Commandos & Church Planting: Part 1 – Is That Gel In Your Hair?
Guest Post by James Richards
I have been asked to write a series of posts on how church planting is similar to being a Commando. I guess I am partly qualified to do this, as I was in the Royal Marines for 4 years and have been involved in a church plant for the last 2 years. However I also know that this is still a relatively short period of time in both activities, so please accept these posts from a learner ‘on the job’, and by no means from an experienced hardened veteran…
THE FIRST STEP to becoming a Commando is called the Potential Royal Marines Course (PRMC). This is a 3 day course where you are dropped in a the deep end with activities involving hard physical activity, early mornings, long lectures and drill (marching in a unit) amongst other joys! The idea of the PRMC is to sort the wheat from the chaff even before the 30 week main training (and believe me it works).
This first post is aimed at the people who are at this stage with church planting. They like the idea – they think they want to be involved and are up for the challenge. They want to enrol on the Potential Church Planters Course (PCPC)!
Joining The Dots Pt.3
Guest Post by Andy Toovey
3. Need trumps ease
In Oxford, we had fun, well-paid jobs. We were involved in a good church, learning lots. We had some great friends, and plenty of time to hang out with them.
But we’re not in the new creation yet. This is the age of sticking out, of being strangers in the world, elect exiles. We’re not here to sunbathe, we’re here to save.
I thank God for bringing us to Wales. Because while there are thousands of people who need Christ in Oxford, there are also good, well-resourced churches with a desire to reach out. In contrast, Wales, and in particular the valleys, stand out as both a spiritual and economic wilderness. The churches are at life-support stage, and don’t seem to realise it, while the surrounding communities are steadily drowning themselves in alcohol-fuelled escapism.
Two things stunned me in my first year here: the widespread domestic abuse, and the popularity of Spiritualism and the occult. Amidst the brokenness and depression of life in the valleys there is a hunger for deeper meaning. The harvest fields are ripe, but the incarnational, Spirit-led, gospel workers are few.
Some questions to consider:
- Where is the wilderness in your town or city?
- What is your church doing to reach those people?
- Could you be the person God is calling to ‘go’?
The stakes are so high – we’re talking eternal life or death. There is no room for sitting in our armchairs while the thousands on our doorsteps trudge towards Hell.
(Andy Toovey is married to Sophie and is currently working for New Inn Chapel as their evangelist. However, by God’s grace they are looking forward to stepping up to the plate and helping to plant a New Breed church on a Valleys council estate that’s crying out for Jesus! More about that in a future post!!)
Joining The Dots Pt.2
Guest Post by Andy Toovey
2. Gifts are given
So what led to me and Sophie moving to Wales for me to take up a position as evangelist at a small village church?
If I’m honest, it was more convenience than call. Sophie’s home church had a position for a pastoral trainee. I’d help out with the church’s evangelism for a year, and they’d help out with Bible college fees.
I arrived expecting to slot in with a carefully crafted plan of evangelistic activity… and quickly discovered I was that plan! 3,500 houses and a blank timetable. I didn’t have a clue where to start.
I spent most of the first few weeks on my knees in fear and weakness, praying that God would give me opportunities to share the gospel. And in his mercy, he gently led us both from house to house, and conversation to conversation.
I realised God had given me a gift of evangelism, even though it took other Christians to join the dots and see it in me! I still feel the fear of speaking up for Jesus, (as did Paul! Eph 6:19) but again and again see victory over it, by God’s grace and power. I’m not going to let fear hold us back from God’s future plans, even though I know they will take us onto unfamiliar territory.
Some questions to consider:
- How much do you gauge your gifts by what you’re already good at?
- How willing are you to let God take you out of your comfort zone?
God’s power shines more brightly in human weakness.
The third and final instalment is coming soon. Stay tuned…
Joining The Dots Pt.1
Guest Post by Andy Toovey
Five years ago, if someone had told me I was going to get married, move to Wales to work as an evangelist, then join a team planting a church on a needy valleys estate, I would have laughed! I didn’t know much then, but I knew three things: I wasn’t an evangelist, I didn’t have the gifts to plant a church, and I had zero desire to end up in Wales.
I’m glad God knew what he was doing, because I certainly didn’t!
Here I am five years on, kind of surprised, but loving the fact that God has an adventure mapped-out which is better than any plan I would have clobbered together. This is just a brief summary of some of the lessons I’ve learnt, which I hope might help others who are wondering what their future holds.
1. The past is part of the plan
I grew up in a happy middle-class home, I became a Christian aged 11. But the training had already begun.
I don’t know why stories of George Müller’s orphan homes stuck with me, but they did. I don’t know why my favourite Bible story was of the prostitute pouring perfume on Jesus’ feet. But God was shaping my heart.
My secondary school was over 50% ethnic minority, and I walked through the estate to get the bus home. I was on a beach mission in Leysdown-on-Sea for a week, reaching out to daytrippers from the East End of London. When I met Sophie, my wife-to-be, one of the things which I loved most about her was her compassion for the homeless in Oxford.
I wasn’t joining the dots yet, but God was happily slapping them down, one by one, for me to look back on. Now, I’m champing at the bit to start a church on an unreached estate, because I know these are the people God has given us a burden for.
Some questions to consider:
- What are the burdens God has laid on your heart?
- Who are the people you have a deep longing to reach with the gospel?
- What events, good or bad, has God used to prepare your heart for service?
If you’re like me, you won’t have to look too hard for those dots – in fact, they might be so close that you’ve actually overlooked them!
Check back soon for part 2…
Church Planting & the Big Church Syndrome
Guest Post by Peter Baker:
(This article was posted on the Highfields blog following Peter’s recent visit to the USA and is used with permission.)
The States taught me that Church Planting is old news! Campus Church or Satellite Congregation is the new kid on the block.
Actually it’s a Church Plant by any other name, the only difference between the old and the new being that the end game is not a truly independent congregation.
Instead, Campus Church in many cases, but not all, gets the preacher from the mother ship beamed in live by video or replayed from the main Sunday event. Campus Church also enjoys the benefits of a shared organizational structure, some resources and oversight. In certain situations the youth and children’s work is still operated from the usually magnificent facilities of the original Church site.
This two way street appears to work by bringing the values and vision of the “mother Church” to a more local demographic.
Perhaps it can translate in the US where large sprawling cities, new housing developments and mega churches (over 2000 people ) are more common.
But it is now happening in the UK on a smaller scale and without the “beamed in” preacher in most cases.
Whether you go the traditional Plant or Campus route, it looks as though new churches are grown best from existing large churches. There are obvious reasons for that. For one, the large church has a wide net geographically and the local scene is often poorly resourced with effective churches. Large churches grow for a reason, and not just because they steal everyone else’s sheep (!) That’s a bit of an urban myth.
The reasons such churches grow are precisely the reasons Church Plants will grow: a well organized ship with quality kids and youth work, strong, relevant preaching, accessible music and an informal but authentic and culturally relevant Christian community.
If people can get that mix nearer to where they live, then they will jump at it!
Let’s face it, the old model of a denomination or an inter denominational agency identifying an area which needs a church and cobbling together a less than willing cohort, has not got a great success rate. So if this new model is to work, then the big churches of the UK (arguably those over 250- 300) need to step up to the plate.
Such a numbers pool means, hopefully, a talent / gift resource, a critical mass, and a Leadership willing to go through the tunnel of chaos as they give away some of their best and live with a temporary resource crisis in the mother church in order to keep encouraging the next wave of newcomers into a church culture whose values are missional.
Missional churches plant churches. You don’t need to be 250 strong to do that, but in my experience that sort of size allows you to plant without imploding the home base.
(Peter Baker is Senior Pastor of Highfields Church, Cardiff and a regular contributor on BBC Radio. He is married to Sian, father to two daughters and is a former Oxford Blue rugby player.)
Does Wales really need a fresh wave of church planting?
Guest post by David Ollerton
Wales today has one of the lowest church attendance records in Europe. Outside of the cities and major towns existing churches and chapels are not, for the most part, evangelical in belief or practice. Whole denominations which used to have hundreds of ministers now have fifty or so, and many of these are looking forward to retirement. Congregations are elderly and declining everywhere except the cities, where the churches that are seeing growth are, mostly, gaining transfers as people move for study or jobs.
“Does Wales really need a fresh wave of church planting?” I would say so … for four reasons:
- There are dozens of towns, and hundreds of villages without a gospel witness. Whether to plant new, or replant into an existing work, is a challenging issue, but there will be no witness until we do one or the other. Ladies no longer wear capes and black hats on their way to chapel, carrying their Bible … or was it a hymn book.
- Existing churches are tied to ‘invitation/in-pull’ not ‘mission/outreach’ as a methodology. As a result there are few bridges into the surrounding communities and little mission. There is much discouragement and pessimism about the future because new people do not turn up any more. The walls of the bunker are high. Plants have to be missional, out-reaching and engaging to start and to survive. They have to build bridges, meet and serve people, and actively tell the ‘Good News’ to gain momentum.
- Younger people plant new, and are able to better reach their own generation. The elderly congregations do not have the urge, energy or ability to do so. The task calls for people with a calling, training, support and a willingness to sacrifice to see gospel communities in barren places.
- Throughout Welsh church history new movements have planted a new generation of churches, from the Celtic to the Puritan, to the Methodist … often by younger people in fresh ways. It is time to see it all again.
There is also an urgency about all this. What do lost people need to do to miss heaven? Nothing. We must pray to the Lord of the harvest for workers. Fancy it? Feel a nudge of call. Don’t sit on it. It is being done, it can be done, and it must be done. Wales really does need a fresh wave of church planting. There are good stories to encourage us. See the Waleswide website: www.waleswide.org / www.cymrugyfan.org.
(David Ollerton currently leads Waleswide and has been involved in several church plants over the years. Now living in Cardiff, he is married to Liz and has 3 grown-up children, one of whom is leading an overgrown church plant somewhere in England…)
Guest Bloggers
Hope you’re appreciating the new look blog. Feel free to post your comments and let us know what you think.
As part of our renewed commitment to making this blog a more valuable resource to you all, we are pleased to announce that over the coming weeks and months we will be publishing a series of posts written by a wide range of guest authors, from seasoned church planters, to young guns who are preparing to jump for the first time. They’ll be writing frankly, honestly, provocatively and with the current Welsh context in mind.
It’s our hope that their contributions will bless, encourage, serve and inspire you on your own church planting adventure.
Stay tuned…
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