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We expect soon to revise this section substantially. We would welcome your views on how it could be improved.

This page looks at:

• Preparing carefully for a fresh expression of church is vital
• GETON may help you to organise your thoughts
• We have applied the GETON check list to seven different contexts
• We suggest you browse through the material in Going deeper

Preparing carefully for a fresh expression of church is vital, but is not always straight forward.

Fresh expressions can be an unpredictable business. Offers of help may come from surprising quarters. Opportunities may emerge that are a total surprise. Pioneers' frequent refrain, 'We are making it up as we go along' reflects the messiness that is so often part of the journey.

This doesn't mean you have to fly completely blind. There are some principles that can assist you. Our advice would be to pay close attention to them. They will help you to lay in some firm foundations and avoid problems later.

These principles should be tailored to each situation. There is no blue print. Fresh expressions of church start in all sorts of different ways – some intentionally, others almost by accident. It is vital to adapt what seems to work well rather than just copy what others have done.

GETON may help you to organise your thoughts amid the randomness - chaos even - of starting a fresh expression. It stands for the following processes:

• Getting together with at least one other Christian. As you check whether your expectations and understandings are on the same page, hopefully a sense of shared call will emerge.

                         Getting together → a shared call

• Exploring the possibilities through '360 degrees listening' – to the people you may be called to serve, Christians you are close to, the experience of the wider church and to God directly in prayer and Bible study. Hopefully a vision for what to do will be confirmed or start to emerge.

                         Exploring possibilities → a shared vision

• Thinking ahead involves imagining how the venture might journey toward church. What are the really important things you would need to do (especially in the early days) to travel the distance? Might these become a statement of values that flesh out your emerging vision?

                         Thinking ahead → shared values

• Organising support – prayer support, from the people you are called to serve, permission-givers and the wider public (eg, through good child protection and health and safety).

                         Organising support → a shared venture

• Nurturing the team through appropriate training, making sure everyone is clear about their role, building a sense of community and so on.

                         Nurturing the team → shared leadership

Usually these are not discreet stages - start with Getting together, then Explore the possibilities and so on. They are processes that often occur simultaneously, may get jumbled up together and frequently occur in a different order. If you are in a church planting team, nurturing the team will be an ongoing process. 

We have applied this GETON check list to seven different contexts. We hope that at least one of these pages comes close enough to your situation to be helpful. Maybe you fit more than one context and it would help to read two pages!

The suggestions are meant to spark thoughts and help you avoid forgetting things. They arise from our observations of fresh expressions. But this is a quickly changing field and we are far from sure that we have got everything right.

Are we being too bold in our generalisations? Have we left important things out? Do you think our suggestions are helpful? Comments at the end of the relevant page could be of real benefit to others.

Below are the different contexts with links to a page on each.

• Do you want to explore an idea? Perhaps you have an idea for a fresh expression and are wondering how to develop it further.

• Do you belong to a planning group? The group may be exploring the possibility of a fresh expression or a church plant on behalf of your local church or a group of churches.

• Are you in a church planting team? The team may be responsible for starting a church plant or a fresh expression and you are looking for ideas about how to do it.

• Do you lead a church-run group? Perhaps you lead a luncheon club, a women's meeting, an Alpha group whose members resist going to 'normal' church, or some other church group that contains people who don't attend church. You think it might have the potential to become a fresh expression and you want to explore this.

• Are you considering a fresh expression among friends, work colleagues or some other network to which you belong? How might you go about it?

• Are you a 21^st century 'missionary' – employed perhaps to work on your own initially on a housing estate or among a specific group of people (such as youth or an ethnic group)?

• Have you stumbled into a fresh expression? You never planned to start a fresh expression. It just seems to have happened, and you are wondering what to do next.

We suggest you browse through the material in Going deeper once you have read the most appropriate page(s) above. 'Going deeper' includes a page on each of:

          Getting together

          Exploring possibilities

          Thinking ahead

          Organising support

          Nurturing the team

Experience suggests that the entire course of starting a fresh expression needs to be surrounded with careful thought and lots of prayer. Sometimes there is more to bear in mind than people realise. The more time spent in prayer and understanding the processes you are involved in, the more likely the venture will be fruitful.

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