In 2009, when we were launching the cell system, our church had about two hundred and fifty adults on Sundays. There were no cells at this stage. It was a traditional church.

What is a traditionally managed church? Most churches in the world fall into this category. These are churches that are not made up of cells. They do not have cells, or cells are just one of the many departments or ministries that exist in these churches.

These churches have sharing groups or ministries or departments as the cornerstone of their operation. Examples of such departments include men’s sharing group, women’s sharing group, children’s ministry, evangelism team, counseling team, music department, teachers, and follow-up ministry.

What is a cell-based church?

Unlike the traditional church, these churches have the cell system as the cornerstone of their operation. Cells are not one of the departments but the only true department in these churches. Every member belongs to a cell; everything in the church operates on cells. In other words, these are CELL CHURCHES.

There are several important steps you need to take if you want to transition your church from a traditional church to a cell-based church. It is essential to approach this with great care. It must be meticulous; do not rush. Give it time; you need to study and understand the cell strategy very well yourself. Failing to follow the steps discussed below can destroy your traditionally managed church. You will actually put your church and its members in a great state of confusion. However, the rewards can be incredible if the conversion is done very well.

Steps to Transition from a Traditional Church to a Cell-Based Church.

i. Learn and understand the principles or concepts of the cell yourself.

Before you can succeed as a pastor of the cell system, you must make a great effort to learn and understand what the concept is. From my experience, most pastors who struggle with cells do not really understand it themselves and therefore cannot implement it well in their churches. Often, I tell these pastors who seem to have little knowledge and understanding of the cell system but wish to implement it, to just take a pause! Because if they don’t understand it, they are likely to do the wrong things. I’ve had cases where cells were running for years, but I had to advise these pastors to stop and retrain before starting again. These churches later experienced much better results, but they had wasted precious years.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.” Ezra 7:10

This scripture is instructive. Ezra did not just rise to teach the law but rather, he first studied it to understand before teaching the statutes of the Lord to the people. The pastor himself must have adequate knowledge before teaching or introducing cells in his church. FOR ME, THIS IS THE GREATEST KEY TO SUCCESSFUL CONVERSION!

Usually, I tell pastors not even to attempt the conversion until they have understood the concept themselves. This will prevent many painful mistakes; as I said, you can actually destroy your church that has been stable for many years.

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” Hosea 4:6

We made many mistakes when we started implementing the cell system in our church, and I learned from those mistakes. One of those serious cell system mistakes was using our old shepherds to start cell work without retraining them. You see, cell ministry is an entirely different ball game from traditional ministries in the church.

To begin with, it’s a lot of hard work; it is demanding and requires specific skills. I didn’t know this at first. We took for granted that because our shepherds had been serving in the ministry for some time, they could also run cells. This mistake really affected the smooth take-off of our newly created cells. There was a real struggle to break through.

ii. Train cell leaders or shepherds anew.

Avoid this danger – do not automatically use your existing deacons or shepherds to run cells. Retrain these shepherds because they themselves do not understand this new concept. After casting the vision (we will discuss this concept later), you need to train or retrain cell leaders. Pastors, avoid this danger of automatically using old shepherds without re-educating them! They simply will not be able to perform the cell ministry.

iii. Disseminate the cell vision to…

This text is an excerpt from the book “The Cell System” written by Emmanuel Louis Nterful.

We invite you to read the following article “Advantages of Cells for the Local Pastor“.