The Early Days of a Church Plant
Poster by Keith1999
About the Author -
Steve has been involved in church leadership for more than a decade, and Grace Church is his second church plant.
This Article
Friday, 6 March, 2009 - 11:32The early days of a church plant are a crucially formative stage in the church’s life. Steve Petch (Grace Church Chichester) reflects here about some of the things he considers to be essential to these early days, and also some of the potential dangers to be aware of. These are based on both his experience of church planting and his observations of other people who have planted or attempted to plant churches. Steve has been involved in church leadership for more than a decade, and Grace Church is his second church plant.
1. Essential: Have a clearly defined visionary leader who is free to lead
- Church planting is spiritual warfare. Churchill, when writing about the Allied Supreme War Council and the British War Cabinet of early 1940, said, “One can hardly find a more perfect example of the impotence and fatuity of waging war by committee, or rather by groups of committees.”
- Sending churches must be especially aware of this danger and let the leader plant without clipping their wings. Leaders must be free to lead!
Danger: Not allowing leadership to be transferred in practice
- Once you have launched you are a church plant without eldership.
- Eldership from a sending church must not dictate or decide the way that the plant goes forward! The new leadership team must do this with clear direction from the visionary leader, together with apostolic oversight.
- Friendship, advice and input are great, but final decision making authority needs to rest with the people who will take the long term responsibility for leading and who are meeting and planting together. They have paid the price; they must have the freedom to lead.
2. Essential: Launch the church with a name and a vision from day one
- You are not just a cell group ‘having a go.’
- To continue the battle analogy, soldiers will rally to a banner in battle; you need to raise up a standard for the group. You can amend your name and vision later on if necessary.
Dangers:
Starting a public Sunday morning meeting too early
- If you do it too early it will drain you and wear people out.
- Find other ways of meeting until numbers are right. (I think you can do a public meeting with as few as 30 adults if the gifting and the hearts of the people are right.)
Poor communication of vision or activities
- Poor communication is a disaster waiting to happen. It can cause unnecessary hurt and can easily lead to your church plant shrinking.
- Be clear about the vision and your aims – state them regularly.
- Be clear about your plans for the months ahead. Give people a clear timetable of what is happening and when, but leave them open to the idea that it may change.
- Say things repeatedly and use every method available including verbal notices, written sheets, visual displays and electronic methods.
- E-mail is great (over 98% of our members use it). You can easily send out weekly e-mail updates to remind people of key messages.
Dilution of the vision
- The visionary leader should do at least 75% of the preaching and leading in the early days.
- State the vision, restate it regularly and keep it uppermost in people’s minds.
- Don’t get knocked off track by good ideas that may be very worthy but are not God’s plan for your church plant.
3. Essential: Have an initial leadership team that will stand down later on
- It is unlikely that you will have more than one person, if any, with eldership experience and gifting in the initial group.
- Build a team: male and female involvement may be best; perhaps husbands and wives, depending on calling and ability. (I am not talking about eldership; governmental oversight by elders will come later on in the order of events and will require transition).
- Look for different gifts in the team: a visionary leader who can preach and teach needs help from pastoral, evangelistic, administrative and prophetic gifting. I would be cautious about planting a church without having those gifts represented, even if only at a basic level.
- This team should understand that, with the exception of the visionary leader, they will ALL stand down at some point when the initial phase is over (which could take anything from months to years). The visionary leader must then be free to start again from clear ground. Different people have different capacities and gifting, the initial team is unlikely to be the right team for when the church is established.
4. Essential: Invest in administration
- Don’t expect the leader to do administration, find someone with the gifting and the character. They might become the first employee.
5. Essential: Separate your finances from the sending church immediately
- You need a ‘war chest’ so start building it up. Remember the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
- Finances can be processed by a sending church, but in a separate column, set aside specifically for the church plant.
- New people to the plant will want to give to the plant, and may be reluctant to give to the sending church.
- Get help and advice when it comes to setting up a charitable trust.
- Danger: Continuing to attend the sending church on Sundays after you have launched the plant
- It may be okay in an initial phase when you are looking to see if God is in it or not.
- Once you are clear that you are called to plant, and the right leader is ready to go, I would urge you to separate from the sending church and meet together on Sundays, even if it is in a home. This can be simple and low key and is a preparation phase.
- You almost certainly need to stop attending the sending church before a public Sunday meeting is viable.
- If the people continue to attend the sending church on Sundays it can hinder and even kill the intention to plant and it will drain money, resources, enthusiasm and time from the church plant.
6. Essential: Make friends with one another
- Get to know people in the church, have social times. Hang out together and be family.
- Aim to ensure newcomers get a meal invitation from a leader.
- Consider having lunch together on a Sunday as long as it is feasible. If you can’t have fun with one another, you won’t attract others to join you.
- Danger: People with their own agendas
- Not everyone who turns up is sent by God; some are wolves in sheep’s clothing ... or worse.
- Other churches or organisations may have an agenda for you that is not God’s agenda for you. It’s okay to say no. “We are just not ready for that” works well.
- Christians who join you from other settings may be a gift or a problem. Discernment is important so you can tell who is to be invested in and who will be a distraction.
7. Essential: Aim for high quality Spirit inspired worship from day one
- If you don’t start with it you may never get it; pray for anointed worship leaders.
- Good musicians attract other good musicians. Bad music puts them off.
- Find a worship leader with a good heart attitude and with a good skill level who you trust to work with you in meetings and who will work to release and include others.
8. Essential: Find people to run your youth/children’s work and keep it high profile in the church
- Don’t just leave it to parents; find someone with a heart for it.
- Children can be a key to communities in this country.
9. Essential: Let people know what you are doing
- Let other Newfrontiers churches know; people may come and join you.
- Inform other local churches. It is better for them to hear about you directly, rather than via gossip. One way is to write to them all, or try to get invited to a local churches together group or ministers fraternal. They may not all be friendly, but they will all know you are there.
- When you are ready to go public with a Sunday meeting, go for PR in a big way, using every means available to you.
10. Essential: Gather people together at least once a week for prayer, worship and vision
- The visionary leader needs to keep gathering people and casting their vision; it cannot be left to small group leaders to do it.
- Allow time to pray and worship together and for God to speak to you corporately.
Danger: Multiplying into small groups too early
- The visionary leader needs to keep gathering people together for prayer, worship, teaching and vision setting at least weekly.
- If you don’t have a Sunday meeting together and you are meeting in several different homes mid week then the vision and direction will be lost. (At Grace Church, Chichester we had over 100 people on a Sunday before we launched mid week life groups.)
11. Essential: Be convinced of your calling
- This will give you strength to endure when things get tough.
- You are not just ‘having a go to see what happens.’
- I believe you need a call to plant and a call to a specific location. These may go hand in hand but to have one without the other is not enough to get started on a church plant.
12. Essential: Do a few things and do them well
- It is better to do a few things to a standard of excellence, than to do lots of things half heartedly. Decide what is achievable with faith and go for it.
- Beware of other groups or people with their own agendas for you and your church or false expectations of you. Approach joint church meetings or initiatives with sensible caution.
- Key things at first are: welcoming newcomers, worship, preaching, prayer, children’s work, alpha and having fun together.
- When you are ready, use every means you can to publicise yourself: leaflets, carnivals, street outreach, posters, newspapers, door to door, radio, promotional pens, invitations, community involvement, Christmas services, cheese and wine nights, quiz nights, stalls at the local fete and anything else you can think of.
Danger: Starting a ministry without the right leadership
- You cannot do everything from day one, so only do what you can reasonably sustain.
- Do not try to do a ‘ministry’ before you have the people with the heart and vision for it who will give their all.
13. Danger: Trying to imitate another churches style or methods
- God has a unique plan for each church, and what you do will vary as you grow.
- Seek God’s plan through prayer and fasting. Look for prophetic input.
- There is no one formula you can follow that will work every time.
14. Danger: Expecting growth to come too quickly
- Pray for visitors to come and then welcome them well.
- Pray for God to send workers to join you in the harvest field.
- Jesus builds the church. I have found that He brings what we need when we need it
- Be faithful in the small things. The first 30 people are harder to gather than the second 30. The first 100 are harder than the second 100.
15. Danger: Not properly ensuring people understand the sacrifice involved up front
- You are going to war, there is a cost. People need to know that they will pay a price before they start.
- Some people will still think it’s going to be ‘fun’, regardless of what you say to them. Often it’s not! Sickness, spiritual attack, difficulty moving house, attacks from controlling spirits, discouragement and lots more await you!
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