Key themes around church planting 

Alex Harris shares observations on church planting nationally in the UK.

All speak to a growing flexibility and agility amongst churches, leaders and Christians to reach people, grow disciples and start new churches where, when and in the ways, they are needed, he writes 

 
We never meant to start the first church I was involved in planting. I was 22 and just a year into a radical experience of Jesus – he had walked off the pages of the Bible as friends invited me to explore faith. The ancient church building needed repairs and we moved a struggling evening service into the upstairs of a local Wetherspoon’s. Six months later over 100 young adults gathered weekly.

Over the last 15 years I have had the privilege of being a ‘serial planter’ in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. I am now a Regional Minister for the Yorkshire Baptist Association, based in Leeds and serve as Director of Planting at St Hild Centre for Church Planting.

In 2024 I published a doctorate in Church Planting in Post-Christendom Europe researching how the majority of ordinary churches might start new Christian communities because of fruitful evangelism.

Ric Thorpe (Church of England), Caroline Khoo-Millar (Assemblies of God) and I co-facilitate the National Church Planting Network that seeks to unite denominations, streams, and networks to collaborate in reaching England for Jesus through church planting.

It’s all rather wonderful from those 20-something days. But it is driven by the same desire – that new people get to meet Jesus and new communities and churches emerge as needed for them to flourish in. I get to speak to and work with leaders and ministers across the whole ecosystem of our beautiful church in England. These reflections come from seeking to serve across all those Christian denominations and streams. They are certainly not exhaustive but perhaps represent some themes worth considering.

What are some of the things I notice?


The rise of the anointed amateur as the primary planters

I’m seeing a new willingness to have a go from regular disciples and a new willingness from those in leadership to empower and celebrate this. This is true across the denominations, with ‘anointed amateurs’ becoming more confident and being more invested in to start new worshipping communities.

There is less reticence, and a lowering of the barriers to entry that is empowering more people to consider themselves first as disciples-who-make-disciples, then as proto-church planters as a result.

Linked to this is the growth in small church, mirco-church, and movements like BigLife or No Place Left who encourage ‘disciple-making movements’ of small, agile, generally home churches. There are growing numbers of ‘hybrid’ churches that have both a conventional Sunday attractional model and an asteroid belt of mirco-churches who are finding ways to flourish in this mixed model.


The evangelist is moving from a peripheral gift to a central one

It used to be the evangelist gift was something of a renegade. Appreciated but treated with caution. You won’t want an evangelist leading your church – chaos!

Often gifted evangelists might find themselves outside the church, working for a parachurch organisation with formal recognition routes difficult to access.

All that is changing. In writing On this Rock in 2023, one of the things we found was the evangelist voice being heard in decision-making and culture-setting places was key to effective church-wide evangelism and church planting. I notice more and more the evangelist voices being centralised, appreciated, welcomed, and given leadership. This is a good thing.

Some statistics in Yorkshire, where I am based, suggest 0.8 per cent of people are in church on any given Sunday. England needs evangelists. The church is more embracing of this.

Alongside this I notice a shift in ministers of churches – generally identifying as pastors and teachers – toward 2 Timothy 4:5. Whatever their primary gifting – they need to ‘… do the work of an evangelist …’ It’s a need driven not gift indulgent response, and better for it. I notice the evangelist is moving from a peripheral gift to a central one.


The beginning of the essential shift of welcoming UKME and GMH (United Kingdom Minority Ethnic/Global Majority Heritage) communities to lead

It is generally recognised that experience of growth and church planting, and the anointing and expertise associated with that, is within our UKME and GMH communities.

Yet, the majority of our senior national leadership and educators (at least in the established and (not so) new church streams) is white.

I notice the beginnings of a new intentionality to address that, not only for the vital reasons of justice and diversity, but for missional reasons. To bring the communities and leaders with greatest experience, expertise and anointing for growth into senior leadership, even if (perhaps especially if) it disrupts the historical norm.

My own network – Baptist Union of Great Britian – is at the earliest stages of this with vast work to do. But I notice the beginning nationally across streams of a shift of welcoming UKME and GMH communities to lead.


There is growing ability to simplify and diversify (therefore multiply)

I notice a growing ability to simplify what we understand church to be – to embrace a more minimal ecclesial threshold of what makes something church, and appreciate and celebrate the variety of models, shapes, methods, approaches that might emerge because of that.

There is a shift away from the encultured expectations Christians might have about what needs to happen for ‘church’ toward a simple, stripped-down approach. It is a shift away from organisational complexity toward relational depth with discipleship and mission held by relationships more than events or programs.


Alongside this welcoming of simplification is a growing celebration of diversity

I notice a move away from a spirit of competition between models of church (the attractional verses the pioneering; or institutional verses the relational; between house church and big church) toward a spirit of celebration and appreciation, and even the beginnings of proactive mutual learning. I notice a loss of competitive anxiety toward a sharing of best practice, offering of value, and cross-fertilisation of fruitfulness.

These dual observations – that we are better at being simple and better at being diverse – means I see the early signs of being better at multiplication. There is less we need to repeat (simplification) and more ways we can repeat it (diversification) making us more able to multiply new churches and Christian communities.


Our training spaces are responding to all this with training supported by academia but relocated into the apprentice model of practitioners learning from practitioners

Across the streams and denominations, I notice a re-examining and re-inventing of how we train people and who we are being asked to train. Gone is the single stream approach of training a full-time, life-long career ministry at tertiary level, to a multi-stream approach training both fulltime and spare time, both generalists and specialists, both professional and amateur.


These are just a few of the observations on church planting nationally in the UK. All speak to a growing flexibility and agility amongst churches, leaders and Christians to reach people, grow disciples and start new churches where, when and in the ways, they are needed.

I think these observations reflect a national level perspective. But they also work out at the local level, worth reflecting on if – like me – you are a local church pastor, planter, pioneer, or leader.

• How do we position the anointed amateur or ordinary believer as the primary agent for starting new churches and Christian communities? How do we move away from the limiting factor of the ‘clergy’ needing to drive church planting?
• How can you move the evangelist voice into the culture-setting and decision-making life of the church more effectively?
• What would leadership from UKME and GMH community look like in your context and, if needed, how is that invited more fully?
• What would it mean to simplify church to multiply church in more places and with more people?
• What training methods and content would more effectively release these people in your church?

I notice some challenges too.

• There is significant pre -planting work needed to bring confident and open faith sharing into ordinary Christian practice. Generally, lots of Christians are too busy to have meaningful relationships with non-Christians, and we have made the gospel too complicated for where most ordinary people are at. We need to prioritise as Christians having relationships and being able to simply explain Jesus.
• There are growing challenges of how GMH and UKME churches shift from mono-cultural to multi-cultural mission as a second or third generation live very different lives in the UK than their parents’ generation.
• How the inherited wealth and status of our legacy denominations, and the emerging energy and anointing of other streams both within and beyond them, catalyse each other and not remain siloed behind denominational walls.

Finally - fundamentally reaching people who don’t know Jesus is not an organisational, relational, financial, or strategic question, but a spiritual one. Perhaps the last thing I have noticed is a growing recognition and realisation of this, reflected in deepening movements of prayer and fasting.

I think it is the fasting especially I notice … a growing desire to fast for the Spirit’s saving work across our nation.

And if that is the one thing we do – throwing ourselves at God saying, ‘this much O Lord do we want you to move, not just with our hearts and mouths but even our stomachs as well!’ Well … this article will have been worth the writing and the reading.

‘… to win as many as possible … I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.’ (1 Corinthians 9:19, 22-23)


Image | Kasturi Laxmi Mohit | Unsplash
 

Alex Harris is the Regional Minister for Pioneering and Church Planting in the Yorkshire Baptist Association and the Director of Baptist Church Planting at St Hild Centre for Church Planting.

He also co-facilitates the National Church Planting Network


This article was first published in Together, the Christian resources magazine. Each issue of Together addresses a key topic relevant to the UK church today, with discussion from church leaders, book reviews, extracts and interviews. To find out more or to subscribe, visit www.togethermagazine.org

 

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