Share

Ideally, a sustainable venture would satisfy three 'selfs' (which were coined by Henry Venn, a great 19th century missionary thinker). It would become self-financing, self-governing and self-reproducing – giving birth to another fresh expression. These characteristics would exist in the context of inter-dependent relationships with the wider church.

We still have much to learn about sustainability - perhaps in this area more than any other. But enough fresh expressions have proved durable for us to have some idea of the principles involved, and we can learn from church plants that have been more short-lived. We also have the experience of the wider church over 2,000 years.

Realism may be a helpful start.  Not every fresh expression needs to achieve the three 'selfs'. 

• A venture can be short-lived and still be an authentic expression of church – a fresh expression in an after-school club, for example.
• More and more churches recognise that it is not reasonable to expect youth work to be self-financing and are appointing paid youth workers. 
• Some ventures may not be fully self-governing. Oversight and administration may be shared with their mother church. The finances of a church plant, for example, may be looked after in the 'main' church's office.

Yet there will also be many cases where it is hoped that a fully sustainable venture will be established, with the vitality to start another fresh expression.

We suspect that thinking ahead about sustainability would entail a discussion about:

• intention;
• gradualness;
• simplicity;
• shared leadership;
• multiplying leaders;
• passing on your values. 

Intention is about your expectations. It involves having high expectations that the venture will both become sustainable and multiply. One fresh expression would start another, and then another. 

Having that intention might encourage you to ask: 'What would we have to do to include sustainability, and especially multiplication, in our vision?' 

We suspect that one reason fresh expressions don't multiply is that they fail to start with the intention that they should.

Gradualness is about starting on a realistic scale. It involves starting the fresh expression on a scale that will be sustainable early on, and encouraging it to grow step by step so that each stage remains sustainable. 

This applies particularly to finance. It is natural that many ventures should rely on outside funds in the early stages. But if the budget is too large, the project may struggle to become financially independent. When one source of funding dries up, will another be available?

Asking the right questions in the planning stage may well determine whether your fresh expression becomes financially self-sustaining. You may want to ask:

• What are the financial resources of the people we are called to serve?
• What sized venture could they realistically sustain?
• How long will the initial funding be available for?
• Is replacement funding from outside likely?
• Are we thinking on too large a scale?

Your answers might influence your approach to employing staff. For instance, in some circumstances (but by no means all), instead of appointing a full-time paid pioneer to start a fresh expression, a church, or group of local churches or a denomination, might choose someone in full or part-time employment. This might:

• enable the pioneer to develop a track record.  A church or denomination might say to someone who feels called to pioneer ministry, 'Show us first what you can do in your spare time. Let's see evidence of your gifts.'

  Later they might conclude, 'She's clearly got a gift for this. If she can do this among her friends and colleagues in her spare time, how much more might she accomplish if she did it half time!  Let's give her a half-salary.'

  If the expression grew so that it could cover that half, the church or denomination might think about paying her to go full time.

• provide a discipline against launching over-elaborate ventures that rely on the input of a single leader. 'I've got limited time,' a part-time leader might think. 'I can't do it all. So I must make sure others share the load.'

• avoid starting in a dependency mode. The pioneer would not be dependent on Christians outside the fresh expression for a salary. The principle of self-sustainability would be given concrete expression at the start.

The key is developing a size of venture that fits the context. People often sign up to the principle of contextual thinking but don't apply it across the board. A fresh expression has to be contextual in every respect - in its size and funding as well as in everything else.

Taking 'gradualness' seriously could well force you back to the drawing board. You may think your vision is wonderful and it seems to be getting support from those who would be involved. But then you realise it fails the 'gradualness' test: the funding required wouldn't fit the context. You may have to pray for a new vision.

This may feel very discouraging. But it is much better to have reached that conclusion now than in two or three years' time. You have saved yourself several years of hard slog on a venture that was never going to last.

You may also have saved considerable sums of money. When church is often short of cash, we have a duty to spend what is available as wisely as we can.

Simplicity may be another key to sustainability. Keeping a fresh expression simple (or 'lightweight') could help to ensure that it is manageable within existing resources and time constraints.

For example, 'simple church' in someone's home around a bring-and-share meal might have great potential. Everyone's got to eat, so it would not be such a big time commitment. Bring-and-share would make sure the burden did not fall on one person. Watching a video or listening to a CD would avoid someone having to prepare the input.

'Simple church' may be especially promising if it is combined with attending a 'big church' celebration from time to time - either on a town-wide basis or going to one particular church. The group would get additional stimulus and be reminded that it is part of a much larger whole.

Going to a festival like Greenbelt or the Walsingham pilgrimage could have similar benefits, but on a much larger scale. 

If simple equals small (which is not always the case), you might want to think of creating several small cells that cluster together periodically - perhaps every few weeks. The cluster would join up different fragments of church and provide an opportunity, perhaps, for a different style of worship and teaching.

In another context, simplicity might mean pruning your activities. Taking simplicity seriously could help Christians at the core of a fresh expression to avoid getting bogged down by church events. A planting team of 25 people in their twenties and thirties, for example, might agree:

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

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

'The other three 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 activities with our friends.

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

'Perhaps every six weeks or so we'll go to our parent church to keep in touch.'

Shared leadership is vital. It entails replacing the mindset, 'This is a project for other people', with one that thinks, 'This is a project with.' 

If you were starting a 'spirituality at work' group, for instance, you might buy a book of Christian meditations, lead the first couple of sessions and then pass the book to another member of the group. If they were confident to lead the session and use the book, would it matter if they were not a churchgoer?

The foundation for shared leadership may lie in the 'exploring' phase. If you have fully involved people you feel called to serve in 'Exploring the possibilities', they will have ownership of the project, which will encourage them to volunteer to help. (You may want to read How can we work with non-churchgoers to create church?)

Plenty of volunteers will greatly increase the likelihood of the venture proving sustainable. The load can be shared more widely, reducing burnout. The project won't depend so heavily on one or two key people who might have to pull out if their circumstances change, such as having to move elsewhere.

Pioneers should withdraw from their converts as quickly as possible. About a century ago, Roland Allen, who served as a missionary in North China, urged this as a key principle for missionary work. Allen is being re-discovered today by quite a few people in fresh expressions circles.

Inspired by the practice of St Paul, Allen argued that missionaries should leave behind:

• the Holy Spirit;
• a basic understanding of the gospel;
• the Bible;
• the sacraments;
• leadership;
• continuing support, such as - in today's context - mentoring support for the new leaders.

Then missionaries should trust the Spirit to work through the word and the sacraments to complete the task they had begun. (See, for example, Roland Allen, Missionary Methods - St Paul's or Ours?, Lutterworth Press, 2006.)

Following Allen's advice in the missionary context of modern society could have a number of advantages:

• We would be adopting the practice of St Paul. Often the Spirit forced him to leave his new converts after a very short time - perhaps a few months. The longest he stayed in one place was at Ephesus, where he remained for two years (Acts 19.10).
• Emerging Christians would be forced to rely on the Holy Spirit from an early stage. As they experienced his guidance, their confidence in God would grow.
• They would be less dependent on the person who had led them into faith. Dependency can stunt spiritual growth just as over-dependence on their parents can make it harder for children to mature. Instead of relying on a more experienced Christian, emerging believers would have to discover answers for themselves, guided by the Spirit and the Scriptures.
• Leaving quickly could send a message that reproducing the church is important. 'I'm going to leave you in the hands of the Spirit because I'm called to start another fresh expression,' a pioneer might say.

  Emerging Christians would be likely to think, 'If the person who led us into faith thinks it so important to start another fresh expression, perhaps we should do the same.'

• Leaving quickly is not the same as abandoning people altogether. St Paul kept in touch with his fledgling congregations by letter and visited them. Founders of a fresh expression can keep in contact today in far more ways and can mentor the leaders they leave behind.

• Neil Cole has followed Roland Allen's principles in North America, for example. Over 800 small congregations formed within 6 years (see Neil Cole, Organic Church, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 26). Ordinary people, who are recent converts, become church leaders in their own homes!

You may also want to read God grows church through reproduction.

Multiplying leaders is crucial for reproduction. Imagine that you and a friend are starting a fresh expression among colleagues at work or in your neighbourhood.

Perhaps the two of you know three people who would be interested in exploring spirituality. You agree to meet as a fivesome to discuss some of the stories Jesus told. 'After all, he is widely thought to be one of the greatest spiritual teachers the world has ever known.'

The two of you have prayerfully 'thought ahead' and can imagine how this cell might multiply. In due course, it might be that one of you will form a new cell with two of the three friends, while the other forms a cell with the remaining one. Or it could be that two of the friends start a new cell under your guidance, leaving three of you in the other cell.

Both cells would then invite two or three more friends to explore spirituality on the lines of the original cell. The original three friends would play a leading part in the new cells as a way of equipping them for a leadership role.

Again, at an appropriate point, both cells would multiply and repeat the process, with the original three friends becoming leaders/mentors in the new cells. The process, you pray, would be repeated again and again. 

The cells would meet as a single cluster from time to time, so that each cell felt part of a larger group. These clusters could provide opportunities for teaching, worship, social events and mobilising people behind shared objectives (such as supporting a development project in Africa).

Here, perhaps, is one way in which leadership can be multiplied so that each new expression of church reproduces. For more about this, you may want to read Bob Hopkins & Mike Breen, clusters: creative mid-sized missional communities, 3DM Publishing, 2007.

Passing on your values will also be important. In their now classic book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, James Collins and Jerry Porras examined 18 'visionary companies', such as Disney, Wal-Mart and Ford. The companies were world famous, had a stellar brand and were at least 50 years old.

The chief thing they had in common was an almost cult-like devotion to a 'core ideology'. These core values gave each company a unique identity. The company might shift from one product to another, it might completely reorganise itself, but it retained its fundamental identity. Here seemed to lie their secret of success.

Can you think of examples where much the same has been true of individual churches? The church has flourished over many years, it has changed and adapted to new circumstances, but throughout it has kept the same core values (whether explicitly articulated or not). Some of the monastic traditions demonstrate this particularly well.

Might retaining a core identity prove to be part of the story for fruitful and sustainable fresh expressions? They will start with an explicit set of values, perhaps developed in the course of 'thinking ahead'. These values may be revised in the light of experience.

They then become central to the life of the new Christian community, shaping its identity. One generation of leaders passes them on to the next. Might sustainability be about developing an enduring identity?

In short, intention, gradualness, simplicity, shared leadership, multiplying leaders and passing on core values appear to be some of the keys to a sustainable venture.

Encounters on the Edge 36, Leading Fresh Expressions: lessons from hindsight, has much to say about sustainability and lessons learned from mistakes as well as strengths. It is priced £4.00. To order copies, contact The Sheffield Centre on 0114 272 7451, or email ask@sheffieldcentre.org.uk

Back to top