Church Planting Training
If Co-Mission is going to plant 60 churches by 2025 then we’re going to need a whole load of new church planters who know what they’re doing.
But we’re not only going to need church planters. We’re going to need church elders who are familiar with the who, what, where, when, how and why of church planting so that they can make wise decisions about initiating and supporting new church plants.
We’re going to need to launch teams full of people that know what to expect in church planting so that they can make it happen.
We’re going to need church planting patrons who are willing to generously and sacrificially fund church plants in their infancy whilst they grow towards sustainability.
And we’re going to need to become a church planting network who breathe the air of church planting so that we can pray for, pay for and promote church planting. Our great city of London needs many more church plants than we can imagine. And we’re all about doing what we can, with others, to make that happen.
If we were to fulfil our ambitious goal of planting 360 churches that would mean one church for every four square kilometers within the M25.
Even with the help of other churches in London, these new churches would be serving a population of 25,000 people each. That’s more people per church than you can fit into the Kennington Oval. It looks like we’re going to have to dream bigger. And plant more churches!
Over the next three years it will become my job as Director of Church-Planting Training to do what I can to raise our familiarity with the kinds of church planting open to us. And to do that I’ll seek to provide three things.
First
I’ll focus on training church planters in church planting. This is the information ‘dump from above’! I’ll download from a growing body of experience and expertise within Co-Mission, and what I’ve learnt from others. We’ve learnt lots from what’s worked and also from our mistakes! And painful though it will be to revisit that, we trust that others can learn from it and avoid repeating our errors.
Second
I’ll provide mentoring in church planting. This is the ‘hand on the back’ encouraging them to go further and faster in their efforts to build and maintain some momentum in their growth. Some of my most memorable church-planting experiences have been spent with planters in various locations across London with a big sheet of paper spread out on a table as we draw all over it in different coloured pens trying to work out what comes next and how to make it happen. This tailored approach of bespoke advice to a particular planter in a particular place is time consuming but usually disproportionately valuable in clarifying what they’re trying to do and how they might best achieve this.
Third
I’ll provide coaching in church planting. This is the ‘arm around the shoulders’ side by side reflection. This has been one of the areas that we’ve been seeking to develop during Antioch Cohort 1. It’s not in place yet, but behind the scenes we’ve been raising up and training gospel coaches who can provide encouragement and support to our church planters so that they can develop and grow in their ministries. Recent church planting studies in Australia have shown that this is one of the key ingredients to church plants reaching viability and sustainability. We want to plant increasing numbers of church plants that take root and become mature congregations.
And so it’s therefore an urgent and vital need to get gospel coaches in place for our planters over the next year.
Although I’ll primarily focus on church planters, I won’t exclusively do so. I will also pursue a broad remit to keep agitating for the work of church planting more widely. I’ll take up any opportunities to promote the work of church planting across our Co-Mission network and further afield. And so I’ll be looking for opportunities to talk to church leadership teams, theological colleges and ministry training courses as well as individuals who are keen to join Co-Mission in this exciting enterprise.
Please pray for this. It’s a new undertaking for me and the family. And it’s a new undertaking for Co-Mission. Ask the Lord of the harvest to use the efforts of this particular player coach to enable us all to raise our game as we pursue church planting for the fame of Jesus Christ and the salvation of sinners to the glory of God.