When you arrive into a town or city as a missionary, let’s assume it’s just you. You don’t have anyone else. You start with evangelism. You start with preaching the gospel. You really don’t know that anyone will be saved, but that’s how you start if you are a missionary.

A church is built on the gospel, which is seen in part when Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” The grammar of Matthew 16:18 refers “this rock” to the confession of Peter, which could be described as his faith in Christ. The church is built on the gospel, belief in Christ. A church is built with saved people by their hearing the gospel and receiving it. The goal in an area is to get the gospel to everyone who is willing to hear it.

Something else you can do is let saved people know that you are in town. If you are there with a goal of a church starting, then you think there needs to be a church there. That is in part because you don’t think you could say, “Just go to that church.” Depending on the size of the area, there are probably believers there that need your work and you want them to know about it. They could join you. However, no missionary should think that he’s coming somewhere to take people from other churches. He’s there to evangelize first.

If the gospel is going to be preached to everyone, that could be done by the missionary doing it himself. He never stops preaching the gospel until everyone hears it. Is that the way intended by God for everyone in an area to preach the gospel? It isn’t. The command of the Great Commission is “teach all nations” in Matthew 28:19. The word “teach” comes from a Greek word, which means, “make disciples.” The priority in evangelism is making disciples.

The first amount of time, let’s say, year, emphasizes evangelism especially. The goal is to evangelize as much as possible and to disciple those believing the gospel. As soon as someone is converted, you start with discipleship. A main goal of discipleship is to train an evangelist. Your disciple at least by year two himself starts evangelizing. What you’ve done then is multiply the number of evangelists. For that reason, discipleship is the priority. If you had a choice to go evangelizing or spending time in discipleship, you disciple someone. Get in as many discipleships as possible, really disciple everybody.

You disciple even the people you meet, who are already believers. When someone claims to be saved already, he also is discipled. This way everyone is prepared to be an evangelist. You want to take everyone as far as they can spiritually.

Yes, everyone needs to start assembling for church. A church is starting. You start to get everyone you are discipling into every meeting. You will be preaching on all the things from the Word of God these new believers and new members need.

As you move along the first year, you will be baptizing new believers. That is part of discipleship, teaching them on baptism and then baptizing them. Each of them will be baptized into the church. Baptizing is part of discipleship even as seen in Matthew 28:19.

I try to evangelize every day and do most days. I will do less evangelism as more people are saved, because I have to disciple these people. Also part of what I do is to take new converts to evangelize, part of discipleship. Maybe you think that spending less time in evangelizing will mean less evangelism. Over a longer span far more evangelism will occur if new converts are baptized.

New converts need to be made disciples. This will result in more evangelism. When it comes to the church planting phase of the history of a church, discipleship must occur for a church even to start. You aren’t going to have a church without discipleship, so no new church will occur. Even more so, not related to a new church even starting is the glory to God that will go through the increased obedience of a discipled saint. God wants to be followed and new converts don’t know what to do. They need to be taught. They have to be taught so they will live like God wants people to live.