143 - "There's No Such Thing as New Testament Church Planting" — What NAMS Actually Aims to Reproduce - September 24th, 2026

<p><strong>There&#39;s No Such Thing as New Testament Church Planting&quot; — What NAMS Actually Aims to Reproduce</strong></p><p><strong>Description:</strong> Over breakfast, a friend who grew a church from 125 people to over 5,000 kept using a phrase Jon Shuler couldn&#39;t let stand: &quot;New Testament church planting.&quot; So Shuler challenged him — there&#39;s really no such thing. The early church spread across the Roman Empire before the New Testament existed as a book in anyone&#39;s hands. What shaped those first congregations wasn&#39;t a text but a living pattern, carried from Jerusalem by the people who had been formed there. In episode 143, back from training church planters in Arkansas, Shuler traces that pattern from Pentecost through the Jerusalem Council to the letters of Ignatius of Antioch — and shows how, by the end of the first century, one consistent order had taken hold everywhere: a single bishop, elders, and deacons. That, he says, is what NAMS aims to reproduce — the church of Antioch by the end of the first century, under the full authority of Scripture. A rich and clarifying episode for every church planter and Great Commission Christian.</p>