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Nurturing the team will be vital. A team is two or more people committed to work to a common purpose. The team seeks to maximise the effectiveness of its members' contributions, gifts and resources through harmonious and fruitful relationships. Individuals flourish when a team functions well.

Tim Robertson of the Assemblies of God Church has identified five factors that make team-working powerful:

• the power of encouragement
• the power of relationships
• the power of shielding and protecting
• the power of unity
• the power of synergy

Nurturing the team will mean different things according to the context - for example:

• for a planning group appointing a solo pioneer, it will involve making sure that the pioneer has appropriate support, especially at the beginning. The pioneer will be backed by a supportive team (or teams).
• for two people starting a fresh expression among friends, it will be mainly about getting support for themselves.
• for a church planting team, it will mean not just getting themselves equipped for the task, but becoming a genuine team.

All of what follows won't fit every context. You might want to pick and choose what is relevant to your situation. We cover:

• Selecting the team leader
• Recruiting the team (or your fellow pioneer)
• Forming the team
• Equipping the team
• Focusing the team
• Commissioning the team

Selecting the team leader might range from appointing someone to a full-time paid post, to confirming that a church member with an idea for a fresh expression really has the necessary gifts.

What qualities might be required in someone leading a fresh expression? The Church of England believes that individuals who are ordained to pioneer ministry should display the following qualities (taken from Ordained Pioneer Minister Guidelines, appendix 1):

• Vision for planting fresh expressions of church within contemporary culture
• An authentic, integrated understanding of the particular ministry envisaged
• Capacity to innovate and initiate
• Mature and well developed devotional life
• Well developed abilities to initiate change and enable others to face it in a flexible, balanced and creative way
• Demonstrable maturity and robustness to face the demands of pioneering mission and ministry
• Self-motivation
• Well-developed understanding of the interaction between gospel and culture
• Clear vision of the place of their envisaged ministry within the wider church's response to God's mission to the world
• The ability and desire to work in a team and collaboratively
• Commitment to reshaping the church for mission

These might be helpful criteria to use in testing the call of anyone seeking to pioneer a fresh expression, whether a couple of people doing so among their friends or someone being appointed to a full-time post.

We would emphasise the important quality of being able to develop a form of church that fits the specific context, and particularly in the case of paid appointments the ability to show some sort of track record.

It is not enough for someone to be enthusiastic about fresh expressions or to have a vision for one. Have they demonstrated in their life so far the necessary skills? What have they actually done that would give you confidence they could pioneer a fresh expression?

If you are creating a full-time post, you may want to ask where the person will live, especially if they will be ministering within a specific area. Will they live on the estate they are called to serve? If not, how will they demonstrate that they are part of the community - that they are one of the people like Jesus was in his lifetime?

What support will you give the person? They will need a supportive line manager, but what else? You might find it helpful to review the four types of support - practical, visionary, close and wider - described in the 'Getting together' section of Are you a 21st century 'missionary'?

How much of this support will be provided by the church (or churches or denomination) employing the pioneer, and how much will the individual be expected to provide? Will this be made clear to people who apply for the post?

Recruiting the team could range from selecting 30 people to join you in planting a church, to finding someone to help you start a spirituality group in a leisure centre.

In some contexts, you may want to think about the optimum size of the core team - Christians at the heart of the venture. This is discussed in Recruiting a core team.

Ideally, core teams - whether two people or 20 -  should comprise individuals who are faithful, available, competent and teachable (see Stuart P. Robinson, Starting Mission-Shaped Churches, Gospel Outreach Ministries, 2007, pp. 42, 46):

• Faithful refers to people who are passionate about their faith and inspired by the Great Commission (Matthew 29.19-20). They will be committed to the principles of fresh expressions (see What Christian principles lie behind fresh expressions?).
• Available means being able to carve out the time to serve in a pioneer context. Available people are aware that pioneer ministry can be hard work and is often discouraging, but despite that they are willing to make it a priority.
• Competent doesn't mean being super-human. It is about ordinary people with useful abilities, such as the gift of being an unsung hero ('She always put out the chairs'). Among other gifts to look for are: the ability to facilitate a group, to network, to share one's faith sensitively and to listen.
• Teachable means that you are willing to be shaped by Scripture on the one hand and the pioneer context on the other. How far are team members willing to listen to, and learn from the people they are called to serve? Being teachable is vital.

You may well want to recruit people who have strong connections with the neighbourhood or network the team is called to serve. If you don't have these links to start with, you should ask how they will be established and be prepared for developing a fresh expression  to take much longer.

Beware of drawing a team from very different networks. You may find that when members' contacts get together, they don't have enough in common to form a viable community. 

Recruiting a core team contains other material you may find helpful.

Forming the team will be important from the outset of the fresh expression, and may well be a vital part of Getting together. It could easily mean challenging the team's expectations. Members may not have experienced genuine team in a church context.

This is because tasks in the church are often undertaken within a framework of hierarchical relationships. The youth worker reports to the vicar. Women on the flower rota relate to the person who is responsible for it. When performing a task, frequently these vertical relationships are stronger than horizontal ones.

 

 

But in a properly functioning team, there is a greater emphasis on horizontal relationships. Members don't just have a relationship to the leader, they have strong ties to others in the team. Performing a task may involve them in a significant number of relationships.

 

 

Helping individuals become more self-aware and aware of each other can contribute much to the team building process. A growing number of Christians are acquiring relevant expertise through their jobs. Might there be someone who can share their knowledge with your team?

A Myers Briggs exercise would help team members understand how their personalities differ. It is advisable to have a trained person oversee and interpret the exercise with your team. A growing number of Christians are qualified. The training officer in your denomination might point you to someone.

A Belbin Team Roles exercise would help a team identify the type of roles its members gravitate to. You can find out more, including an opportunity to do this online, by visiting the Belbin website. Again, a trained facilitator would help the team interpret and apply the results.

Encouraging individuals to share their lives will be at the heart of team building, just as Jesus and the disciples shared their lives. This can be done through regularly eating together, perhaps going away as a team for a weekend or just relaxing in front of a video.

Using ice-breakers before the team gets down to business might be another approach. The ice-breakers could be low key to start with, such as: 'What was your best holiday?', 'What was the best meal you've ever eaten?' and 'What was your happiest memory as a child?'

As individuals become comfortable with each other, you might introduce more challenging ice-breakers: 'Can you describe a time when God failed to answer an important prayer?', 'What aspects of the team's task do you most struggle with?' and 'What have you found most life-giving as we have worked together?'

Ice-breakers might be followed by prayer, before the business part of the meeting begins. For ideas on ice-breakers, you might read Garry Poole, The Complete Book of Questions. 1001 Conversation Starters for any Occasion, Zondervan, 2003.

Avoiding overload. Members of the team may well live busy lives. In which case, burnout will be a constant danger. To avoid this, you may want to keep things as simple and time-efficient as possible.

Enriching your team life may enable team members to reduce some of their other church commitments. Even the smallest teams, for example, can worship together before they start planning.

Your worship might be contemplative as you listen to a CD of Christian music. You might listen to a recorded sermon. You could certainly pray together. Doing this as part of the team's business would help to integrate worship and mission. Both would resource each other.

If the team worshipped regularly, might members attend their home church fortnightly instead of every Sunday? Would they need to belong to one of the church's small groups? Pruning to achieve growth applies as much to Christian activities as it does to gardening.

Building community in the core team is crucial, even if there are just two of you. It is not only worthwhile in itself, but it will also set the tone for the whole venture. The team's life together will give a communal flavour to its 'loving service', which will help community to form among those who attend.

In turn, this wider community - in which participants feel comfortable with each other, trust the core team and experience God's love - can provide a safe context for individuals to explore the Christian faith if they wish.

Equipping the team is about ongoing training and support, whether you are a tiny team or a larger one. Many fresh expressions suffer because their leaders and core teams have not taken time to learn from other people.

Learning is at the centre of discipleship. It requires a humble spirit. If you are the leader, how much time are you and your team spending in learning from others? What does this say about your disposition of heart? You might want to ask the following questions:

What initial training will the core team need? For example:

• in practical things like health and safety, and child protection.
• in the principles of starting a fresh expression. Should members of the team attend a Fresh Expressions vision day, short course (mission shaped intro) or perhaps even the one year part-time course (mission shaped ministry)?
• in personal evangelism. One of many possible organisations to seek advice from is CPAS.

What ongoing support will the team need? For example:

• Might someone in the team join a learning network and bring insights back to the team? Learning networks enable practitioners to share experiences and wisdom, to avoid re-inventing the wheel and repeating the same mistakes. For more information see Networks.
• Might someone from the team keep in touch with practical advice from the Guide?
• Might the team benefit from a coach or mentor for a while? Coaching need not always be one-to-one. It can involve whole teams. On-the-job coaching can be a highly effective form of training, though sadly it is not always available.
• Might people with appropriate expertise be invited to talk to the team? Might the team visit a similar venture?
• What reading might team members undertake?
• How will the team be spiritually nurtured?
• How will it remain connected to the wider church?
• What prayer support will the team receive? This is discussed further in Organising support.

What support will the team leader need, over and above support available to the team? For example:

• a spiritual director or guide.
• someone outside the team to cry and laugh with.
• practical support (where appropriate) in moving house, getting started and finding specialist help.
• accountability arrangements alongside practical support. Accountability is discussed further in Organising support.
• a mentor or coach. This would be personal to the leader rather than available to the team.
• further training in the principles and practice of fresh expressions, or in Biblical studies and theology.

Will the budget for training and support be adequate?

Focusing the team is about deciding what each person is going to do to help launch the fresh expression. You have done lots of listening, praying, thinking and talking. Now you need to turn all that you have learnt into a plan for action.

A Mission Action Plan - a MAP - may sound a bit formal, but it could help a church planting team, for example, a couple of friends, a small team praying their church group will evolve into church, or a pioneer working on their own to turn their vision into concrete steps. It offers a planning group a framework for presenting its recommendations.

MAPs will vary according to the context. Larger projects may need sophisticated MAPs, while smaller ones will require something simple. There is no one way to write a MAP. You need to decide what's going to work for you.

Stuart P. Robinson, Starting Mission-Shaped Churches, Gospel Outreach Ministries, 2007, chapters 8-13, has a detailed discussion of MAPs.

One possibility would be for your MAP to answer four questions:

• What exactly do we want to do?
• How will we do it?
• Who will do it?
• When will it be done by?

Another possibility would be to have four sections:

• A summary of your VISION.
• A statement of your VALUES.
• A description of the TASKS that have to be done (and by whom) to successfully launch the venture.
• A short list of GOALS - what you hope these tasks will have achieved by a specified date.

In larger ventures, each task might have its own set of goals. The task descriptions might form the basis of a simple statement of 'ministry expectations' for each team member (and any other volunteers), so that everyone is clear about their boundaries and what they are expected to do. How often will 'ministry expectations' be reviewed?

Reviewing the journey you've travelled would be another way to focus the team on some immediate objectives and write your MAP.

You might summarise your journey in the following statements:

• 'We're called to start a fresh expression among...'
• 'We plan to do this in such-and-such a way' (a summary of your vision)
• 'As it develops, the venture will be shaped by these values...'
• 'It will draw on these forms of support' (you might specify the arrangements)
• 'We'll carry out these immediate tasks, which we pray will achieve these goals'

Whether or not this forms the basis of any written statement, a review of the journey you have made can be an opportunity for celebration, for learning from your mistakes and for looking ahead to the next phase. It can feed into any plans you may have for commissioning the team.

Commissioning the team will be appropriate in some contexts, such as when the fresh expression is a new initiative by a church, a group of local churches or a denomination.

Publicly commissioning the team would:

• follow the example of Jesus, who called his disciples and then commissioned them to share his ministry;
• recognise that members have been called to this particular mission;

• remind them that they are acting on behalf of the wider church, which has confirmed their call and to which they remain accountable;

• encourage members of the sending church (or churches) to support the venture in prayer and other ways.

Commissioning the team when preparations for the fresh expression are complete - rather than at an earlier stage - could make a great deal of sense. The church (or churches or denomination) will be able to affirm what the team has done, while the team will have shown that it is worthy of the church's trust.

 

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