NEW ORLEANS (BP)–Southern Baptist seminaries aren’t known for their greenhouses. After all, growing plants in a controlled environment isn’t usually considered a core purpose for a theological institution.
At New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, though, there’s another type of greenhouse aimed at cultivating church planters and missions-minded Christians for the 21st century. “Greenhouse” is a small group that meets weekly on the seminary campus in the home of Jack Allen, assistant professor of church planting.
“We’re trying to give students who want to develop their missionary calling, either here in North America or overseas, a place where they can develop their skills in a safe environment,” Allen said. “That’s essentially what a greenhouse is — a place where plants can grow in a safe environment.”
Allen, who has directed the Nehemiah Church Planting Project and the Day Center for Church Planting in New Orleans since 2004, launched Greenhouse in the fall of 2006.
“We meet as a group five times during the semester, following a basic Acts 2:42 model, where we eat together, pray together and study Scripture together,” he said.
Using The One Year Bible, Greenhouse members study an excerpt from the Old and New testaments, a psalm and a proverb each day. When the group meets at Allen’s house, each member brings questions and thoughts provoked by the week’s reading.
“Everyone comes prepared with what they’ve been reading during the week,” Allen explained. “From the most mature biblical scholar to the brand new Christian, they’ve all been reading the same stuff, so there’s always something to talk about. The Spirit really brings that out.”
Greenhouse focuses on three main disciplines Allen says are keys to success for the church planter: prayer, a willingness to share the Gospel with others and the ability to begin and lead a small group. Members of the group are expected to personally engage the New Orleans community and move toward starting a small group of their own.
“They have a basic assignment where they go out during the week to prayer walk, lead people to Christ and start a small group with those people they lead to Christ or those who seem interested in Christ,” Allen said. “That’s based on Luke 10, where Jesus told them to go out into the community and find a man of peace. That’s the methodology.”
For Allen, it’s a simple question of purpose.
“What are we trying to do?” he asked. “We’re trying to create disciples who look to the Bible for guidance. Missionaries have to learn how to get people out there into reading the Bible every day.”
“We want to do what disciples do,” Allen continued. “Disciples pray, they eat together and they read the Bible every day and study it together. We know that because Acts 2 tells us that. At that point, they’ll share their faith.”
Allen said it may take a year or more to gather several new Christians into a discipling small group, but he said time is not the issue. The most crucial issue, instead, is what to do as the group grows.
“I don’t want people thinking ‘I can lead a group of 10 or 12 people and that’s enough,'” he said. “It needs to grow. We want to reach New Orleans for Christ and not just 12 people.”
Allen said the same cap of 10 or 12 people in a small group applies even to Greenhouse. Consequently, he’s currently developing others to lead similar groups.
Since Allen began hosting Greenhouse groups in the fall of 2006, a high percentage of participants have moved on to other places of ministry. At its largest, Greenhouse consisted of 11 people. Of those, eight are currently involved in church planting or other ministry endeavors.
“And it didn’t take them long,” Allen said. “It took them about three months to get to the place where they were ready to be on the field. But there is no time limit. People are ready when they’re ready.”
Master of divinity student Bethany Hales is one Greenhouse member who has moved on to another field. In August 2007, she became assistant to the director of the Unlimited Partnerships program, which matches seminary students with local churches to foster new Bible studies and evangelistic efforts and integrate new believers into the local church.
“Greenhouse definitely prepared me for New Orleans and the job I’m in now,” Hales said. “He [Allen] designed it to be an incubator to teach you how to truly be a missionary and live a missional life.”
Greenhouse taught her the discipline of going to the same coffee shop at the same time each day or of going to the same checkout person at the grocery store each time, Hales noted. That daily intentionality has helped her begin relationships with people and share the Gospel.
Eventually, Allen wants to connect Greenhouse to a local church. Students then will engage the surrounding community, develop thriving small groups and connect new Christians to that particular congregation.
The Greenhouse model can be easily applied to whatever field future church planters will engage, Allen says. He believes honing these skills while students are in New Orleans will greatly benefit them when they move on to other places of ministry.
“The difficulty of doing ministry in New Orleans is a great antidote to the false conception of how easy it will be on the field,” he said.
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Michael McCormack is a writer for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
