CP4DbD – Your Church planting dream team

What does your kingdom dream team look like?  As you think about planting, or leading a plant, or potentially preparing to plant in the future whom would you send to give it the best chance of thriving?  This is often where a planters thoughts go – who do I need in order to plant?

I do a Fantasy Football team every year and enter into the church league (I always seem to finish in mid-table).  But what would a church planting dream team look like?  I remember someone from our sending church describing one person who was coming with us as a £15 million pound signing (back when that was a lot of money for a transfer), he was someone phenomenally gifted in PA and AV, and he was a real gift to us.

There are some people who come with more readily obvious skills and gifts that others.  But what skills and giftings do you need as you plant?  Well, that will all depend on what you think church is.

The advantage of planting a church is that it gives you a chance to think biblically about church.  What is church?  What skills and gifts do you need to start a church?  What does starting a church look like?  Is it a big glossy launch?  Is it highly technical and need a big team?  Or is it something different? 

Your answer to that will partly depend on your experience of church and what you think a church should look like as a result of that.  Unconscious bias plays a big role here, so it’s worth spending time working out what are your cultural expectations of church, or thinking about what are the things you think others expect church to have, and once you’ve got that out of your system really working through a biblical vision of church.

For example your dream team may include a wide range of musicians, at least some AV/PA skills, and gifted and high-energy youth workers because of the way you think of church.  But you discover something interesting as you camp out in the gospels and in Acts; these things aren’t priorities or even necessities for planting a church.  There is more we could say like leadership and so on, but let me highlight 4 foundational things every church needs:

Relational discipleship

Jesus doesn’t start with a big service in a venue rather he builds his church relationally over time as he teaches people God’s word and lives out THE example of a life lived as a son of God – he is everything Adam and Israel failed to be.  This relational holiness is not impressive to the world.  It’s not quick.  It is a slow transformation of the character of disciples by repeated exposure to the word of God in life and word.

Prayer

Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray largely by example but also through direct teaching – this becomes one of the key bedrocks on which the early church is built.  And yet is rarely mentioned in church planting literature.  Jesus shapes the Apostles to be prayers as he disciples them, and prayer marks the early church.

Word enfleshed

Jesus teaches his disciples the word of God, both explaining it to them in ways that they had never grasped before but also by living it out at cost to himself and calling them to follow him as he did so.  God’s word alive and at work in transformed living that was radically different to the world around it.

Love across divides

Finally they learn to love one another across difference empowered by the gospel.  Jesus gathers a group of disciples who are nothing like one another, they are not a group who would have socialized together, they didn’t think the same way about things.  In society they would often have been polar opposites, but Jesus unites them and calls them to love one another, to serve one another as he has loved and served them.

Those four things ought to mark out the church; Relational discipleship, Prayer, the Word of God taught and lived out and love that unites across divides and actively serves.

The disciple’s gathered around and learning from Jesus are a picture of what church really is.  People being transformed by Jesus over time as they learn what it means to be sons of God.  Fundamentally that helps us see church as learning to relate to God in and through Christ as we come to him, depend on him, learn from him and are transformed to live like him.

In Acts we see those features mark the embryonic church.  As the Apostles lay the foundations of the church what they are doing is bringing people into contact with the risen and ascended Jesus who is still at work by the Spirit.  They disciple one another, they pray, they teach the word of God, they tell the good news of the gospel, and they live lives empowered by the Spirit to look more and more like Jesus as they love one another across divides.

Those four things need to mark out the church today be it the mega-church, the established church, the revitalized church or the newly planted church.  That really helpfully focuses our minds on what church is but also frees us from cultural expressions and worries about what we don’t have.  What do we need to plant?  The word of God, praying people, and the gospel at work to transform us as we disciple one another and stretch to love on another across divides.

That means we don’t need a big venue, a PA kit, a huge team, gifted youth workers, and so on.  Those things may be nice to have.  But as we build Jesus’ church we will focus on doing it as Jesus did, building on the foundation of the Apostles as he laid them. We will gather around God’s word longing to learn more about Jesus and be transformed to be like him as we grow in love and service of one another across divides and we will do it all dependent on prayer because only God by his Spirit can produce change and make God’s word bear fruit in our lives so the world sees the gospel in all it’s power doing what nothing else can!

CP4DbD – Where do we plant?

That’s one of the questions I probably get asked more than any other when it comes to planting.  And it’s a valid question.  Most of us can probably think of 5-10 areas of our towns or cities, or adjacent towns that are needy for the gospel straight away.  In our own case when we were thinking about planting there were a number of areas we drew briefings up about and they were all needy.  We could have planted a church in any, or all of them, without stepping on another gospel churches toes.

And to answer the question honestly, but you may think unhelpfully, I don’t think you do know where to plant.  You pray, you plan, you prepare and you pray lots more.  We began by planting into one area, but despite some fruit there, it became obvious over time that we were seeing more fruit in a different area, which became where we moved the church to after a few years; where we are now in Hayfield.  It was one of our plant area’s we looked at but various reasons meant we initially planted elsewhere, and God gave us fruit in terms of conversions in that area, but it gradually became obvious that God was moving us on through various pulls, pushes, and convictions.

Do I think we got it wrong?  No.  I genuinely don’t.  I think sometimes we want to reduce things down to binary decisions of right or wrong, 1 or 0, black or white, when God is actually doing something different, and teaching us to trust him and not our plans as he works and gradually leads us.

Having said all that there are three things I think we need to give careful thought to.  Firstly; we all have unconscious bias.  Things that we’re predisposed towards and against, that’s true of us as individuals and of us as groups, organisations and churches.  It will mean there are probably areas you are predisposed towards and against, we need to be aware of those and work through and name the reasons why that is and then pray them through, repenting as necessary about our prejudices and hard heartedness.

Here’s the second thing to think through.  It’s helpful to step back.  If you think of your city or town as a clock face and then plot gospel teaching churches onto the clock face you often find they are clustered between say 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock or 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock, with very little outside of that.  It’s well worth doing that activity with a map.  That simply activity helps you spot the potentially ‘gospel-less’ holes which need more research and ought to form the initial list of potential plant areas.

I love Paul’s missionary strategy, that was actually his church planting strategy: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.  Rather, as it is written:

Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” Romans 15v20-22

Those verses ought to weigh on us, especially as we look at the UK and the vast tracts of the country (especially the North and deprived areas) that get forgotten when we think about planting.  It also ought to weigh heavily on us as we think about our counties, cities, towns and villages.  Our goal in planting isn’t to successfully plant a church that will be filled with transfer growth; it’s to take the gospel in word and deed to where it has not gone.  That simple gospel imperative ought to rule out some parts of the town or city where there are other gospel churches, no matter how attractive those areas mat seem in terms of planting potential and quickly building a church.

Gospel need ought to be our primary criteria as we think about planting and where to go.

The third thing I think needs careful consideration, and probably more so now than when we planted, is where will we meet?  Many of the churches planted over the last twenty years meet in schools and that has been a valuable and fruitful partnership.  But we need to be honest about the pros and cons of doing so.  We also need to be honest about the fragility of such an arrangement; all it would take is a change in school leadership and that relationship could change dramatically and see any church ousted from a school and looking for a new place to meet, and they often aren’t easy to come by.

With that in mind I think we need to give careful consideration to areas where there is gospel need and where there are available buildings.  Tragically many churches are shutting for the last time, or are in desperate need of help with small numbers of older saints who are now frail but faithful.  I think, going forward, one of the things we need to think about is redeeming these gospel assets for new works as we plant.

If there was a gospel-less area with a potentially available building or a congregation willing to undergo a gospel transfusion and revitalization I would certainly want to give that the weight it’s due when weighing up and praying up where God is calling us to plant.

CP4DbD – Network or Neighbourhood

I wasn’t quite sure where to put this, hence it sits outside what I’d said I’d look at because it’s important as you plan and think about what kind of church you want to be and as you think about who you are taking with you and what the area is like.

The big question is network or neighbourhood?

As you think about those coming with you as you plant are they used to network churches or neighbourhood churches?  Network churches tend to be a central gathering of people from a wide variety of areas, across a town a city or even from neighbouring communities.  People gather centrally to worship but then scatter to quite diverse and different areas for work and life.  Lots of churches operate like this simply because of the lack of Bible teaching churches in the UK.  It isn’t choice about worship style or kids work or liturgy that causes them to drive, it is a necessity because there are no gospel teaching churches. If we’re brutally honest sometimes we’re network churches because of less helpful factors such as consumerism, factionalism, or history.

Other churches are neighbourhood churches.  The vast majority of people live in a community, they see each other not just on a Sunday or midweek but at the local shops, café, pub, park etc when they are out and about during their ordinary everyday.  These churches are very neighbourhood focused and everything happens within a tight radius.

Those two experiences of church are very different and it can be difficult to adjust from one to the other.  So we need to know who we are taking with us and whether they assume church is network or neighbourhood.

It’s also worth looking at the area you plan to plant in and taking time to try to work out which of those two it is. Is it a neighbourhood area where people tend to live and do the vast majority of life within a postcode? Or is it a network place where people are constantly commuting not just for work but for leisure and life?

Most churches will end up being a bit of both, neighbourhood and network, to some degree or another.  But we need to be clear on our mission in light of our area – is it to reach the community with the gospel?  In which case most of the events we run and most of our focus will be on making connections in the area.  It will mean those who don’t live in will need to commute to events and to spend time in the area where our focus is.  It is also worth outlining that living outside the area doesn’t exempt people from mission – that can be an easy, but unbiblical, excuse.

Or are we in a network area and so we will be a network church?  If so we won’t focus so much on locality but supporting people where they are, maybe having multiple small groups which cover the geographical spread of the congregation.  We will gather together but the focus will be much more on equipping people to be and speak grace where they are.

Working out which of the two the area is it vital.  If it’s a neighbourhood area and everyone is commuting in you will find it hard to get traction, to get to know people, and you will miss out on so much of life.  In fact I’m not convinced you can reach a neighbourhood with a network style of church.  The danger is having a neighbourhood postcode for a network church. 

Similarly if you’re in a networking area but have a neighbourhood church you may put lots of things on but few people will come because they commute for everything.  They simply aren’t there. As we think about planting we need to take time to prayerfully weigh up which of the two the area is we want to reach with the gospel and so pray through what model of church works

CP4DbD – Know that no plan survives the first punch in the face

One of the greatest joys and stresses of church planting is the sense of potential.  There is something new, a chance to begin again, to create a culture and to try new things.  To establish patterns and discipleship and structures and so on.  But we must not trust in our plans.  We must hold them lightly.

And we can plan and prepare all we like, but everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.  That punch for a church plant may be the shock divorce, or the surprise desire from some to go to Island B not Island A.   It may be the hardness of the ground to the gospel, friendly fire from some quarter, a sudden loss of the building we were planning to use or a surprise loss in the congregation.

We experienced lots of those.  God in his grace sustained us.  Some of those surprises were good surprises; from the appetite of some to see a congregation planted nearer their home and the starting of an afternoon service.  Others were harder to take – the diagnosis of a young man in one of the families in the church with terminal cancer at a devastatingly young age.  The emigration of a new believer to New Zealand with their family.  The death of a fairly new convert from the area with cancer when we had hoped she would be a gateway to reach others.

All were things that we faced.  God at work in strange ways the outcome of which we don’t know of yet.  Life is not linear, we plan but it is only ever God willing.  And we need to be clear about that as we prepare, plant, and pastor.  It needs to inflect our planning with a note if humility and prayerful dependence on God.

But it also means we need to wrestle with the strange providence of God and prepare for suffering.  It’s something else I wish I’d spent longer thinking through and studying scripture to learn to think God’s thoughts after him.  I’d learn to sit with the tensions of scriptures that do not answer the why question in one neat pastoral silver bullet, but provides a complex multilayered range of answers that draw us back to knowing God and trust in his goodness experienced first and foremost through his redemption but anchored in everything we have being blessing from his hand.

If I had my time again I’d immerse myself in Job and wrestle with it’s complex and multiply nuanced examination of suffering, flawed friendship, the emotions of a sufferer and the abiding goodness and sovereignty of God.  As a young pastor it would have better prepared me to both pastor and to plant.

I’ve recently worked through Job and preached it in 5 sermons after months and years of study.  It has a lot to teach us as pastors and elders and people about how we sit with, and listen to, those who suffer as they wrestle with the God they know and the circumstances they find themselves in that shout loud untruths about God which they do not believe, but are tempted to, and need to process without being quickly slapped or shut down by trite or half-formed theology.  Job’s friends stand as both an example, a warning and a rebuke.  Job stands as a sufferer whose greatest fear is that he has lost his relationship with God, not his loss of stuff, and who longs for God even as he is in danger of believing horrible things about him.  And God is revealed in ways that magnify him and challenge us about how little we know of God’s sovereignty, majesty, and purposes, and how half formed our desire for him and devotion to him are.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.  We can plan and prepare and pray, and we should, but suffering will come, not because God isn’t sovereign but because he is.  As we plant, prepare to plant, and revitalize we need to know God, to know that he is our greatest treasure, so that no matter what happens, what punches we face that is what we seek and rest in.

CP4DbD – Know God’s People – Part 4

One of the joys of planting a church is forming teams.  It’s a chance to study the Bible afresh for what it has to say about God’s purpose for the church and his wise way of being his people together.  One of the key elements of that is forming a leadership team.

Leadership is a bit of a dirty word in our society, even in Christian circles; it has a whiff of the unclean and the untrustworthy.  But that’s not right.  Such cynicism must not invade our thinking and infiltrate and corrupt the church.  God gives us leaders for our good.  And God gives good and wise instructions for what leadership looks like and what it leads like, how it ought to watch itself, how it watches over others, and how his people ought to respond to it.

As you think about planting there is a God gifted opportunity to pore prayerfully over God’s word to see what he says about leadership.  First of all recognize what the instinctive framework is that you bring to any such reading and discussion so you are aware of a natural bias to read that into the text.  Try your best to empty yourself of this and then study what God, in his word, gives to his people in the gift of good godly leaders.

Deacons are the shock absorbers of the church.  There to stop potential damage and fracture points in the unity of the church.  Ready and willing to serve where some may feel overlooked or where those set aside to care spiritually for the flock may just be overwhelmed and distracted with serving practical needs.  I think that means you need as many deacons as you need and God provides.  Where are the potholes in church life that threaten to cause major damage to the unity of the church?  Is there someone gifted who can meet that need? 

For us we’ve had various deacons with various areas of service.   It may be administration, they oversee all the admin tasks that would otherwise sap the time the elders need to give to prayer and preaching and pastoring.  It may be finance (though some churches have an elder who serves here) as they use the gifts God has given to build and oversee a team who ensure the church runs smoothly.  It could be distribution of meals, visiting the elderly, practical service for Sunday morning or any one of a hundred other potential choke points or potholes for a congregation.

But notice something.  They don’t do the job all on their own.  They build and oversee a team who take on those tasks.  They galvanize others so that the church is served, unity is preserved, and the gospel is made practically visible to the watching world in the church.

Elders are the spiritual shepherds of God’s people.  The Bible recognizes that there are some gifted men who are willing to give themselves to selfless sacrifice in service of the church for the glory of Christ.   They are not a board of trustees, or the directors of a company rather they are a team of shepherds who are among God’s people and care for them.  They do not lord it over the flock or lead like the world’s leaders do, rather they are servant leaders who serve out of a rich, deep, growing, grasp of the gospel as they have been served by their Saviour.

Elders in the Bible are always in a plurality.  They guard themselves and guard the flock (Acts 20v28).  They are alert to protect the church from false teaching within and without (Acts 20v30-21).    They humbly exemplify the gospel lived out not perfectly but increasingly to the flock.  They have the character traits we read of in 1 Timothy and Titus, all of them, and they are willing to pour themselves out in service of the people of God.

Some of them will be set aside full time to do that, others will do that as lay elders alongside their secular work.  But all are equally elders, all equally bear that responsibility.   Vitally they serve together, they watch over each other together, and watch over the flock together.

This plural leadership ought to be the norm.  We ought to be very wary of deviating from it.  When we planted there was a more mature, wiser elder, and myself.   He was the handbrake that stopped many of my misfiring early pastoral impulses.  He would frequently and gently encourage me to wait, to slow down, to pray more and so on.  Then we took on more elders and there was real joy in not feeling alone in pastoral ministry.  Having a band of pastoral brothers to share the load, to care for one another spiritually, to balance out each other’s weaknesses and strengths, was invaluable.

For the last 5 years I’ve been the sole elder of our church, after our 2 elders both moved away; one with work, the other to be nearer family as he aged.  Both moved for valid reasons.  But it has bought a greater sense of burden and an aloneness to ministry that I think underlines the importance of a plurality of elders.  Partly for that reason I would not plant as a sole elder.  There is great wisdom in God’s word; we ought not to depart from it lightly.

Why include this?  Simply because as you plant you need leaders with you.  You need elders because the ups and downs come at you fast and there is joy and wisdom in being able to pray them through with brothers who you know love Jesus, love the church, and love you and your family even as they disagree with you, restrain you, and challenge you.  If we don’t want a church that is subject to our whims and the latest thing we’ve read or heard we need godly servant hearted elders.  If we want to go far as a church rather than go fast as a church we need elders with us.

As you plant or plan to plant or revitalize leadership is vital.  Not just for the church but for your own spiritual life.  Do everything you can to have a strong plural eldership.  Put simply I wouldn’t plant without a plurality of elders, it has been hard enough with 20 years ministry experience, let alone from day one.  If sending churches won’t send elders with you, you have to question whether you should go, and whether they should be planting?  And ask them about their duty of care for you, the people you take with you, and the church you plant?

For those who plant alone, the pioneer planter.  Do everything you can to find biblically qualified elders as soon as you can.  Where that isn’t possible at the very least ask some other local ministers who have a kingdom, not just a ministry, focus to act as your ministry sounding boards and pastoral handbrakes until God provides plural elders.  It ought to be an early prayer point and something that at least gives us pause before we plant.

Part of knowing God’s people is knowing that they are God’s people and he knows best what they need, and that means putting such plural leadership in place.

CP4DbD – Know God’s People – Part 3

We need to work hard to know God’s people, and specifically those who are coming with us in the early days of the plant.  It is worth spending time before you plant working through some basic discipleship questions so we are all clear on where we are at and what level of care people can expect.

Often as we think about planting the focus is on reaching the lost, and that is vital.  That’s probably what compels you to even think about it, there’s an area, a people, desperately needy for the gospel.  A town or village or neighbourhood that has no gospel witness and where people are facing eternity separated from God without a chance to hear the gospel.  They are the kind of areas we want to reach with the life changing, salvation bringing, good news of Jesus.

But too often in the busyness of planning, preparing and planting a church we forget about anyone we are taking with us and their pastoral care and discipleship needs get lost amidst the fervour to reach the lost and the shaping of a new church. It’s worth spending some time as you think about planting slowing down and considering who is coming with you, where they are at and what level of care they need, and what pastoral care will look like given who you have coming with you.

If I had my time again as part of the planning process I’d spend more time with every family and individual that was coming working through John’s gospel.  I’d take time not just to think about the church big picture – and study something mind blowing like Ephesians – but I’d take time to ask each individual about their understanding and experience of discipleship.  So much of our spiritual formation happens outside of the formal settings of Sunday services and Bible studies, so much of it is deeply embedded by past experiences, that I’d want to understand what is setting the goal, trajectory and tempo of their spiritual life.

Someone can be in church, contribute to a planting and planning team but be spiritually dry and about to hit crisis point within weeks of you planting.  In fact sometimes people think planting will solve their problems, it’s the greener grass, the new shiny silver bullet that will make everything OK. We need to do all we can to be ready to care for those people by being aware of past patterns, present discipling relationships, and potential problem areas.  It is worth investing considerable time here.  I wouldn’t do a formal questionnaire as I simply don’t think that encourages honest reflection and answers.  I’d look to spend time with each and every family.

Secondly, you need to plan with your leaders how pastoral care will work mechanically in the church from day one of the plant.  You don’t plant a church plant you plant a church and that means you need to be clear about help offered, how it’s accessed, what it looks like and who is responsible for it.  You also need to be clear as a leadership about how you will deal with certain issues and what support you will provide. Here are a few issues to think through:

Marital problems – how will you, as a church and a leadership, provide support for struggling or unhappy marriages?  Will you provide mentoring by an older couple or will all the weight of that fall on the pastor and his wife?  As elders at what point might you encourage a temporary separation and over what issues?  Are you clear on things such as emotional manipulation, coercive control, and various other problems that present themselves?  What does repentance look like in these situations?  Ultimately, if it tragically comes to it after there is no repentance, at what point would you support someone seeking divorce?  What are the biblical foundations you are building this on?

None of us likes to think about these things but it is worth thinking about it before you plant.  Both for those you take with you and for those who may come to faith as you share the gospel.

Pornography – One of the greatest snares of Satan has always been sexual sin.  Just think of Israel and the Moabites, King David, and so many more examples in the Bible.  And Satan has made such sexual sin all the more readily accessible through the screens we carry around with us all day.  Pornography is a huge and growing problem.  And it is serious.  It is destroying marriages and eroding the very idea of faithfulness and covenant commitment.  It is enslaving young, and not so young, Christians who seem unwilling to do everything to fight sexual sin.

The latest statistics in this area would tell us that even a small church or plant/launch team will have at least 1 or 2 people – if not many more – who struggle in this area.  And whilst they may be statistically more likely to be male, they will not be exclusively so, and don’t rule out couples who watch it together.  How will you deal with this issue?  Is it a church discipline issue?  What support will you put in place?  How will you practically challenge and encourage accountability and repentance?  How will you help them see the seriousness of this sin and it’s consequences for others?  And what will that repentance look like?  How will you support the spouse whose partner confesses this problem to them, crushing their trust and making them feel unworthy of love?

This isn’t a pastoral issue but a leadership issue, but it needs thinking through, can someone who is not fighting this sin with everything they have lead?  I don’t mean someone who is fighting it with everything they have – going dumb phone not smart phone, cutting off every gateway to pornography possible – and who knows victory but occasionally backslides, without that becoming a habit, on a trajectory to faithfulness.  Can they be a deacon, and elder, lead worship, lead a small group?

There are all manner of others sins and knock on pastoral issues that we need to have a pastoral plan in place to deal with from the acceptable idolatries of our society such as greed, family, and anger, to pastoral care because of the consequences of sin in families, parenting, unemployment, grief and loss.

But I wonder if the biggest area we need to think through and prepare for pastorally is in thinking about how we provide pastoral care for those struggling in the area of mental health.  This is a huge and complex area but it needs careful thinking through.  What support can we offer?  What will that look like?  Who will do it?  What training do we need to undertake and who will undertake that training?  What can and should church do, what is sustainable and when do we refer?  How will we support the family and those who are involved in providing pastoral care?

It is a privilege to walk alongside those disciples who follow Jesus as they walk through the everyday reality of depression and any other mental health battle.  But too often as churches and church leaders we haven’t thought through the above, how we care well, when we seek help.  And we can’t care well for people until we do.  Whilst every individual is an individual and every struggle is different we need to have wise guidelines in place so that we can walk well with those we are called to care for.

I haven’t got time here to talk about what that might look like, nor am I qualified to do so.  But there are some really helpful resources out there on tackling mental health together as a church.  It is vital that we gear up as pastors and leaders to do so.

CP4DbD – Know God’s People – Part 2

The second part of knowing God’s people is knowing who is coming with you as you plant and why they are coming and what their expectations are.  We all have assumptions and expectations that we don’t communication.  Ways that we just assume things will be done.  Or ways we think we can influence things to be done once we get started.

As you think about your church plant you will have some fairly clear ideas about what it will look like, and you’ll be pretty sure everyone else thinks the same as you ( am I right so far?).  If we call that Island A.  That’s where you are going and what it will look like.  And it’s all too easy to assume that everyone is on board with that, after all they are coming with you, and you’ve talked about it and been clear, haven’t you?  However, lots of people will come with you either not totally sure on where you are going or thinking you may be headed to Island A at the minute but hoping that they can convince you to head to Island B instead once you set off.

Lots of church plants have people who initially come with them but head back to the mother church over the first few months.  Often because it wasn’t really what they expected, they thought they were going to Island B not Island A.  We had a few cases of that in our first few months, partly because I wasn’t concrete or clear enough about what the church would look like, or because others had Island B expectations they assumed they could persuade us of.  That can be painful and it’s often hard in the fragile formative first few months of a church being planted.  There are a number of ways we can minimize the risk of that and the damage it causes.  Things we need to be clear on.  So clear on it that we think we’ve spent too long on it – the best communication strategy is over communication. Here are a few big areas to be clear on, though there are lots of others:

Polity matters.  I’m not a big church polity nut.  But it’s important to be clear about what church will look like and how it will function.  What are its operational and governance structures?  Who are its leaders, how do they relate to each other and how do they communicate?  Who can lead what, when, and where?   No matter what model of planting you go with this needs to be done, done early and done well.  Otherwise there will be conflicts and questions and problems stored up for the future.

Don’t just assume you know what it looks like. Don’t just assume you’ll carry over what you do at the minute. Get this clear up front.

Discipleship.  What does discipleship look like?  Are you expecting everyone to be in a 1-2-1 or accountability group or not?  Will it be formal or informal?  This can be somewhere where there can be conflicts too.  Some people come from a culture where there is little discipling other than the Sunday morning sermon or weekly Bible Study.  They have never really had anyone ask them questions about their love for God and living out the gospel, and can find it overwhelming.  Others crave daily contact, they need 24/7 support and care and assume that is what the church will give. We need to be clear about the expectations for discipleship, and the mechanisms for it, so people know what they are signing up for.

Expectations of staff, leaders and spouses.  It’s worth being clear at the start what the expectations of staff, leaders and spouses are.  You never get another chance to study what the Bible says and pray it through together and reach settled conclusions on these things.  If you wait until you get started and then try to build the plane as you fly it, immediate need and pragmatism become distracting and complicating factors. 

It’s particularly worth thinking about how your elders will operate – are they like a slightly disengaged trust board or are they a band of unpaid pastors who will bear a considerable part of the pastoral care burdens or something in between?  What about the pastor’s wife?  What are the expectations of her?  Is she the unpaid +1 member of staff?  Is she called to ministry too?  Or is she another member of the congregation who will serve just as others do?   Sometimes what we say and what people hear and expect can be very different.

Evangelism.  How will you reach the area with the gospel?  Many Christians and churches carry across the CU mission week model of evangelism.  Where there is a concentrated period of events once a year, or a few specific targeted events.  We’ve tried a few of these and seen some fruit from it, but nowhere near as much fruit as we have from week by week, day by day contacts and friendship and service of people.  But often people still want the big week of events, feeling somehow it’s needed to keep evangelism at the forefront of the churches agenda.  You need to be clear on how you plan to reach the lost so people are clear on what that will look like and can engage in it.

Potentially Divisive Ministries.   There are lots of things churches fall out about but two in particular come to mind.  Music and kids work.  For that reason we need to be clear about what we do and why.  Pragmatism is dangerous here, so we need to work out the principles first.  Are you convinced biblically of unaccompanied psalmody or electric guitars and smoke machines?  Would you use an app if you have no musicians? What will your liturgy be like and why? If you say we do don’t liturgy you need to think about more carefully because everyone does – you just haven’t thought yours through theologically yet which is a dangerous place to be.   What will you sing and what won’t you and why?  How are you loving others in how you sing?

Children’s work is another fissure between churches.  Do you run Sunday school or keep kids in the service?  Will you set aside part of the service for teaching families or not?  Will you/can you run midweek groups or are you not convinced they are beneficial?    All those things need to be clear.

They are just some of the areas where we need to be clear on what we will do; how we will we do it, and why it matters.  It matters because being clear on those things up front, grounding them in biblical principles and not just pragmatism will prevent the church being reactive, based on what people don’t like about where they are.  It will also help it not be overly responsive in changing to attract, or keep, new people who join or are looking at joining but want Island B or C not Island A.

And again we need to labour hard to make this clear. You are clear not when you can say what you will do and why, but when others can say to you, and to each other, what you will do and why.  Knowing God’s people and them being clear on what church will be like is key to pastoring them well from the outset and saves many awkward and painful conversations once you start.

We’ll look next time at Knowing God’s people pastorally.

CP4DbD – Know God’s people – Part 1

There are lots of different methods and models of church planting.  The lone pioneer, the transplant, the strawberry plant, the launch team, the sister service and so on.  Each has their merits.

The lone pioneer involves an individual or a family feeling so strongly convicted of the gospel need that they move to an area and begin to build relationships and share the gospel with the aim of seeing people come to faith and a church grow out of that work.  It is hard.  It can be lonely.  It often involves bi-vocational working for a considerable number of years and it can be hard to develop a leadership team in this model.  But tragically it is necessary because sometimes existing churches won’t plant, or people feel an area is beyond them even when they are made aware of the need.  Other times it’s because the individual with the passion for the area rushes in and won’t wait or listen to others wise council to go slower together.

The transplant model sees a team of people (from one church or a few who have partnered together) launch a new church independently from day 1, they will have their own leadership team, their own statement of faith and bank accounts etc., they may have 3 or 4 years of funding to prime the pump.  But they are effectively on their own from day 1.  This model has lots of advantages but can put tremendous pressure on members and staff, especially in terms of finance, in ways that I’m not sure are always helpful.

The strawberry (or spider) plant model involves a new congregation being planted in a new area but with strong supply links to the planting church.  For example they may plant and have a separate leadership team but be legally under the same umbrella. This can save quite a bit of admin and also keeps avenues of finance and support open.  It has its challenges as sometimes the new church can be a bit like the slightly impetuous teen that has to be reigned in by the mother church.  And it can be hard to know when to cut the cord.  But it’s how we planted and it was a helpful supportive model.

The Launch Team model sees the church set aside a team of people who will go and lead the plant.  Elders, deacons and other leaders will be present in this team and it has the advantage of being a bit more established from day 1 of the plant because this team know each other and disciple each other, provided people know what they are committing to (more on that later.)  This team takes on some of the work of knowing the area and meeting people and can spend months before launch forming a team as they pray together and build relationships.  This model can work with the strawberry plant model or the sister service.

The Sister Service model sees the church effectively run two services until such a time as one hives off to become independent.  So when we ran the evening service in North Lincolnshire that was what we did.  It was just another service of Grace Church but in a different location – same leadership, some of the same people, same statement of faith and doctrinal distinctives etc but in a different location.  This can be effectively done, especially if a church isn’t ready to plant independently yet but sees a need and an opportunity it feels compelled after prayer to take.

I’ve sketched out a few different models, they can stand alone, or sometimes people go for a mix and match approach.  They all have their advantages and disadvantages.  But the reason why I’ve done that here is that I think you need to know God’s people where you are and what model they have in mind when they hear the word church plant.

If you are in an existing church – and I’ll be brutally honest you need to be if you want to plant a church.  Planting a church without significant experience of church and it’s hardships and the necessary application of the gospel to bear with one another and the wisdom of an eldership who speak their minds and who you know are for you, is unwise.  You need to discern where you are before you think about who you will be.

So who are you?  What is your church like?  What existing models of planting are assumed to be the norm?  What costs and risks are the church prepared to take?  What is the churches – not just the leaders – attitude towards planting?  Who is prepared to come and who isn’t and why? What is sustainable? What is workable? What will be helpful? What will take a risk without foolishness?

I’ll be honest this is something I didn’t do very well when we planted.  I didn’t take enough time to think about who we were as a church, our experience of church planting as leaders, and our expectations as leaders and as a church. If I had my time again I’d do a lot more of this and encourage the elders to as well.

If a church is thinking about planting, if it is really serious about it, it can’t be the passion project of a handful of people.  It can’t just be the designated planter who drives everything.  If the church is planting a church then the church MUST plant a church.

Too often churches plant in name only.  It is actually a small subset of the church who plant.  In an ideal world the elders will have spent a long time beforehand thinking about who should go and who should stay.  And there shouldn’t be any default assumptions that the existing elders will all stay and the new church be composed of new elders.  I wonder if we should also be thinking about whether it’s the pastor or the assistant who plants?  In the New Testament Paul pioneers new work, and leaves or sends his assistants – if we think of Timothy and Titus in those terms – to pastor the churches he has set up.  I think it’s at least worth a discussion.  If the leadership aren’t committed to the church plant in going – not just name – then the church needs to ask some hard questions. If more than one church are planting together then this needs even more careful consideration, communication, and discussion.

People follow leaders and if the leaders aren’t going with the plant then you can understand why the people may be reticent about going.  Existing elders with significant experience of leadership are especially vital if the pastor is young and the majority of the launch team is young.  It was invaluable for me to have an elder come with us who was 30+ years into leadership to keep me even in the ups and downs and pastoral crises that came up in our first few years.  He was a godly, steadying, blessing and the church benefitted hugely from his influence even though they weren’t aware of it.

As we think about planting we need to know our church we are planting from and discern the weaknesses and strengths it has.  To take soundings about it’s passion for the gospel.  To accurately reflect on it’s culture.  And to prepare the church for the risk that planting ought to be if we are going to plant well.  If the leaders or the church won’t risk then there is a culture problem that needs to be looked at long before planting a church.

We also need to spend a long time before planting thinking about and talking about what the relationship between the existing church and the planted church will look like.  What are the expectations both ways?  How will you work together and when?  How will you support each other in prayer and other ways going forward?

CP4DbD – Know your area

We’ve been through a process again and again and again as leaders and as a church.  It goes like this Learn, Launch, Relearn, Reform.  It’s a helpful process for all churches to go through as things change around us.

As we think about planting one of the things we want to do is learn as much as we can about the area in which we will be planting a church.  You can do some of this by studying the stats and data.  www.datashine.org.uk is great for giving you an overall snapshot of an area and you can print off colour coded maps that give you helpful insights into the overall information (and will make any geographers in your immediate vicinity salivate at the pretty coloured maps).  But that isn’t enough.  It’s a rough, a very rough starting point.

This is where you need to spend the majority of your time because there is no substitute for boots on the ground and time spent with people.  The raw data shows you overall trends but behind each trend are thousands of individual stories.  If you’ve met and know one person from your plant area you’ve met and know one person – no more and no less.  To try to draw generalization from that is ridiculous, unhelpful and potentially catastrophic.  You need to get out and meet people and hear their stories, their fears, their hopes and their values.

Spend time where people meet.  If you have children enroll them in the local primary school or in local clubs so that you can naturally meet parents – and not just be the weirdo hanging out by the school gate with no kids – that will only help you get to know the local police.  Shop in local shops.  Hang out in the local pub.  Eat in the local café.  Spend as much time as you can out and about in the area and take as many people as you can with you.

Long before we planted where we are now we were involved as parents in the local primary school, getting to know mums, dads, and grandparents, staff and other pupils.  Pretty quickly I was in doing assemblies with the children and the odd Harvest assembly where parents saw me too.  We started a Friday night football at a local secondary school and invited loads of people.  There was no pub in our area, but we now travel to the next bit of the village (It’s all called Auckley, but is divided a railway line and a ½ walk and the history of one area being the village and the other the RAF base – or camp as they call it) where we do the local pub quiz, looking to build more relationships.  Had there been a pub we would have spent time hanging out their each week.

Lots of the church planting books recommend you interview key gates holders in the community such as doctors, head teachers etc.…  And there is some value in that but for those who had a bad experience of school, or who are wary of authority, they don’t really engage with those people.  It can be helpful to chat to staff at the local school but remember any insight they give will come from someone who doesn’t know everything, and probably hasn’t had time to listen to the stories behind what the children or parents say.  However, it can give some helpful colour to the picture you are building up of a local area.

Study the area’s history.  What are the key events that have shaped its geography and it’s culture?  What ingrained divides are there; a main road, a river, a railway line, an estate boundary?  How does that shape life?

One of the key mistakes I’ve seen churches do is to put on things to fill what it perceives as the gaps only to discover that no one comes because there is a local expression of that already meeting the need.  So work hard to find out what’s going on.  Get hold of the local magazine, read what’s posted about it on Social Media – though again discern the attitude of those posting because it can reveal nothing more than deep prejudices rather than true information.

Once you’ve gathered as much information as you can the question is what lessons are you learning?  Learn all you can, but remember to hold what you learn lightly.  You may discover you’ve missed a key piece of information, or downplayed its significance, or that something else comes to light later that changes the way you think about everything.

For example when we moved to Hayfield I knew that it used to have an RAF base.  I used to come as a kid, in fact our house is built on where we used to park to then walk down to the Airshow.  But I didn’t appreciate enough how much of a role that played in geography of the area – for example the original estates reflect rank in the RAF and are still thought of as doing so by some.  It’s a divide that continues to have a lasting legacy.  Or how many people still had links back to those days.

We regularly go through the process of Learn, Launch, Relearn, Reform.  As the area has changed over the last 16 years we’ve had to go through that process again and again, as new housing estates have been built and the demographics change.  As people age.  As the Airport shut and is currently mothballed.

Do your research, learn as much as you can about the area, spend time, lots of it, with people and just hanging out but remember no plan survives first contact.  As we plant we need to be adaptable and hold what we’ve learned lightly.

As established churches we need to be learning, launching, relearning, and reforming all the time, not so the gospel stays relevant as it is eternally relevant, but so that we don’t become an unnecessary barrier to it.  And as church plants we need to be undergoing this process, holding things loosely as we prepare to plant.

For example when we first planted one of the ways we set what time we’d meet was by the time our friends said they’d be most likely to come to church.  We also took into account an hourly bus service, so we meet 15 minutes after the bus arrives so if people want to come they don’t have to wait 45 minutes.  But then what do you do when the bus timetable changes?

We have also debated moving to an afternoon so we could better reach those involved in Sunday morning sport, but as we debated and gathered information it became clear that actually in our area games don’t just occur in the morning but at times that vary from 9am to 3pm.  So unless church was going to vary it’s time every week that wasn’t a useful factor.

Learn, Launch, Relearn, Reform.

CP4DbD – Know the Gospel

How well do you know the gospel?  Not in terms of the facts of the gospel or even in terms of being able to preach the gospel.  But how we do you know the gospel in the way the Bible uses the word know to speak of transparent intimacy?

When the Bible uses the word ‘knowing’ of a married couple it is about two becoming one, increasingly sharing everything about their lives and themselves without shame or secrets.  Do we know the gospel like that?

Have we done the hard work of applying the gospel to those areas of life where we feel shame?  Those areas where we feel pride?  Our fear of failure?  And anywhere else?

Maybe as you read this you’re deeply aware of somewhere you have never allowed the gospel to do it’s work.  Maybe there’s an area of life where you’re soft selling repentance; you’re happy to say sorry and feel a little bit of worldly guilt but you’ve applied the gospel as therapy rather than as sin killer because you want to coddle it a bit more, it’s your retreat, your safety blanket.

Repentance is not easy.  Thomas Brooks said, “Repentance is the vomit of the soul.”  It’s not pleasant, but it is necessary to purge ourselves of sin.  Where are there areas that you have cordoned off from the gospel and its power to compel repentance as we see the full horror of sin?

Pastor you need to know the gospel not theoretically, not just theologically, but really, deeply, and intimately.  It’s the good news that refreshes the parts of the soul nothing else can reach.  It alone brings life from the dead.  And we must minister out of a deep intimacy with the gospel not once way back when but as a daily ongoing reality.

Why is it so vital?  In part because any ministry can breed a dangerous overfamiliarity with the gospel.  We become professional at calling others to repent whilst skipping our own heart examination.  Like the doctor who advises every patient to drink less, cut out smoking and fast food and exercise more, whilst failing to do all those things.

But it is especially important for the planter, and the church planting, because we naturally fear failure and church plants fail.  There’s no getting away from that.  Not every church plant doubles in size or grows and becomes self sustaining within 3 years or 5 years or 10 years or ever.  Not every church plant goes on to become a church planting church plant.  Not every church plant is planted.

In the ordinary everyday towns of the UK church planting and revitalization is slow work.  It is hard work.  It is long term; bring your coffin, work.  And so it needs a gospel perspective on failure and on fruitfulness.

Some church plants fail but that doesn’t mean the gospel fails.  And we need a gospel perspective on failure.  Even when the church plant doesn’t fail some of the ministries and ideas you try will be non-starters.

When we initially planted we planted into one area, not too far from our planting church.  We labored there for years and we saw some fruit, we saw some totally un-churched people come to saving faith and be discipled.  But we struggled to really get traction in the area.  But all the while we were getting traction where we are now, being asked to take assemblies and RE lessons and driving multiple carloads of kids from here to where we did church.  And so it became obvious after much prayer that we ought to move where we did church.  So we did.  I one sense planting into Hatchell Wood failed, but in another – souls saved – it was fruitful.

We’ve had various ministries we’ve tried.  For a while we ran our morning service centrally, then held 2 afternoon/evening services, one in another part of Doncaster and one in North Lincolnshire.  And for about 18 months that was great (if somewhat tiring preaching 3 times a day with a 35 minute drive between the last two), but then just as we were wondering what to do with our North Lincolnshire house church because there were about 14 coming along, a church local to there appointed a gospel preaching pastor.  So we stopped doing the service there and encouraged them all to go to that church and support the new pastor.  Was that a failure?  Not to my way of thinking, but I guess so if our goal was to be a church planting church plant, or to reproduce those in our denomination then yes.  But in terms of the kingdom of God – no!

When we plant a church it will challenge our grasp of the gospel.  It will challenge how intimate we are with the gospel.  It will expose sins, comforts, things we actually rely on instead of Jesus and we need to run to the gospel not escapism.

When we plant, if we are engaging with the real world those outside the church inhabit then we will need to have an intimate knowledge of the gospel so we can help them.  I’ve encouraged others to develop an unshockable face and battle to grasp that the gospel is really for everyone, it can save anyone, it really is the only hope for the world one soul at a time.  Because the curve balls just keep coming.  Only if we are intimately familiar with the gospel and the way it shows us our sin for the putrid stinking offense to God it is and the power to redeem us and make us clean can we hold out that gospel to a world in need.

We need that grasp of the sinful mess of human hearts, theirs, and ours so that when they share something with us we’re not surprised, shocked into silence.  Be that a call from a police station after arrest for a crime that our society views as beyond the pale, or the confession of spousal abuse or of a degrading addiction.  In every case we need to know the gospel so well so that we feel compassion for fellow sinners not disgust, and can share the hope of the glorious redeeming gospel, which shine light into the darkness and life from death.

We need to be so familiar with the gospel that we preach it, pastor with it, and instinctively hold it out to everyone.  We need to apply it to everyone equally.  We need to name the respectable shine that seethe in our own hearts and those our congregation and not just the ones out there.

But there is also a gospel challenge for the sending church.  Planting a church should prove costly.  It ought to hurt.  It ought to feel like a risk not just for those sent but for those sending.  It ought to challenge them financially, in terms of leadership, volunteers, and comfort.  It ought to cause them to grasp hold of the gospel in a new way.  To really believe Christ is enough even though this feels risky and uncomfortable rather than just sing it.

How well do we really know the gospel?