If you are going to plant a church it helps to know what a church is! What are the negotiable and non-negotiables for the church you are going to plant. If you intend to copy an existing church you will know what the end result should look like. However, you may be open to an expression of church that looks different to your present experience of church and will want to know what is acceptable.
Church planting provides opportunity to express church in new and appropriate ways for our country. You may become involved in planting a defined community of people with a name, constitution and even a building; you might be a small band of friends trying to reach others as a group; or you might be hoping to form another congregation alongside others in your church - be that on Sundays or during the week. Perhaps this fresh expression of church will be part of your existing church, but those people will have little contact with the existing church or they may share church life with them.
A few years ago when Baptists planted a new church it looked fairly much like the existing ones with a few tweaks; but that is changing.
Now the church planting landscape is seeing new forms of church which, on the surface at least, seem to have little in common with the inherited church. So what is church, if you hope to plant one?
There are many different ways to organise the church that comes out of the mission in which we are involved. In the words of church planting consultant Stuart Murray-Williams, “Church planters act within the boundaries of convictions, context and constraints and these shape what the church is”.
What's next?1. Introduction |
