What has contributed to your commitment to the Restoration Movement?
I think growing up so deeply involved in the movement has had as much an impact as anything else. Having a mother who is a Stone from Bourbon County, Kentucky (and maybe on Barton’s family tree), and having my grandmother Williams baptized in Brush Run Creek in Pennsylvania places one pretty deeply in the Christian church movement.

So does the Restoration Movement define you?
I would say that in some ways it does. Growing up in a Christian church home with that kind of history probably has as much to do with who I am as anything. I have always been and will always be a restless pilgrim on the journey. I’ve made peace with that. There are people who are just content to be who they are and there are people who are always restless, trying to figure out what the next step is. I’m one of those restless souls, not one of those peaceful souls.

How does your restlessness show itself?
I’ve always had to ask the question, “Why?” I’m not content with what’s on the surface, I want to find what’s underneath the surface.

What is underneath Paul?
That’s where I’d come back to someone whose rootedness is deep within this movement and wants to do what’s best to serve the church—this branch of the church.

Where did you think you were headed the day you graduated from Kentucky Christian College?
I was going to have my own band and work with CIY (Christ in Youth) the rest of my days—which I did from 1973 to 1979.

Have you satisfied the vision of your youth?
I never would have thought I would end up here. Church planting was never on my radar, never a passion. It was a strategic opportunity that came to me at the end of my CIY ministry. I saw the importance of it, and the possibilities of it, and chose to go into it. I look at Tom Jones or Marc Bigelow and they bleed church planting. It is their passion. For me, it was simply more strategic.

Has planting churches taught you about life?
Being in New York taught me about life. Planting churches in New York was been a life-size, lifetime challenge. We’ve had a lot of success, but it was anything but easy.

How did you end up with “Go Ye” Chapel Mission?
My wife had grown up in New York and she wanted to go back. That was the job available and so I said, “OK.” No clear call of God, it was more just a sense of the strategic nature of the work and the need of the place. I was captured by the need of New York.

At some time you obviously caught the passion.
As church planting became a science in the early 1980s, I think I was really slowly growing to the challenge and the opportunity. A number of us were privileged to be a part of that—John Wasem, Tom Jones, Alan Ahlgrim. That was exciting. Those were formative times.

When did you get to the point that you said, “OK, I’ll stick with this”?
I had been in it eight years and the organization started talking to me about becoming director. I actually considered a couple of other opportunities and decided I wanted to stay in church planting instead.

What have you learned from 30 years of church planting?
It’s not about you. It’s about something bigger than you.

What is yet to be learned?
To live in peace and contentment and . . . <pause> actually, I think I’ve gotten there. It’s probably that I realize now that what I have yet to learn is far, far greater than I realized 25 years ago. The body of what I have yet to learn grows larger and larger.

What’s the next phase of church planting?
I think the “flywheel is turning” in church planting within the Christian church movement. I think a lot of denominations engineer themselves beyond the capacity to grow by creating monstrous structures and systems that have to be fed. We’ve avoided that in the Christian churches and I hope we can continue to let it grow organically with less concern about control and more enthusiasm for the wonderful messiness of church planting.

Isn’t a certain amount of “engineering” necessary?
I’d rather see us trust the flow than try to engineer results. I think a key to why we have planted churches as successfully as we have is that we have trusted the flow.

What does the next generation of church planters look like to you?
The entrepreneurs being drawn to church planting today will take it far beyond the last generation. They’re able to start out at a better spot than we did.

That spot being?
They have the benefits of the “science” of church planting coupled with the traditional freedoms this movement provides—and, an environment conducive to new church development. At the time I started, 2 percent of the average mission budget went to church planting. That was 1979. Church planting was little more than an afterthought then. Now it is front and center in the life of the Christian church movement.

How do we get beyond planting white, middle-class churches?
The Christian church movement has not figured out how to do that well at all and I don’t think our generation has provided an answer.

Do urban church plants help us understand ethnic church planting?
To a certain extent, I think so. I think that because most urban churches are racially diverse. Most of our urban churches are ethnically diverse as well. That’s not because of our ethnic expertise; it’s because of our urban expertise. Unfortunately, it’s not been translatable to our suburban ethnic environment, with the exception of the Brazilian community in New York. And that has been because of the effectiveness of our director in that area, Claudio Divino.

Brad Dupray is senior vice president, investor development, with Church Development Fund, Irvine, California.