The importance of church planting

Posted Mar 22, 2017 in Culture

Since the launch of Generate 2021, the new church planting initiative of the Uniting Church SA, Rev Dr Graham Humphris has had many questions to answer – most commonly, why plant new churches when existing ones are declining?

As the Church Planting Officer for the Uniting Church SA, this is a topic that Graham has given considerable thought.

“There’s a lot happening to support current congregations. Most of the Presbytery and Synod’s resources go into supporting existing communities – Property, Finance, Mission Resourcing, Pastoral Relations and Mission Planning are some of the most obvious examples. The latter two departments are particularly involved in helping to support growing and stable congregations, and helping ageing or declining congregations to revitalise and sustain their ministry,” he explains.

“Church planting, on the other hand, is given minimal resources. But this is not a competition – new churches are not competing with old ones, we’re all part of the wider Church and want to see the Kingdom of God grow.”

When Graham talks about planting churches he’s not referring to Fresh Expressions or Messy Church – he’s talking about planting that leads to a new community meeting for worship, witness and service. The aim of Generate 2021 is to see 10 of these communities established over the next five years.

“Church planting is an adventure of faith, grounded in Jesus’ promise and command, which involves a planned process of starting and growing churches that grow through conversion, make disciples, and plant more churches,” Graham explains.

“Planting churches is not a new idea or a fad – it’s something in our DNA as the Uniting Church. We are commanded to go out and make disciples, and studies show that new churches are significantly more likely to reach new people and grow more through evangelism.”

There are three common models church plants tend to follow – the campus model where an existing church plants a new community, the start-up model, and the re-plant or regeneration.

“This last model actually provides an opportunity for some of those congregations that are declining,” says Graham. “Is your church open to something like this? Let us know! As long as your church is open to change we’re open to going out to re-plant. I’m also eager to talk to people interested in the other models or church planting in general.”

From 27 February to 3 March, Graham ran an intensive church planting course with Rev Tim Hein. The course covered why we plant churches, essentials of church planting, context and culture, characteristics of church planters, the process of church planting, and more. 

“[We held] interactive lectures and seminars, holding discussions, and bringing in practitioners with experience in planting churches. It [was] a great opportunity to learn more about this exciting area, and we’re really hoping to get a lot of people coming along,” Graham says.

“I really believe that planting new churches is going to be the most important and effective way forward for the Uniting Church in SA as we seek to reach people and disciple them for Jesus.”

For more information about church planting, Generate 2021 or future church planting training, please contact Rev Dr Graham Humphris on 8236 4235 or email Turn on Javascript!

This article was originally published in the February/March 2017 edition of New Times. Changes have been made to some of the text and quotes relating to the church planting intensive, which was run in February-March.

An article with more statistics on the benefits of church planting and the creation of Generate 2021 was published in the October/November 2016 edition of New Times and is available online at here.

Comments

Write comment