Article
Planting Beyond Paul: Recovering the New Testament’s Diverse Models
We know he was the greatest missionary who ever lived... but what if there were more biblical examples for us to follow within the pages of Scripture?
There’s a script that dominates much contemporary church planting. The planter is visionary, pioneering, and entrepreneurial. The planter moves into new territory, gathers a core team, grows a congregation through evangelism, strong preaching, and clear vision (and maybe great coffee), and then—perhaps—moves on. We might call this the Pauline planting paradigm. It has real biblical warrant. It is good. But our near-exclusive focus on Paul may have left us thinner than the New Testament intends.
Dig a bit, and the New Testament offers a far richer tapestry of planting models. Alongside Paul, we find (among others) Peter, Timothy, Titus, Priscilla, and Aquila—and even Jesus Himself—offering patterns that should not be neglected given many of the contexts we now face, particularly in the United States.
The Acts Context: A Crucial Caveat
Acts largely depicts planting in genuinely unreached, pre-Christian, pagan contexts. Paul and his companions often arrived as the first witnesses to the gospel. There were no churches, no Christian infrastructure or networks, and no believers waiting to be organized.
That context matters. The Pauline model emerges from frontier mission, where everything must be built from the ground up. But is that the situation most of our planters face today? In much of the U.S., or indeed the Western World, the challenge is not the absence of Christian witness but rather fatigue with it. Churches already exist. People have opinions about Christianity—often skeptical or negative ones—and a fading cultural memory of faith.
Different contexts require different models. What worked in first-century Ephesus may not be what’s needed in 21st-century Alabama or Los Angeles. This is why recovering the New Testament’s other planting patterns is so important.
Beyond Paul: Other Faithful Models
Timothy: The Successor
Timothy wasn’t sent to unreached territory but instead to Ephesus, a church Paul had already planted (1 Timothy 1:3). His task was renewal, not launch. This was not a blank canvas. He had to deal with false teaching, conflict, and dysfunction (1 Timothy 1:3–7; 4:1–16)—working with and within inherited structures rather than starting from scratch. This is succession or renewal planting, and it demands extraordinary pastoral patience, emotional intelligence, and deep institutional wisdom.
In many American contexts, both now and in the future, the most strategic move may not be a brand-new plant but instead breathing life into a declining church. Yet we rarely train, consider, or celebrate planters for this kind of complicated work.
Titus: The Embedder
Titus was left in Crete to “put what remained into order” (Titus 1:5). Like Timothy, his role was slow, steady, and often unglamorous: appointing appropriate indigenous leaders, strengthening fragile communities, and creating healthy structures (Titus 1:5–9). Titus reminds us that faithfulness sometimes looks like staying put and doing the long work of slow stabilization.
Peter: The Contextualizer
Peter’s ministry focused largely within Jewish contexts (Galatians 2:7–8). He worked carefully and patiently inside existing religious frameworks and expectations, helping people see how Jesus fulfilled their story rather than replaced it (Acts 2:14–41; 3:12–26). His model highlights the importance of deep cultural fluency and depth, especially in communities with strong traditions or histories.
Priscilla and Aquila: The Team
This couple appears consistently together throughout Acts and Paul’s letters (Acts 18:2, 18, 26; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19; 2 Timothy 4:19), modeling what partnership in gospel work actually looks like. They quietly hosted churches in their home, discipled leaders like Apollos (Acts 18:26), and integrated mission with ordinary work as tentmakers. Paul calls them his “fellow workers in Christ Jesus” (Romans 16:3), highlighting their collaborative ministry on Paul’s church-planting team.
Their pattern reminds us that church planting was never meant to be a solo endeavour. The New Testament consistently shows teams as the normative approach to planting. This is vocational or bivocational planting done in community, deeply embedded in neighborhoods and workplaces, while intentionally nurturing Christian life together. For many U.S. contexts, this team-based, bivocational approach may be one of the most sustainable and biblical paths forward.
Jesus: The Community Builder
Jesus’ approach challenges our usual church planting metrics. He called 12 men to be with Him (Mark 3:14), invested intensely in this small group, prioritized character over speed, depth over distance, and was painfully willing to even let people walk away (John 6:66–67). Jesus wasn’t trying to maximize attendance or create a scalable model. He was building a community that would embody an alternative kingdom (Matthew 5–7), and He seemed content for that to happen slowly, organically, with great attention to internal character formation—teaching His disciples to love one another as the defining mark of their community (John 13:34–35).
Practical Implications
First, we need an honest assessment of our context. Are we planting in a genuinely unreached space, post-Christian soil, or a renewal setting? The model must fit the mission field.
Second, selection and training must expand. Alongside pioneers (which we do need), we need embedders, successors, contextualizers, and teams of vocational leaders. Where are we training people for slow work, inherited complexity, and long-term presence?
Finally, expectations need resetting. Not every plant will grow quickly or become large. In many post-Christian settings, slow trust-building may be the most strategic form of faithfulness.
Conclusion
The New Testament offers a feast of planting models, but we’ve often settled for a single dish. Paul’s approach remains vital for true frontier mission—and that work continues globally. But it is not the only faithful model.
In the post-Christian West, we need the whole cohort: Timothy’s renewal, Titus’s patient ordering, Peter’s cultural depth, Priscilla and Aquila’s vocational integration, and Jesus’ slow, relational community building. When we match models to contexts, church planting becomes more accessible, more sustainable, and, by God’s grace, more effective.
