Basecamp, the new Frontiers Church Planting weekend, was not only a time for meeting some great people with big visions and a desire to see the nations reached it was also an excellent time of teaching on the subject of church planting.

We were blessed with having a number of excellent speakers over the weekend including David Stroud, Matt Hatch and Tony Thompson. The teaching was fairly basic in some ways but brought to life through the speakers sharing their experience of church planting, how they had done it and the issues they had faced and overcome.

David Stroud took the first session focusing on Character, Vision and Call.

CHARACTER

• Humility
• Conviction
• Endurance
• Stability
• Security in who we are in Christ
• Strong relationship with the Lord
• Secure marriage
• Good follower

On CALL we looked at the different ways God can call you to church plant.

These included

• God speaking into your heart
• Prophetic calling
• Dreams and vision
• Being asked by someone to do it

And finally VISION based on

• Scripture
• You
• Context

These need to be in equal tension with each other, best described as triangle with equal sides and angles                                           

Finally we looked at the skills of the church planter

• Motivated for the lost
• Able to gather lost and believers
• Self Starter
• Manage time and set goals
• Raise up other leaders
• Cast Vision
• Communicate to a small group
• Communicate clearly
• Preach to 30 – 70 people

This is some list of things and against some Mrs Beatthedrum and I do well in others we fail miserably. The good news for us is that God is involved and wants to be part of the process or changing us, or to some degree sanctify us so we become the people he wants us to be.

So we have a lot to learn, a lot to change, a lot to repent of, a lot to do and a lot of prayer is needed. For us the big thing is that God is involved and wants to do this through us.

There will be a lot of hard, difficult work ahead, but it will be worth it if we can bring Him more glory

I am currently wading through Ed Stetzers “Planting Missional Churches” which is probably the best book I have read on church planting (will do a review of it when I am finished). One of the things that has really stood out in my reading so far is the section on leaders of church plants. In this section Stetzer breaks down a plant leader’s week into four activities, evangelism, ministry, study and administration. He then looks at the proportion of time that should be used up in a leader’s week by each of these items. He bases his week on 50 hours for a full time leader and 11 for a bi-vocational leader.

Full Time

Evangelism – 15 hours (3 Hours bi-vocational)

Ministry – 15 hours (3 Hours bi-vocational)

Study / Sermon prep – 10 hours (3 Hours bi-vocational)

Administration – 10 hours (2 Hours bi-vocational)

Now this is for church plant elders and elders in new churches, however I was left wondering about elders in other longer established churches. My thinking was around the 15 hours of evangelism a week for full time elders. I wondered how many elders in the UK actually get anywhere near to this figure. Their time is often taken up with ministry and administration and the two things that probably get neglected are the study and evangelism.

In all the churches I have been a part of, most of which have been New Frontiers or Covenant Ministries churches, the elders have got bogged down in ministry and have typically left the evangelism to the congregation unless it was a major event. Evangelism in these churches has then typically not been the way of life for the church; ministry is seen as being more important and spiritual gift such as prophecy and words of knowledge are the things people seek, and looking after one another in the church is the focus, not the salvation of the lost.

This left me wondering why, then the obvious hit me.

The biblical definition of leadership or eldership is that of ancient Middle Eastern shepherds. These shepherds, unlike today’s shepherds who herd their flocks, used to train the sheep to follow after them. So if this is the biblical method of leadership then the flock will follow after the leaders. Christ followed Father, and we are to follow Christ.

Maybe this is the cause of the malaise in the British church; too many leaders have got stuck into ‘Ministry’ and forgotten the call to evangelism.

What can be done?

I guess Elders need to be encouraged to start to actively pursue personal evangelism as a way of life and calling. We also need to rise up new leaders who are evangelism focused who can leader and train others into the great work Father has called us into.

Also a large amount of pressure is placed on elders by us the body for them to take on more and more ministry tasks and more and more administration functions, we need to step up to the plate and help them. This will ease the burden on them, increase our experience and hopefully leave more space for people to reach the lost.

Elders also need to learn to delegate some of the ministry and administration functions so that they can concentrate on study and evangelism. After all this is what the apostles did in Acts 6:2. This might be hard for some elders as they have had either bad experiences of this in the past or have a ‘if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself, mentality’. Delegation is something that has to be learned for most of us.

NOTE: This is not a ‘pop’ at my eldership who work hard and carry the burden of the church with integrity and a real servant heart. It is a general comment about the health of the British church in general.