Church planting: half full or half empty?

A conversation between the European Apostolic Team and
Newfrontiers churchplanter Colin Baron, 2003

 

Over the last few years, Colin Baron, part of the Newfrontiers International team, has been a helpful provocation to the European Apostolic Team, and to many of our current church-planters. This article is a summary of a discussion between Colin and EAT in 2003, exploring how apostolic ministry and church plant can properly connect. You may not agree with everything – but allow God to ‘rattle your cage’ as you read!

Colin moved to Manchester, UK in 1994 with a vision to plant twenty churches numbering 10 000 people in and around Greater Manchester. He is on the way to this goal having already established a number of churches. He is now involved in equipping and training leadership teams and planting churches in the UK and his insight is often called upon in other parts of the world.

Big or small

How can we church-plant in a way that enables the benefits of initial connection to a big church, but fosters the radicalism of small church? A key core value is to be permission-giving (‘lets do it’) – as opposed to ‘you need permission before you can do anything’. Let’s assume people can do it, but also give apostolic fathering and pastoral care!

When planting a big group out of a ‘resource church’, one option is just to make a new mini-church, within an existing church, and then move it somewhere else. These sorts of plants, from a strong relational sending church, often ‘rip’ relationships when they are planted out – John Wimber commented that you can only plant like this 3 or 4 times before you lose energy and enthusiasm.

So, don’t try to give too many people away at the same time from the sending church, because of this ‘rip’ factor. Instead, plant with a small team. This means that you need to adjust church and apostolic leaders’ expectations of ministry – big churches can often think that working with ‘just a handful’ is not useful use of time. We also need to try to avoid sending out all our pioneers, and keeping the maintainers in home base. This too will stall a church. Solid people, who are ‘just’ maintainers, can add in enormous stability to plants.

Even within a larger planting group, one or two people are always the main catalyst for a church plant. So, let’s take risks for God! And, I suggest we let pioneers go and plant before they get fed up! – don’t hold them back for too long, but let them go while they are still vulnerable and teachable.

Home-based apostolic ministry

What is apostolic ministry? Biblically, it’s teaching publicly and from house to house. Paul was at home in homes.  So, are there different styles of apostolic ministry, different giftings, and different types of apostolic team? Apostolic ministry started in homes, but now tends to interact mainly with leaders, in conference mode. We need to rediscover this house-to-house mode, as well as retaining the wider mode that we now do more easily.

In the early days of plants Colin spent several evenings a week in people’s homes, leading meetings. You can go and lead itinerantly. New church movements have learnt consultative itinerant ministry (often by apostles adopting churches) rather than apostolic itinerant ministry (apostles fathering new churches). Until elders are appointed, the church is the apostle’s, not the person who hosts the meeting. The church in Philippi was Paul’s, not Lydia’s. Our emphasis on honouring local elders, can make us regard apostles simply as consultants, rather than fathers.

Planting apostles can therefore lead a number of churches at the same time, as long as they don’t get overly bogged down in ‘network business meetings’. And, its a good training ground: emerging apostolic ministries can learn building authority by planting from scratch, instead of inheriting established churches.

There may not be grace for established apostolic ministry to change in this way, but we can release younger people to gather and plant, with more mature ministries providing care and motivation.

Pioneering and ongoing leadership: a difference
It’s easier to start a church plant, with an apostle, than multiply a cell. The apostle brings a ‘zing’ that gathers people.
Don’t be afraid of failure. If we try 30 plants and ‘only’ 20 work, do we see that as success (of the 20) or failure (of the 10)?

Growing from 15 to 50 people is the hardest bit. You have to be a GP: evangelistic, pastoral, leadership.

Then, the initial pioneers who are gifted for pioneering, often get burnt out. So, you need to posture people, as the plant starts, that they may not lead it for ever. The apostle should keep authority so not as to have to wrench it away again. Then new leadership should be brought in (either grown up, or brought in from another church), and get the pioneers out to plant again!

Using the picture of rocket:

1. First stage booster (0-20): Initiation, hospitality, gathering – male or female, working under apostolic authority.

2. Second stage (transition stage): Start to look for (male) senior leadership coming through, and emerging eldership authority. Ongoing apostolic input is essential to ensure we don’t end up with pastoral, settled communities.

So, how do we help people respond to the change of leadership at the transition stage? Sow it in from the beginning, ensure that allegiance is both to host and apostle and send junior apostolic delegates in if you are unable to get there yourself.

What do we do in the plant?

People often ask: “What should we do to plant a church”. The implication is: “Surely we should do something that is hard?”
But we must beware of Saul’s armour. Church planting is hard enough anyway! If people have faith to start with hospitality, praying together, and trusting God for the harvest, that’s great. Another group may start with evangelism. Others may start with people around the house regularly. Find what the group has grace for, and let that define what other gifting/ministry you need to add in.

Colin suggests that especially with leaders that are not released full-time by the church we need to make it as easy as possible, allowing them to be who God made them to be. It also helps them see who they are and who they are not. Help lay foundations, emphasise faith, grace, hospitality, Holy Spirit, every member ministry, leadership, the poor, etc. From the moment the home is opened foundation laying starts, being imparted in all we do. Paul seemed to put a lot in quickly earlier on, and then left them to get on with it. We may consider many of these ‘half-baked’ and want to ensure better foundations, but he was comfortable releasing these churches to others.

Cell, congregation, celebration

A question often asked is ‘What about Sunday meetings?’ Colin gets church plants together with other groups in regional ‘crowds’, with apostolic and prophetic ministry, rather than groups of 50 without much momentum. Celebration and cell, without congregation. A Sunday meeting is not the measure of success. Often the problem is that local leaders want to do Sunday meetings, and don’t value the ‘celebration’. We need to keep sowing to the bigger picture!

There is often a mismatch between the large sending church and the plants. Often you have a non-full-timer who is planting trying to relate to a team of full-timers. Why not plant 3 or 4 new churches at the same time, which gives some common ground, training and discipleship. Then, you can gather the smaller groups together and do something very relevant for them, preaching into pioneers.

When does a church plant/cell become a church? Colin says this is to do with values/vision (community, presence of God, etc.) rather than size/structure!

Transfer or new birth

People often comment: “Don’t church plants just gather transfer growth?”

Colin acknowledged that he is seeing a lot of transfer growth, but he feels this is starting to establish a sense of mobility in the people. And, why should we judge church-plants by a different yardstick than we use for more established churches?

He is also looking to get his evangelists more mobile, reaping people for the pioneer communities, rather than just being equipping and locally-based. He comments: “Alpha is good for reaping into established churches, but in a pioneer situation we don’t have the networks of friends necessary to make Alpha work well. So, we need to release the itinerant evangelists (probably from resource churches)! The problem is that churches tend to prioritise releasing a local pastor, then apostolic ministry, leaving little to release evangelists.”

Have we thrown out ‘itinerant sowing ministry’ because we have such a focus on ‘adding to the church’? Does evangelism develop the kingdom, or just the church? When we send people out to plant one of the first things they need to consider is how they engage with the local community, which is an evangelistic strategy. But friendship evangelism alone is too slow, so we also need catalytic evangelistic/apostolic ministry.