Share

Many fresh expressions comprise a church plant, based on a core team of anything from a handful of people to 50 plus. The plant may be initiated by a local church, a group of local churches, or a denomination or 'stream'.

The aim is to build a Jesus-centred community that will draw people into the heart of God's love.

If you are planting with a team from one or more churches, you may want to read this page and use the links to get more detail.

If you have been asked to plant a fresh expression but haven't been given a team, you may want to read Are you a 21st century 'missionary'?

How might a church planting team get started?

Getting together as a core team would be an obvious beginning!

It will involve forming the team. If you are the leader and the team has not yet been recruited, you may want to ask yourself these questions, which are discussed in Recruiting a core team:

• What exactly is a 'core team'?
• How large should it be?
• Who should join it?
• How might they be recruited?
• Will the team be commissioned - and if so, when?

Building community in the team should start during 'Getting together' and continue throughout the preparation phase. It will involve creating a team rather than surrounding the leader with a collection of individuals.

Hopefully as a result, when you start the venture there will be a community at its core. This will make leading the venture on a journey to a Christian community that much easier.

Building team will almost certainly include eating together and having fun with one another. But it will go beyond that as individuals share their lives, like Jesus did with his disciples.

Might some form of sharing be built into the team's regular meetings? This might be low key to start with, using ice-breakers such as: 'What was your best holiday?', 'What was the best meal you've ever eaten?' or 'What is your happiest memory of childhood?'

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 at the start of a planning meeting.

As the team forms, members will discuss the task they have been given. How do they understand it? The aim is to be clear about what God is calling the team to do in this preparation phase.

In particular, the team may need to discuss what it understands by 'fresh expressions'. Is the whole team on the same page about this? Material in the first section of the Guide might be useful, such as:

• What is a fresh expression of church?
• What Christian principles lie behind fresh expressions?
• How do fresh expressions develop?

The team may find it helpful to ask:

• 'What principles behind fresh expressions most speak to us?'
• 'Are there particular expectations in the church (or group of churches or denomination) sponsoring the plant that we should keep in mind?'
• 'In relation to our task, what would each of us die for?'
• 'Are there differences in how we each approach our faith that would make it difficult for us to work together?'

Discussing these questions will help to clarify the team's call - 'What is God calling us to do in this early stage?' The team may agree that 'In preparing to start a church plant, it's particularly important that we remember so-and-so.'

It is worth spending time on all this. A shared understanding of God's call and some of the principles behind it may avoid misunderstandings later.

Getting together → a shared call

This is discussed further in Getting together.

Exploring the possibilities will be at the heart of the team's work. When a church plant comes out of an existing church or group of churches, typically a great deal of prayer and discussion will have gone on first, and this leads to the decision to plant. A lot of exploring may have already taken place, and a vision for the church plant may have formed.

The vision may be quite general ('Plant a church on this estate or among Gen. X'), or it may be more precise ('Serve young families on this estate through these sorts of activities, and as a result plant a church among them').

The task of the church planting team is to test whether the vision is realistic and develop it further: 'What might we do and how might we go about it?'

To test and develop the vision, we suggest you listen carefully to:

• the people you feel called to work with. What makes them tick? What are their longings and hopes, their disappointments and needs? How might you serve them with love?

  Listening is very likely to include consulting professionals and voluntary groups working among the people you feel called to serve. What can you learn from their experiences? Might you work together?

• the wider church. How have other churches served similar groups of people? Might you visit one or two fresh expressions to stir your imagination? Are there lessons from the church overseas or from what churches have done in the past?

• the local church (or churches, or denomination) which have sponsored the church planting team. Sharing your thoughts as they develop will help your fellow Christians to pray for you, allow you to draw on their wisdom and ensure your conclusions don't come as too much of a shock to them!

• Scripture. Bible study and prayer, as part of the group's work, will be an important way of listening to God directly.

 

360 degrees listening

 

Through this '360 degrees listening', you will become aware of possibilities, and the vision you started with will either be modified or fleshed out in more detail.

Hopefully, sharing your ideas with some of the people you seek to reach will enthuse them and potential helpers will start to emerge. You may want to read How can we work with non-churchgoers to create church?

'Whom are we called to serve?' will be a key question. Will you be serving a neighbourhood or network, and do you understand the people involved?

Identifying a specific group of people is particularly important. Some fresh expressions are unfruitful because the people they seek to reach are so varied that creating community becomes almost impossible. A church planting team, for example, may have lots of contacts. But bring them all together and they have little in common.

Is God calling you to build on your strengths? Perhaps you have a lot of contacts in a network or neighbourhood. It seems to make sense to grow a fresh expression from among them. How well do you know the people you are in touch with?

Or is God calling you to serve people with whom you have few contacts, perhaps because they have been ignored by everyone else? You will have to find ways of making contact, and your venture will take much longer to develop.

When you are starting with few contacts, it will be important not lose heart by comparing your progress with a project that began with many. You will need realistic expectations about the time it will take to bear fruit.

You might also consider whether the people you are called to serve have much knowledge of the Christian faith. How will this affect the way you work with them? How will it affect the time involved for the venture to grow into faith?

An easy way to start might be to gather together individuals who know lots of people among those you plan to serve. What can they tell you about their networks? Might one or two catch the vision and want to help?

This listening process is crucial. Deep listening will transform the team as members discover God's perspective on the context.

Sometimes fresh expressions are unfruitful because there was no proper listening at the start. To avoid this mistake, we recommend you read Exploring the possibilities for more on how to do it.

If you have listened carefully, hopefully a shared vision of how a fresh expression might develop will begin to emerge - a vision that is shared by the people the Spirit is prompting you to serve, other churches in the area, your own church (or group of churches or denomination) and, most important, by God himself.

Exploring the possibilities → a shared vision

This is discussed further in Exploring the possibilities.

Thinking ahead is vital, and may occur in parallel with 'Exploring the possibilities'. As a vision crystallises, members of the team may get excited and want to forge ahead. Pausing to think ahead will help you to flesh out the vision and strengthen the foundations of the venture.  

Thinking ahead is about imagination. It is not planning for every eventuality, but asking: 'Can we imagine how the venture would travel a path to becoming church? What would we have to do for it to grow into a loving, Christ-shaped community?' It is about Godly imagination.

The team might look at How do fresh expressions develop? Perhaps it could draw the fresh expressions journey on a flip chart:

 

The fresh expressions journey

 

This diagram is described more fully in The fresh expressions journey - a fuller version.

Members might use that journey to imagine how the venture they have in mind would travel through the four circles. Perhaps they plan to start a mums and tots group. What would church look like in that context? What would discipleship mean?

If they can't see the venture evolving into church, they might want to think again. Or they might ask those to whom they are accountable whether they should be engaged in a fresh expression of mission rather than a fresh expression of church. Their activities, hopefully, would be a stepping stone into existing church.

A venture that promotes kingdom values would be extremely worthwhile, even if it never became church. Not every form of mission has to become a church in its own right.

Using the fresh expressions journey, the team might discuss questions like:

• How are we going to build a real sense of community?

•  How might we encourage people to explore Jesus -  perhaps through 'God talk', mission worship, creative expressions of spirituality and acts of kindness? (See How do fresh expressions develop?)

• What might church eventually look like in this context?

• If the venture evolves into a church in its own right, what sort of relationship would it have with the parent church (or sponsoring local churches or denomination)? How would communion be celebrated? Where would baptisms be held? 

Some of these questions might prompt a discussion with those who set up the team. The latter might agree that the issues are important, but that it would be best to return to them when the emerging nature of the fresh expression is clearer.

The team's discussions would be unlikely to result in a rigid plan. Fresh expressions tend not to follow a fixed path. They often emerge in surprising ways.

The discussions could result in a set of values, however. These will be values that help to create the potential for the venture to become an expression of church. If 'vision' is about what you will do, 'values' describe how you will do it. Values create the venture's ethos. What values would draw the people you serve into God's love?

Say the team is thinking about several projects on the estate - a mums and tots group perhaps, a course in photography (and in time other skills) for young people, and 'lads and dads' football.

The aim would be that these activities are worthwhile in themselves, but they also create opportunities to invite people to events that begin to draw individuals towards God - a community carol service, for instance.

Those who show an interest might be invited to a 'just looking' group to explore the Christian faith, these groups (it is hoped) might evolve into Christian cells via an Alpha course and these cells might then meet all together from time to time - 'church' on the estate.

Whatever happens, these different activities will have values. They will reflect the values ('What do we value?') of the people who play a leading role. These values will shape the direction in which the overall mission to the estate evolves. They will either be implicit (no one thinks about them) or they can be encouraged deliberately.

Being deliberate will enable the team to identify values that will lead its activities towards the kingdom of God and help an expression of church to form. That is why thinking ahead is so important.

The group might ask: 'What do we want our mission to the estate to look like in one year, three years and five years' time? What values – what DNA - would we have to embed in our activities so that they evolve in the way we hope?'

Maybe the team agrees on the following values (they are no more than examples):

• Residents of the estate will be involved in leading every activity so that activities genuinely 'come out of' the estate. Partnership, not paternalism, would be the watchword.

• Community will be at the heart of every activity. Though football or photography might initially bring people together, from time to time opportunities will be created for participants to meet in other contexts - having a beer together or going bowling. People will have a chance to get to know each other better.

• 'Stepping-stone' events will be as important as 'community' activities. If you are not a Christian, jumping in one leap from an activity like 'lads and dads' football to going to church is a tall order!

  To make the journey, people need to take small steps - a 'mothering Sunday' event perhaps, then a regular men's breakfast with a presentation about Christ, a 'just looking group' next, and perhaps a Christian cell emerging from within that group thereafter. 

• We'll respect the right to disagree. No one will feel pressured to take part in an activity or to journey towards God. People will be loved for who they are, not for what they do.

• Communion will be at the core of the team's life. Keeping close to Jesus through the sacraments will make it easier for the team to bring Jesus to others.

The team might acknowledge that how these values are put into practice could change as the venture develops, and that the values may need to be revised later on. (The same applies to the vision.) But come what may, these values will be at the heart of the venture in its initial stages.

Thinking ahead → shared values

This is discussed further in Thinking ahead.

Organising support will be an obvious task, and could well be an on-going throughout the 'starting up' phase. It may be worth considering:

Prayer partners - who are vital and easily forgotten:

• Who outside the venture will pray regularly for those involved?
• How will they be kept informed?

Permission givers:

• Is the church leadership aware of how your thinking has developed? Might any of your ideas cause the leadership difficulty?

• Is the budget for the venture realistic? Might you need additional sources of funding? (Providing money is a very active form of permission giving.) Or might a larger budget make you too dependent on outside funding, so that it becomes much harder for the venture to become financially self-sustaining in due course?

• Does anyone else need to give permission?
• How will permission givers be kept informed as the venture develops?
• How will the venture be held to account? How will the church leadership also be held to account for delivering the support it's promised? How can these arrangements be both effective and easy to put into practice?

People you are called to serve:

• Do 'opinion formers' among them share your vision? How enthusiastic are they?
• Do you need a meeting to share ideas and get reactions?
• Can you imagine who will volunteer to help – from opening up each time you meet, to looking after the money?
• Do you need a clear identity - a name, logo and perhaps strap line that identifies you, can be used on all your publicity and will help to build recognition and trust? 'Oh, it's that lot who are behind the Easter party.'

  Near Oxford is the Discovery Days community project, which has the strap line: 'Discover your neighbour, discover your community and discover God'.

  Gently making clear that this is a Christian venture will allow the team to develop the spiritual aspect of its work without anyone saying, 'But you never said.'

• What publicity will you need? On a housing estate, for instance, a regular newsletter would enable the team to publicise events and consult residents about a new project - 'We're thinking of refurbishing the community hall, and there's a meeting to discuss it...'.

  If you don't go for a newsletter, what other form(s) of communication might you use?

The public. What will you have to do to enjoy 'the goodwill of all the people' (Acts 2.47)? For example:

• How will you satisfy legal requirements, such as health and safety, third party insurance and child protection (if appropriate)? Have you thought about your charity status so that you can claim back the tax on donations?
• Have you sought the support, where appropriate, of other churches, voluntary groups and government agencies? Might this include exploring forms of active co-operation?

• Who will need to be kept informed as the venture develops?
• Who will thank individuals the group has consulted and let them know what it plans to do? Courtesies are important - the reputation of the project (and of God) is at stake.

Organising support → a shared venture

This is discussed further in Organising support.

Nurturing the core team will be essential throughout the preparation phase. This will include all the obvious elements, such as pastoral care and spiritual nourishment. As you finalise your plans, three aspects of nurturing the team may be especially important:

The first will be training and support. The team might ask:

• What training will be needed? For example:
  1. In practical things like health and safety, and child protection (if relevant)?
  2. Should some of the team go on the Fresh Expressions short course (mission shaped intro) or the part-time one year course (mission shaped ministry)?
  3. Might the team benefit from some training in personal evangelism?
• What additional outside support might be required? For instance:
  1. Might the leader have a mentor or coach?
  2. Might the team also use a mentor or coach for a while? On-the-job coaching can be a highly effective form of training, though sadly it is not always available.
  3. Might someone in the  team join a learning network and bring lessons back to the team?
  4. Might someone in the team keep in touch with practical advice from the Guide? 

• Is the budget for training and support adequate?

The second will be team relationships. Hopefully, throughout the preparation phase a sense of community will be developing within the core team. This will be worthwhile in itself, of course. 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 Christian love - may provide a safe context for individuals to explore the faith if they wish.

As you approach the time when you launch your venture, the team may want to take stock. 'How have our relationships developed?' 'Are we really working as a team?' Some people may have left the team, others may have joined. 'How well have newcomers been welcomed into the team?'

There is no shame in acknowledging that the team is not functioning very well. That is very often the case. Rivalry and disputes among Jesus' disciples ('Who will be the greatest...?') suggests that he found team-building difficult too! You may want to invite a facilitator or coach from outside the team to give some advice.

Avoiding overload could be a third issue. Members of the team may well live busy lives. In which case, burnout will be a constant danger. One way of avoiding this may be to keep things as simple and time-efficient as possible.

For example, a planting team of 25 people in their twenties and thirties might agree:

'We're all busy people, so let's be realistic about how much time we can give. Why don't we commit ourselves initially to one session a week, to allow some leeway to give extra time as the venture develops?

'We might meet as a whole group twice a month, which will include worship, eating together and doing any business. No extra meetings for business!

'In the other two weeks we'll work in threes and fours to develop hubs of activity among our friends. Before the activity, the three- or foursome will worship and pray together for half an hour, so that we maintain regular worship but connect it closely to the time with our friends.

'That will mean that as relationships develop, we'll have some space in our lives to start an introduction to Christianity course or put on occasional further events. Maybe the half-hour times of worship will evolve into some form of cell church, involving our friends?'

Nurturing the team → shared leadership

This is discussed further in Nurturing the team.

In summary:

• Getting together → a shared call
• Exploring the possibilities → a shared vision
• Thinking ahead → shared values
• Organising support → a shared venture
• Nurturing the team → shared leadership

Sometimes these stages will flow logically from one to the next. More often, they will overlap or be taken out of sequence. GETON is not a rigid, step-by-step framework. It is a checklist to avoid forgetting things and to spark ideas.

The Open Door Café, as it has developed so far, is not strictly a church plant. But it is the type of project a church plant might start and it illustrates some the principles discussed on this page.

 

Back to top