Gary Smith is a church planter in one of the most difficult mission fields in the world, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. He is church planting and raising up other church planters. He is the author of From Dying to Dangerous. Today we talk about the secrets of effective church planting.
Buy Gary Smith’s Book: From Dying to Dangerous: https://amzn.to/3N7uZM0
Learn more about Gary Smith and his ministry: http://churchplantingpathway.com/
Summary:
- Pastor Gary Smith is the church planting director with Alliance New England, and he is working to plant 100 new churches in New England by 2033.
- Smith is using a five-step church planting pathway to multiply disciples: (1) Follow, (2) Multiply, (3) Team, (4) Scale, and (5) Health.
- A key part of Smith’s strategy is to “listen, listen, listen” to the Holy Spirit and to the person they are speaking with, rather than just focusing on what to say. This allows them to tailor their message and approach.
- Smith has seen churches transformed from stagnant to soul-winning by helping them shift to a focus on making disciples and multiplying, rather than just on launching new services.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:20):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today, I have Pastor Gary Smith with me. He is a church planter and he has recently published a brand new book called From Dying to Dangerous. Pastor Gary, thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast.
Pastor Gary Smith (00:43):
Daniel, so great to be with you today and just thanks for this opportunity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:48):
Well, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing for Jesus.
Pastor Gary Smith (00:55):
Thank you, Daniel. I currently serve as the church planting director with Alliance New England, which is with the Christian Missionary Alliance. And the territory that God has given to me are the six states of New England, typically listed as some of the most lost, most unreached states in the United States. And that’s exactly why we ask God to bring us here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:18):
You’re right in the middle of the mission field here in the United States. Absolutely. And it’s amazing going and ministering on the East Coast. It is in many ways a post-Christian area, very secular. And so what response have you been seeing as you minister in that part of the United States?
Pastor Gary Smith (01:39):
So we have been seeing a great response. When I came here, we had seen the district here, Alliance New England dropped from 80 some churches down to 50. And the district superintendent that was new said, “We believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding us into a new vision.” And so he cast a vision that the Alliance of England would double its amount of churches in New England in the next 10 years. And people were like, “That’s kind of crazy.” But I said, “I want to take that on. I believe that the Holy Spirit can do that. He can give us power to witness for him and about Christ.” And so we took this role on and we have seen God’s spirit work. The Lord of the harvest is faithful. And the thing is, Daniel, when people look at New England, they’ll say it’s hard. The people are hard, but God has been working here.
(02:30):
And so the great news is, is the Holy Spirit, when he is powerfully giving you power to witness and share about Christ, you can be anywhere, just anywhere. And so here we are, we’re seeing a harvest. We lead all of our church planters to be in the harvest. And now we have many, many planters here now.
(02:52):
We are going to more than double the amount of our churches here in less than five years, not just 10 years, but five years. And so Lord, the harvest is granting us leaders right and left here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:01):
Yeah. I saw on your website that one of the goals is to plant a hundred new churches before 2033. And so there’s a variety of different ministries around the world that are really focusing on that date, 2033, because it is the 2000 year anniversary of when Jesus rose from the dead, ascended up into heaven, and then the birth of the original church. And so I think it’s really cool that you’ve picked that as one of the dates you’re aiming towards. And tell me what is the strategy that you’re using to plant a hundred new churches?
Pastor Gary Smith (03:43):
So we’re trying to follow Jesus and his strategies because he has the best ones. And so the way we began, Daniel, is we watched Jesus meeting those fishermen and he saw something in their life, of course. And he said, “Follow me and I’ll make you fisher admit.” And so we designed our church planting system here to meet people the way that Jesus met them and to call them out. And what’s so interesting, Daniel, is that the church planting systems across North America for the most part have used these assessment systems that look for qualities and characteristics of church planters, nine to 11 of them typically. And I said, it seemed like Jesus way is that he called people out, he recognized characteristics in these leaders, and then he told them what he wanted them to be about, and then he invested in them. And so in our church planning pathway, what we do here in New England, that’s the only district in the Christian Missionary Alliance that’s doing it this way, by the way, is that we … I’ll meet a guy in a coffee shop and the Holy Spirit will say to me, “You need to call him out.
(04:59):
” And I’ve never met him before. And I’ll call him out and say, “Look, tell me about what you think about Jesus or about you thinking about sharing Jesus.” And they’ll be like, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah, tell me. ” And I had a guy say at a concert the other day, he said, “Well, I’ve led several people to the Lord at my recovery house that I’m now in. ” I said, “Perfect. You have the perfect characteristic of what I’m looking for. ” And so anyway, this is kind of the strategy that we’re walking here in New England and we are seeing God so at work. It’s just myself and my wife part-time. And we are now walking with … By this summer, we’ll have 35 church planners that are going to be in the harvest. We only have 50 churches. And so we are really seeing the move and we’re actually having to slow down our process just a little bit because we’re so advancing.
(05:47):
But it’s pretty exciting what God is doing here with us.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:49):
Wow. I saw in your bio that you’re originally from Canada. My wife is actually Canadian, so we love ministering in Canada and you are working to plant churches in Canada. What are the similarities or differences between what you’ve done in Canada and then New England?
Pastor Gary Smith (06:12):
What’s so interesting is that the United States and Canada are very much alike when you come north to south. So here we are in New England and the northern part of Canada that’s north of us is Quebec. I mean, people don’t realize that one of the most unreached people groups in the world are the Kibekua people. When we went there as a church planter, 0.3% of them were evangelical Christian. Now that number jumped up a bit because there’s been some great harvesting going on there, but Canada is different just like the US is different. When you go with prairie people, you find people that have spiritual backgrounds, religious backgrounds like Mennonites, this kind of groups. When they immigrated and came out, they brought something with them. But the people on the East and West Coast of Canada, just like the people on the East and West Coast of the United States are much greater, there’s a much greater need for the gospel and for harvesting in these places because there’s so few followers of Christ.
(07:06):
Even in the state of Vermont, there are nearly 50 communities still today that have no evangelical church at all in that state. And there’s not that big of a state, not that
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:15):
Many people. My wife is from Alberta, which is very similar to where I live in Tulsa, Oklahohoma. There’s a lot of Christians there, a lot of great churches. And I really, I feel like what God wants to have happen, both in Canada and the United States, is that the middle of the country where you have these great churches, if they could get a missionary vision to send people and to pray for the church planning efforts on both coasts, we could really see a revival in our nations.
Pastor Gary Smith (07:50):
I mean, I fully agree with you. When I was in Canada, if I were going to recruit, I wanted to recruit from the Midwestern states because I find that Midwesterners for the most part are the most flexible. And you have to be flexible when you’re on the mission field. First of all, to follow the Holy Spirit and his lead in what he’s doing, because he wants to do fresh things. He wants to do new things, but you are right. If these churches where their strength would say, “Let’s shift our resources.” I was so encouraged when I was writing my book, I found a church that, hey, they’ve shifted and now 50% of their resources are all going into the harvest now. And for an existing church, that’s a tough call for them to make. That’s going to really change the paradigm in what they’re doing.
(08:35):
But if we have more churches think that way, man, we could see a much greater harvest with the resources flowing in the harvest field.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:41):
Amen. Well, tell me a little bit about your book. It’s called From Dying to Dangerous: A Radical New Pathway for Churches to Reignite Kingdom Culture. And you talk in the book about how 1135 churches close their doors every single week, which is a horrible tragedy. I go down the street sometimes and you’ll see a beautiful building that used to be a church and now it has closed, it’s dead, it’s dying. And that’s not what God wants. God wants the kingdom of God to keep evangelizing and to keep growing and to never step back, but to always be going forward. So tell me a little bit about what revelation God has given you in this book from Dying to Dangerous.
Pastor Gary Smith (09:30):
Yeah. So just like you said, I start out trying to ring a clarion bell and say, “Look, everyone, we have got to realize how fast the church is going away in North America.” Daniels, I talk with people, I talk with pastors, they have no idea how dire it is. And in a sense, we know that God can turn this around. He totally can turn it around. But when I tell people 135 a week and we’re only planting at best, maybe 70 a week, I mean, I think that number’s a little high, but we are not coming close to matching the death that’s happening. Now, there are some great churches, by the way. Canada and the United States, there just are, but there’s very few that are really, really multiplying and advancing. And so in the book, I talk about that at first and then I say, okay, we’ve got to change the way that we go about this.
(10:26):
Organizations that are planting have got to change their strategy and their structure. And so in the book, I call churches, I call organizations, I call church plants to say, “Let me connect with you to help you to rethink how to truly see the United States as a mission field and to be shifting the way we’re going at it because with so many Americans and Canadians dying annually, and the amount of evangelism we’re doing is not even touching half of the death rate.” And so we have got to really rethink and people have got to get pretty uncomfortable, Daniel. So the book, I call people to that, to a level of discomfort to say, “Let’s listen to God together and do something different.” If our little organization of 50 churches is going to double the amount of works that we have here in just a few years, what would happen if other organizations, other denominations, other groups that love the gospel, that love the scripture would say, “What would it look like and what would it take for us to double the amount of churches we have, the amount of gospel sharing we have, the amount of souls we’re seeing saved, the number of people being baptized?” And it is not impossible.
(11:38):
Mark 9:23, Jesus said, “If you can believe all things are possible to him that believeth.” Our Lord can do greater things than we even ask our thought according to the book of Ephesians. And so in the book, I say, let’s connect, let me help you, let me walk with you, or just you walk with the spirit and let him tell you, you don’t need me necessarily, but let’s change the way we’re going about it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:59):
Let’s get down into real life details. Share with us some testimonies of how you have seen churches transformed from being stagnant into soul-winning churches.
Pastor Gary Smith (12:16):
Yeah. So one of the stories that I share in the book is I was pastoring a church in Alberta, you were talking about Alberta in a community that was growing so fast, the fastest growing community in Canada, Cochran and Alberta. And our children’s minister, she asked us this question in a staff meeting. She said, “Would anyone miss our church if it were not here tomorrow?” And we were so gripped by that. And so out of that, I’m going to make a long story short, out of that, we came up with a ministry called Love Cochran. And in that love Cochran ministry, we said, “We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this community.” And it was incredible what God did with that. It actually turned in such a way, Daniel, that the community actually started calling our church asking how we were going to help the community.
(13:08):
And so now our church was being seen, but it was also in that time, Daniel, that the church … There was a time when the church first started where it was seeing a pretty good amount of evangelism. There was a great pastor named Mel Blackaby, who was the pastor, and it was some great … But since then, it hadn’t seen the kind of evangelistic efforts that we were seeing, but we were starting to see … There was a year where we had 50 people baptized in that church and they hadn’t seen anything like that in a long time in that year. And we were seeing lots of people come to Christ almost every week. Someone was coming to Christ and it was pretty exciting. And so I’m just saying that was one story. Another story I’d love to take you to is a guy named JJ.
(13:48):
He’s a guy that’s a church planner with us here in New England. I got connected with him and he would not pass the church planning assessment. He sent me a text yesterday and he said, Gary, can you send me some materials? I want to start my first Discovery Bible group. It’s one of the greatest ways we’re doing evangelism, Daniel, is through these DBGs, Discovery Bible groups. And this guy, he said, “Gary, this guy was just sold out everything against God and now he’s so hungry, Gary. Show me what I could do.
(14:16):
” Excuse me. “How can I begin walking with him?” And so he’s so excited to start this Discovery Bible group with him. Man, this guy is going to reach so many people for Christ. It’s just incredible. So we just call people in our first step in our church planning pathway. We say, “Follow Jesus and fish for men.” Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:32):
And
Pastor Gary Smith (14:32):
That’s where we begin. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:34):
And so in your book From Dying to Dangerous, you have a church planting pathway, which is a proven five-step method to multiply disciples. Can you walk us through some of those steps that you go through in order to multiply disciples?
Pastor Gary Smith (14:51):
Absolutely. And so we’ve actually made it our assessment system, just so you know, so the people that know church planting, they know that church planters do assessment. We do it step by step. And so I’m going to lead you through the steps of what the qualifiers were looking for for us to take the planter to the next step. And as we advance them, we resource them even more. And so he was faithful with little will receive more. That’s a big part of our church playing pathway concept. Here’s what we do. We say, all right, I want to make sure that you want to follow Jesus sincerely, that you are saying, I want to be about what he’s asked it to be about. And I test that out by watching them fish, fish for people. And I give them all kinds of tools. I train them in the three Ls of evangelism.
(15:34):
I can tell you about that if you want to hear about that in a minute. And we say, “But I want to make sure they’re willing to follow Jesus and fish.” When they show me that, and there’s a few other things we do with them in that step, but that is the main thing. And every one of these steps is one word and it’s made it easy for us to translate because we now translate it into multiple languages as well. So it fits our North American multicultural context super well. The second thing is we say, okay, now that you are following Jesus and you’re starting to fish for people, you’ve seen some people come to Christ, you baptized someone in the ocean last week, how awesome is that? Now here’s what we want to see. Now we want to see you multiplying disciples. So take them to the great commission.
(16:09):
Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples.” So I’ve asked them to take the people that they’ve led to Christ and invite them, show them how to share the gospel and how to be starting discovery Bible groups. And so we now multiply.That is our next step is multiply. And I’ll tell you, it is exciting to see these new believers sharing their faith, starting Discovery Bible groups, seeing other people come to Christ, and this is how we’re planning churches. So then we move from multiply and we say, okay, in our church planning training day that we use, it’s called Church Planning Essentials from Dynamic Church Planning International, we ask them to begin getting a vision from God. We ask them to take multiple prayer retreats to go away and hear from God. It’s a core thing that’s missing in church planting and pastoring, prayer retreats, hearing from God, what’s his vision?
(17:00):
And in our next step, we help them to build a team to match the vision. So we haven’t even talked about church service yet. Have you noticed that? Most church planting focuses on launch Sunday. Jesus didn’t ask us to focus on launch Sunday. He asked us to focus on multiplying on making disciples.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:18):
Jesus always had launched the boats.
Pastor Gary Smith (17:21):
That’s right. And so, but in this step, we help them build out the team for the vision God has given them, whether it’s to reach multiple apartment complexes in a city, whatever it is. So we help them build out that team. My wife is the best coach for that. And then we say, all right, how do we help you scale this out? Because we’re supposed to be like a city on a hill. You notice I didn’t use the word launch. I’ve actually taken that out of my vocabulary because again, people have thrown so many resources at that, that they’ve forgotten that we are to be making disciples. This is where supposed to be in the harvest. Now, it’s not that I don’t like launch Sundays in church planning. I love worship services. I love preaching. I love worship, but let’s focus on what Christ has for us.
(18:00):
So we scale it out for them. And then the last one is health. We describe health as Acts one: eight. That’s how we see a healthy church. So we’re not talking about large numbers, small numbers. We’re talking about multiplying disciples being made. How do we get more of the gospel into the city? And then how do we start multiplying that beyond? In this process, I’m asking our church planters to be raising up their next church planters that’s either going to take over their church, they’re going to go out and do it again, or they’re going to send them out. I’m asking them to raise up pastors, but I ask them to do it the same way I did it with them. Is I meet you in Panera Bread. I meet you in Dunking Donuts. I meet you wherever you are and I call you out and I say, “You want to follow Jesus and fish for people.
(18:39):
” And sometimes I start into the gospel conversation because sometimes people have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s perfect intro because they’re like, “What are you talking about? ”
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:46):
That’s awesome.
Pastor Gary Smith (18:47):
Anyway, but that’s our step-by-step strategy.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:49):
All right. So give me the five words.
Pastor Gary Smith (18:52):
Follow. Follow. Multiply.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:54):
Multiply.
Pastor Gary Smith (18:56):
Team. Aim. Team. Oh, team. Yeah. Team. And then scale. Scale. And health.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:04):
Health. Health. Wonderful. And you mentioned you have three Ls of evangelism. What are the three Ls of evangelism?
Pastor Gary Smith (19:12):
So I go about it two different ways in the book, but the one I’ll tell you about today was taught to me by a First Nations, a Canadian Indian man. Actually, he didn’t teach him, but the Spirit taught it to me because of him. So I was going up to his village as the white man to go into an Indian village and to meet this gentleman for the very first time. He was the mayor in his town. He was a pastor in his town and he was a government leader in his town amongst First Nation people. So as I’m driving up to this village, the Spirit of God whispers to me Daniel, he says, Gary, don’t talk when you get there. I’m like, “What do you mean don’t talk when I get there?” I’m a preacher, pastor. All I know how to do is talk.
(19:54):
And I said, “Lord, did you just tell me that? ” And I really sensed that the spirit was telling me not to talk. So I got to his community, I found his house and I introduced myself, of course. I mean, I had to say something, and then I just went quiet. I didn’t know about First Nation culture, Daniel, and how that was such an honoring thing to listen rather than speak all the time. But for about two and a half days, I hardly said a word. And I was at his house and he told me, he said, Gary, he said, “I’m going to work with you. ” I’m like, “Well, I’m sorry, what do you mean? We haven’t even hardly talked about working or ministry.” He said, “You’re the first white man who’s ever listened to me. ” And so the spirit put that word in my spirit about listening.
(20:40):
And I realized that in most evangelism training, we teach people what to say, but we don’t teach them how to listen, how to listen to the spirit, how to listen to the heart of the person, how to listen to the culture that they’re in. Those three Ls and listen, listen, listen to the spirit of God. You see, the Lord Jesus had around 60 plus conversations in the gospels, but they’re all unique. Some people addressed hymns, he addressed some other people. They’re all unique, all these conversations. And so I say, “If you don’t listen, how do you know what to say?” And so I love the Romans row, by the way. I love all kinds of evangelism. I love what you talked about on one of your podcasts about using the chosen for introductions to the gospel. I think that’s awesome, Daniel. But I’m just saying, if you can listen, the spirit will give you cues as to where to enter in with the gospel, as to what to share with the person, as to what they need in this moment that’ll be the door that opens their heart.
(21:39):
And so I’ve trained a lot of people in the three hours of evangelism now how to listen. And it gets you so much farther with so many more people down the road when you’re just doing cold evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:52):
I actually agree with you a lot. I think one of the most powerful tools of an evangelist is listening. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so by listening to someone, hearing about their problems, hearing about what they’re going through, hearing about their life, you show that you care. And then once you’ve earned the right to speak into their lives, then they’re much more open to hear what you have to say. So yeah, that’s really powerful. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, if you are listening and you would like to order Gary Smith’s book from Dying to Dangerous, you can find it on amazon.com and just type in from Dying to Dangerous, Gary Smith, and you can find the book. And I think it’s a great book. You should definitely go and get it. And then if someone wants to connect with you or find out more about your ministry, is there a good website that they could go to?
Pastor Gary Smith (22:49):
Yes. It’s thechurchplantingpathway.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:53):
The churchplantingpathwayway.com. And so I encourage you to connect with Pastor Gary and learn all you can from him. And just to finish up here, Pastor Gary, what word of encouragement would you give to other people who have a desire to plant a church, they want to be church planters, maybe here in the United States, maybe internationally. What would you say to those who are called to plant churches?
Pastor Gary Smith (23:24):
I would say to you, the spirit of God can empower you to be his witness and you can be his witness anywhere because it’s about what he is doing. And so he can empower you to do it and say, I would say go forth boldly and share the gospel. And I just want to say, Daniel, that I think this means to be one of the main things that we do in church planting today is sharing the gospel because there’s a harvest ready. There’s ripe fruit ready everywhere. I really believe it. And so I would say to you, go forth boldly sharing the gospel. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be timid. And the Lord will show you how to speak. The spirit said, I will give you the words. Open your mouth. I will give you the words to say. So trust him to do that. Let’s plant many, many evangelistically harvest centric churches.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:15):
Let’s just take a moment right now to pray for church planters across North America and around the world. I believe God wants us to plant hundreds and thousands and even millions of churches around the world. God is raising up his church. Dear Heavenly Father, we lift up everyone who is called to be a church planter. Lord, I pray that they would have boldness to go out and to share the gospel, to call people to you, and then to disciple people and begin to help them to get closer and closer to Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would raise up an army of church planters in New England, in North America, up in Quebec, all over the world. Lord, we pray for mighty church planters to be raised up that would have a massive impact for your kingdom in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Gary Smith (25:18):
Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:18):
One final word, Pastor Gary.
Pastor Gary Smith (25:21):
Well, Daniel, just thank you. Thanks for what you’re doing in the Ministry of Evangelism. And I just pray God will bless your work and your ministry so much, brother. And thanks for letting me be on with you. And again, if someone would like to connect with me, please do. I look forward to helping you in the harvest.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:36):
Awesome. Thank you, Pastor Gary, for being on the evangelism podcast.
