Andrew Evans, Church planting and the Assemblies of God

This week I spoke to Andrew Evans, founder of Paradise Community Church in South Australia, one of the largest churches in Australia. Andrew was also the general superintendent of the ‘Assemblies of God’ movement from 1977-1999. He also founded the Family First political party.

Andrew was elected in 1977 at the biennial national conference; previously the denomination had seen no growth for the past 2 years. In the 20 years which followed the Assemblies of God denomination grew 2,500% and planted one new church every 11 days. I am doing an Australian church history project on this period and I asked Andrew about the growth of the movement during this time and I have summarized just some of his reflections on church planting.

Andrew said that he identified two things which were needed for the kingdom of God to expand in this nation
(a) church planting and;
(b) friendship evangelism

To this end the executive of the Assemblies of God made a number of strategic changes to facilitate and encourage growth.

This included setting growth goals; changing the biennial conference from business to inspiration and vision casting; strengthening the position of pastors; moving the power base from the executive back into the local church; and setting up strategies for church planting.

Although each one of these things is significant in itself, it is church planting that particularly interests me.

At the 1981 biennial conference a goal was made to put a new AOG church into every town in Australia over 1000 people. A four part strategy was created to facilitate this:

(1) Identify new place where a church was needed
(2) Existing church adopted area in prayer
(3) Put a home group in the town
(4) Put a pastor in the home group

The philosophy which was adopted was anyone can plant a church, anytime, anywhere they want to so long as they inform (a) the local AOG pastor in the area and (b) the executive

In addition the key focus for the movement became, not the more extreme Pentecostal experiences of the Holy Spirit (though they were certainly still present), but winning souls.

The big mega-churches became the evangelistic arm of the movement, while the smaller churches were the ones which allowed people to grow.

Andrew’s advice for young church planters was to have a mindset to grow and to prayfully have a go.

He had 4 basic growth principles which he believes work anywhere:
(1) Prayer
(2) Positive preaching
(3) Good organisation
(4) Discipleship

It was actually a tremendously encouraging conversation from someone who is traditionally “not in my camp”. What struck me was his zeal to see people “saved”, he really is driven by this longing to ‘take the nation for Jesus’, in his words. A real emphasis in the movement during those years was not signs and wonders or slaying in the Spirit but it was on prayer, growth and evangelism. Though growth has slowed down somewhat in the past few years I wonder if it is possible for other mainline denomination to recapture that vision for growth and the lost. I think that the recent interest in Church planting is particularly encouraging, only the Pentecostals figured it out 30 years ago.