the church of God at Corinth, the church of God at Rome — they all thought of themselves as one church. But if you look at Romans 16, you can identify at least five house churches there. They did not see themselves as competing churches; they all saw themselves as part of the same church — yet they had different locations and different elders over those churches. So maybe we can have the best of both worlds: many churches, but all considering ourselves as working together as one body, for the good of the kingdom of God.
Scriptures: Romans 16
How does somebody know they're called to plant a church?
- The host's second question, carried from the verbatim layer: how does somebody know if they are called to plant a church — maybe take it back to your own experience in planting a church? First of all: a call to ministry is a call for souls. It's not about preaching ability. The first thing he asks anybody who feels called to preach: what are you doing — as far as outreach? What are you doing to share your testimony, teach a Bible study, win a soul? And then, second, inreach: what are you doing to care for people on the margins in your local church — people who are struggling, people coming to the altar to pray, people who are missing church? Are you, on a personal level, praying with them, sending them a card or a text? I want to see a burden for people. So if somebody thinks, well, I may be called — start a regular soul-winning effort, start a Bible study or an outreach, and just see what develops. You may find: I'm a good soul winner, but caring for other people — pastoral guidance and counseling — that's not my thing. But you learn that by experience. On the other hand, it can progress naturally: I'm winning a few souls; now I have a burden for those souls; those souls need to be discipled; they're looking to me; they're going through marriage crisis, financial crisis; now I'm trying to help give them proper resources and proper guidance — and I feel that's my calling; I feel fulfilled. That's how you feel a pastoral burden.
- As far as a call to plant a church: it needs to be in conjunction with your sending pastor, and we have an organization — we ask you to meet your district board and get approval. There's safety in having multiple people: you submit an application, they ask questions — an objective means: are you really ready, is this what God has called you to do, are you qualified at least to begin, is it the right time, is someone sending you, releasing you, going to support you? There's a multiple witness. But as with all callings of God, there has to be an individual point where you feel like God — an intangible. And sometimes you have to be dissatisfied with what you're doing, not because there's anything wrong. Some people mistake that: well, I've got to find something wrong with my church or my pastor because I feel ready to leave. He calls it a holy dissatisfaction: there's nothing wrong with your church or your pastor — it's that God is stirring you up so you will step out of your comfort zone, launch forth from the nest, and fly. There's that intangible factor.
- He knows it from his own story. He and his wife had talked for several years about either starting a church or taking a small church, and the burden intensified. They kept praying, and finally they felt an intense burden — and through just Romans 8 groanings which cannot be uttered, a deep intercessory prayer, he felt God was doing something, though he didn't know exactly what. Then they prayed again, specifically about Austin, and just felt a strong peace; they got up from that prayer and looked at each other — there was such a victory. After months of talking about options, and several intense prayers with a burden — but an unfocused burden — then a victorious prayer: they looked up and said: let's do it. It was a confirmation that both of them had at the same time. Now, they did look at the pros and cons: he listed eight things that would have to happen for them to do this, and said: Lord, if this really is your will, we're going to have to see these. And one by one, they came to pass. After they'd already made a commitment, a couple of them fell through — and then he said: well, Lord, we stepped out by faith because all this was working out; now it's not working out; you're going to have to help us. And the Lord gave them an alternative plan. So he learned: your plans aren't going to work necessarily the way you think, but you still have to plan — and God can still give you a confirmation. And you need that, because when problems come, you need to be able to say: now, Lord, in all sincerity we sought your will, we heard from you, so we know there's got to be a way through this — because you wouldn't have brought us this far just to abandon us. And it wasn't our idea; it was your idea. So you do have to have a definite calling — a sense that this is what God wants you to do, at this place, at this time in your life.
Scriptures: Romans 8
Scripture index: Matthew 28; Acts 2; Romans 16; Romans 8.
Transcript
the church is God's idea so I've in a previous episode talked about why it's important to have a local church so let's just start with the very Basics first of all God wants us to evangelize the world the Great Commission in Matthew 28 says we're to go to Every Nation every ethnicity and we're try to make disciples and baptize converts and teach them to follow Jesus Christ so obviously uh trying to evangelize in disciple Souls is God's plan but then from there what do you do with those people who are evangelized and how can they be discipled it has to be in the context of a local church the Bible does not know of just a generic Christian who has an individual relationship with God that's not associated with a local body and a pastor and discipleship and it's not just a mental belief but it's a new way of life and we see that in Acts chapter 2 they continued steadfastly in the apostles Doctrine and fellowship breaking of bread which includes the Lord's supper and fellowship meals and prayer years and you can read on and on and on they went to the temple large venue and from house to house they had Church in their home because they didn't have any church buildings so my point is the whole new testament uh shows two important things number one we're trying to evangelize and disciple everybody number two that has to happen in the context of a local church and while you can have a large scale Evangelistic effort you cannot actually make disciples just through a large scale effort it has to be broken down so why should we plant more churches is because the local church is the will of God now we have a much more mobile Society than in ancient times uh people had to walk or ride donkeys or ride in a cart maybe and so even going a few miles was a long way so they had churches in various homes because they didn't have buildings and they had multiple churches in one city because even as I said going five miles would be a very long journey and so they brought the church to where people are although we're a mobile Society the same principes still holds because even in say the US and Canada with people driving a car or in some cases public trans portation most people are reluctant to go more than about 15 minutes to a church now if they're already discipled they're already committed and they move to an area and they want an Apostolic Church they'll drive an hour to church they'll 30 minutes and pass up another church even another Apostolic church if they find one that really fits but if we're trying to win new people evangelism and discipleship Great Commission people might visit at a distance but they're very reluctant to commit to coming more than about a 15minute commute so that means it's not enough to have one Church in a city uh or several churches in a big city we've got to bring churches to where people are we've got instead of trying to make everybody come to us we have to go to them so that indicates that every city every town every suburb every neighborhood every section of a sizable City needs to have a local church and then when you think there are various language groups that prefer or need a language and you also understand each church has its own character its own personality its own style Ministry maybe it's not better or worse than somebody else but it it it it reaches a different network um just through family friends neighbors co-workers each church will reach different groups of people and as I said some people may drive past one Church to go to another because their friend is at the other or their coworker and so we have to realize that churches aren't generically interchangeable but each church has its own unique Ministry its own unique local culture its own only unique personality and it will fit one person even if it's the greatest Church in the world for some reason some people may visit and never really stick and they'll go to another church and get connected that's just the nature of that and so instead of beoning that we celebrate that and so the solution is we need multiple churches not only to cover the geography and to house the people but to reach every type of person every type of personality or culture or ethnicity or language group we need more churches to reach the diversity of our population and so My Philosophy as a pastor we grew the church we started in our home and then we moved to a Rena building for four years and then we built our first building second building third building and now the church exists uh it will seat uh a thousand people with room to expand to at least 2,000 and uh when I resigned for the church we had 956 people on the regular tenants role so if you look at our constituency it' be over a thousand we started 16 daughter works during that time and then we also sent some pastors from our church that were trained that would to took some small existing churches to strengthen them so if you look at those two categories and under my successor Rodney Shaw they've continued to do that I think I looked in the 2025 directory of the upci churches there are like 20 I think maybe 26 or 27 churches in Austin and Central Texas that either were started as daughter works or we sent pastors to a small church or some of those churches have started daughter works and so it's perpetuated so here's my point my goal the church continued to grow while I was a pastor so my goal was to my goal was to grow the church as large as we could not to artificially cap it people are coming people are being saved people like it people want it well I'm not going to say no go somewhere else I'm going to try to keep um growing the church but it did not have to be either or even though that church was successful and some people might drive a large long distance there are other people that weren't coming and there were some who visited but didn't come back there were some who got saved but didn't stick um there are some who maybe they fell by the wayside through personal failure adultery divorce for and for whatever reason they feel embarrassed or intimidated to come back so if I was the only church in the area there are a lot of people I'd never reach a lot of people I'd never keep and what I didn't fully realize until I actually became general superintendent I was able to go preach for all these churches on a Sunday and today I still try to preach for all of them it takes me with my other responsibilities and schedule it takes me about two years to get around to all those if that but I found in every one of those churches there were people that I had touched before so there are people who had visited uh or people who had received the Holy Ghost or people who had come for a while but backslid or maybe just needed another they moved out a distance or because of family or whatever the cases or opportunities for Ministry they needed another place and I realized all these other churches became outreaches that the mother mother Church to the mother church was not limiting its growth uh I think actually we could say the by planting these other churches we doubled our growth so even though you might have one Church in a metro area that's doing great if you have 20 churches in that same metro area the total of the 20 is always going to be greater than just one so that indicates the best way to grow the kingdom of God is to grow churches and there are some ministers pastors that may have the ability administratively to handle a thousand people or 2,000 people but there are many wonderful ministers that they're going to be most effective in a smaller group so why just limit it to a few if they are super capable why not open the door that good ministers and good churches can multiply without having to have have extraordinary talents in certain ways or extraordinary resources or extraordinary buildings but the church can multiply organically whether through homes or smaller buildings and uh grow so I think over time many churches are going to always reach more than just one church and then as I already alluded to I saw not only were planting multiple churches Not only was that more effective in winning more people overall through the diversity of location and Ministry and Etc but they also were effective in what I might call a second harvest people that one Church could not win or retain multiple churches were able to glean so that the initial efforts over time became actually more productive so I would say we plant churches to fulfill the Great Commission we found that planting local churches is the best way to evangelize a community and it's the best way to disciple people and over time more churches are going to reach more people another thought to consider no matter how great a church is it churches tend to go through life cycles of expansion and decline any one church is susceptible to a problem maybe a catastrophe an economic or financial situation A pastoral transition that doesn't go well or you you name it a pastoral failure which hopefully will be very rare but no matter how great a church is you know it can suffer a reversal if it's the only church in an area then you're putting all your eggs in a basket and if there's a disaster or even a difficult situation you're at risk of losing many maybe hundreds of good people but if you have 20 churches in the area or 10 churches in the area if one goes through a struggle there's still many other options and actually our church that happened where there were churches in our area that went in Decline for one reason or another um and people would come to us and we would help become a safe haven and restore them or provide a place for them but then when that church where they which was actually in their closer to their neighborhood or Community when it got back on its feet maybe new leadership work through this problem then we would send them back um we weren't trying to just keep them but we're trying to help them and certain people can weather a storm certain people can't but if you have multiple options in the long run you're going to have healthy churches overall and there's something to be said we don't want to compete against other churches but there's something to be said for the marketplace of ideas if there's only one Church in an area of a certain Faith you're kind of it's almost like a monopoly well they may not have Excellence they may be a little authoritarian they may not have good pastoral care but you're going to go there because you want truth and you want to be saved but if you have 10 churches in that area we want them all to be ethical we don't want them to steal or solicit from others but it does encourage all of us to be better have more effective Ministry more care for your Saints you know excellence in your preaching and your music and whatever you're capable of doing because you know they have options it's not that you're competing it's not you're antagonist you have good relationships but you want to make sure that you do an excellent job and so it doesn't hurt to have other churches who not only motivate you to Excellence but also can partner with you and you can share resources you can share special events and a larger church can benefit from resources of a smaller church can benefit from a resources of a larger Church while maintaining its identity so it doesn't have to be antagonistic in fact I would argue the norm is if you see the New Testament it talks about the Church of God is at Corinth the Church of God is at Rome they all thought of themselves as one church but if you look at Romans 16 you can identify at least five house churches they did not see themselves as competing churches they all saw themselves as part of the same church but yet they did have different locations and different Elders over those churches and so maybe we can have the best of both worlds we can have many churches um but we all consider ourselves as working together as one body for the good of the kingdom of God
well first of all I would say a call to Ministry is a call for Souls so it's not about preaching ability it's about the first thing I ask anybody who feels like they're called to preach what are you doing as far as Outreach what are you doing to share your testimony teach a Bible study win a soul and then second in reach what are you doing to care for people on the margins in your local church people who are struggling people who are coming to the altar to pray people who are missing church are are you on on a personal level praying with them sending them a card or a text you know I want to see a burden for people and so from that if somebody thinks well I may be called I would say start a regular soul-winning effort start a Bible study or start an Outreach and just see what develops and from that you may decide you know I'm a good Soul winner but I'm not my my specialty is not caring for other people and providing pastoral guidance and counseling that that's not my thing but you learn that by experience on the other hand it can progress naturally well I'm winning a few Souls now I have a burden for those Souls those Souls need to be discipled they're looking to me uh you know they're going through marriage crisis they're going through financial crisis now I'm trying to help give them proper resources and proper guidance and and I feel that's my calling I feel I'm fulfilled um and so that's how you kind of feel a pastoral burden as far as a call to plant a church I do think it needs to be in conjunction with your sending pastor and we have an organization which we ask you to go meet your District board and get approval so I think there's safety in having multiple people uh you know where you submit an application they ask questions so there's an objective means are you really ready is this what God has called you to do are are you qualified at least to begin um are is it is it the right time are you is someone sending you is someone releasing you a someone going to support you and so there's a multiple witness but I think there does as with all callings of God there has to be an individual uh point where you feel like God it's an intangible and sometimes you have to be dissatisfied with what you're doing not because there's anything wrong and some people mistake take that well I got to find something wrong with my church or my pastor because I feel like I ready to leave I call it a holy dissatisfaction there's nothing wrong with your church or your pastor is that God is stirring you up so that you will step out of your comfort zone or you will launch forth from the nest and fly and so there's that intangible factor I know with my my wife we had talked for several years about either starting a church or taking a small church and the burden intensified so we kept praying and finally we felt an intense burden and through just Romans 8 groanings which cannot be uttered just a deep intercessory prayer I felt God was doing something uh I didn't know exactly what and so then we prayed again specifically about Austin and we just felt a strong peace and we got up from that prayer we just looked at each other there was such a victory so after months of talking about options and several intense prayers with a burden but an unfocused burden then a Victorious prayer we looked up and said let's do it it just was a confirmation that both of us had at the same time now we did look at the pros and cons I looked at all the good points the bad points other locations I looked at all the things would have to come to pass I listed eight things that would have to happen for us to do this and I said Lord if this really is your will we're going to have to see these and one by one they came to pass now after we'd already made a commitment a couple of them fell through and so then I said well Lord we stepped out by faith because all this is working out now it's not working out you're going to have to help us and so the lord gave us an alternative plan and so I learned that your plans aren't going to work necessarily the way you think but you still have to plan and God can still give you a confirmation and I think you need that because when problems come you need to be able to say now Lord in all sincerity we sought your will we heard from you so we know there's got to be a way through this now because you wouldn't have brought us this far just to abandon us and it wasn't our idea it was your idea so I do think you have to have a definite calling or a sense that this is what God wants you to do at this place at this time in your life
Scripture references as spoken: Matthew 28; Acts 2; Romans 16; Romans 8.