Mission Alive

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Church Planting Process

In Mission Alive we look at church planting as a four-fold process taking five years. The parts of the process are:

• Look
• Learn
• Launch
• Launch Again

Look

Introspection. During the first part of this period, the prospective church planter and his family undergo a time of reflection. They prayerfully ask, "Is church planting what God desires us to do? Are we gifted in this area? Do we fit the characteristics of a church planter? Can we imagine ourselves as church planters? Do we affirm the spiritual, missional, and practical church planting values of Mission Alive?"

Pre-Assessment. If the church planting family decides to take additional steps into Mission Alive, they will do an informal interview with Gailyn Van Rheenen or John Cooke, Director of Church Planter Care, and complete the application to enter the Discovery Lab.

Learn

Mission Alive provides focused assessing and equipping in church planting during the Learn, Launch, and Launch Again stages. The initial "Learn" stage involves three distinct learning experiences or labs.

Discovery Lab. The Discovery Lab enables Mission Alive as a ministry organization and the prospective church planting families to understand their (1) gifts and ministries in church planting and (2) personal and family readiness for church planting. Up to five family units participate together in each Discovery Lab. The Discovery Lab will ascertain whether the gifts and abilities of prospective church planters will enable the family to successfully initiate and nurture new churches. After this Lab qualified candidates enter Mission Alive and begin focused training and equipping in church planting.

Theology for Church Planting Lab. The Theology for Church Planting Lab enables church planters to think through the meaning and practice of missional church planting. These missional understandings will guide church planters to understand their place in the mission of God and guide them to plant churches that are formed by the calling and sending of God and that reflect the redemptive reign of God in Christ. By the end of this lab church planters will have written a statement of missional understandings, formed by scripture, which guide and shape all practices of ministry.

Church Planting Strategy Lab. The Church Planting Strategy Lab provides church planting families and individuals with the multiple tools needed to initiate churches through developing a core team, developing spiritual friendships with searchers and skeptics, nurturing new Christians to maturity, and training leaders. The primary deliverable of this particular lab is a working plan for church planting in a specific context.

During the lab, the church planters develop . . .

• a time line for implementing a church planting strategy.
• tools for navigating and studying their target culture.
• theological frameworks for missional thinking (missio dei, the kingdom of God, incarnation).
• a spiritual formation track to nurture searchers and Christians to maturity.
• patterns of spiritual formation in intergenerational small groups.
• missional connection to community.
• ability to structure missional worship.
• tools for launching a public, celebratory worship.
• guidelines for building a church-planting team.
• children’s ministry in church planting.
• youth ministry in church planting.
• patterns of personal care.

In addition to equipping through a series of labs, Mission Alive provides care for the church planting families during the first three crucial years of the church planting. Soon after the Church Planting Strategy Lab, Mission Alive collaborates with each church planting family to select a mentor and coach to work with them. The mentor focuses on family and spiritual aspects of life and the coach on the process of church planting. The coach is a church planter himself and knows from experience what needs to be done to form and nurture an authentic Christian community. The mentor, perhaps an elder of a partnering church, shepherds the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the church planting family. Mission Alive believes that no family or individual should plant a church alone but rather should work within an environment of encouragement and guidance.

Launch

Effective church planting in an urban environment requires a full-time effort by the church planter beginning at this stage. The Launch stage is divided into four periods: pre-launch, home fellowship launch, public church launch, and post-launch.

Core Team Launch

Several tasks are significant during the pre-launch period. First, church planters will pray the Lord of the harvest to guide them in the church planting. Second, they will continue to form a core team of Christians with whom they will plant the church (a process that probably began earlier). Third, based upon a biblical theology of the church, church planters will work with their core team to develop a philosophy and organization of the new church planting. Finally, church planters equip small group facilitators. Their training is important to a church who views itself as "a community of God on a pilgrimage through life helping each other to continue as Christ's disciples and encouraging others to join them on the journey to reach heaven." Christians in these new church plantings will practice the "one-another" relationships descriptive of Christian fellowship in the Bible. Church planters must assume the roles of catalysts, vision casters, coaches, and practical theologians during this and succeeding stages.

Numerous other activities also begin during this stage, including the development of children’s, youth, singles, and worship ministry. The church planters and core team, from the inception of the pre-launch period, also begin to tithe or give as God has prospered them (2 Cor. 8:3-9).

This pre-launch stage lasts a minimum of four months but not more than six months, as determined by the church planters, coaches, and core team.

Home Fellowship Launch

The church is launched as a networking of home fellowships who seek to find divine, biblical answers to the dilemmas of life. Small group facilitators are taught how to move participants from issues of life to divine, biblical responses. These groups provide a spiritual environment for nurturing new Christians and reaching friends, neighbors, and relatives who do not yet walk with God in their everyday lives.

Continual development of small group leaders is a priority since the focus in all stages is incorporating new Christians into small fellowships of faith to facilitate evangelism and spiritual formation.

The core team continues to develop the children’s, youth, singles, and worship ministries in preparation for the public church launch. Sometimes a new minister is hired to fill in the talent/ministry gaps.

The newly formed church meets as a networking of home fellowships for four to six months, thus establishing its DNA as a small-group church with a focus on personal spiritual formation.

Public Church Launch

The public launch of the church, usually in a centrally-located, easily accessible rented facility, like a school or theatre, occurs at month ten to twelve of the church planting.

The Public Church Launch stage continues the development of small group leaders and children’s, youth, singles, and worship ministry. Extensive advertising has announced the public-church launch to the community. Special events, such as block parties, coffee houses, a day in the park, and children’s camps, are initiated to draw the community into the church. All these events should depict the love, holiness, and awe of God. No agenda is hidden. The church is God’s people in the public square as well as in the home fellowships. The prayer "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven" is worked out in daily encounters. These new churches are passionately, whole-heartedly, urgently pursuing full devotion to Christ. In this process of spiritual formation character is formed to reflect the holiness, love, and faithfulness of God.

Post-Launch

New church plantings should become self-supporting within three years with a decreasing financial commitment by the supporting churches and foundations each year.

The Post-Launch Stage focuses on coaching leaders, ministry effectiveness, modes of new member equipping, training of leaders, continued spiritual formation of new members, and development of missions.

Launch Again

By year five the newly planted church should plant its first church. Purchase of property for a place of permanent worship should not precede planting a new church. Property and buildings can become so all-consuming that the church never establishes its DNA as a church-planting church. The purchase of property should begin from year 5-7.

During this "launch-again" period, the tasks of vision-casting for church planting, discovering and equipping a new church planter, and raising finances become major ministry tasks.