When we first received the call to start to church plant we contacted Matt Hatch at Mosaic Church in Leeds if he could provide us with some recommended reading, as he runs a course for potential church planets in their church. He provided us with a list of over thirty books but there was one that he recommended we start with and that was Planting Missional Church (Planting a church that’s biblically sound and reaching people in culture) by Ed Stetzer so via good old Amazon we purchased a copy and have been reading through it for some time (I tend to have two or three books on the go at any one time).

This book covers ALL aspects of church planting starting with looking at what a church plant is, what a church planter looks like, how to identify church planters, the different types of church plant and overcoming the objections to church planting.

It then moves onto the investigating every area of a new church plant, from leadership, meeting, fund raising, pulling together the core group, worship, advertising, the first meeting, buildings, evangelism, discipleship and planting from a plant.

Stetzer has a great deal of experience having planted a number of churches himself and having trained a huge number of successful and unsuccessful church planters.

The main downside of this book is the fact that it is American based and focused, so he expects people to come to the new church after receiving a mailer about it, which would not be the expectation in the UK. So as with all American books we have to take what is good out of it and ignore that bits that do not apply to us. However there is so much in this book that even with the ‘americanisms’ taken out there is still a great deal we can learn from it. For example the view that full time elders of the church should split their 50 hours a week in

1.      Evangelism 15 hours

2.      Ministry 15 hours

3.      Administration  10 hours

4.      Study / sermon prep 10 hours

Holds true in all churches and most context, although most church leaders i know work more like a 60 hour week!

This book therefore is an excellent starting position for anyone interested in leading or joining a church plant. It pulls no punches about the fine line between success and failure and will give anyone who thinks that church planting is a breeze a reality check.

It has however fired up something inside me that wants to go and plant a church, all we are waiting for now is instruction as to where that is, so feel free to pray about it for us.

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.