Citing a cigarette advertisment with the slogan 'Where a man belongs', John Piper erupted, 'To hell with such lies! Where a man belongs is on his knees beside his wife, leading in prayer. Where a man belongs is at the bedside of his children, leading in devotion and prayer. Where a man belongs is in the drivers seat, leading his family to the house of God. Where a man belongs is up early and alone with God, seeking vision and direction for the family. Men I challenge you in the name of Jesus Christ our King, be where you belong!'

John Piper, Desiring God, ch. 8, p. 218

David Stroud's new book "Planting Churches" is now available for pre-order from Newfrontiers Resources. It is an excellent church planting manual. A lot of church planting books are very American in style, content and aim. This one is a British book, rooted in British experience for mainly British readers!  David tells lots of stories of his church planting adventures in the midst of practical teaching on how to plant churches that change communities. A good range of church planters, including me, were asked to contribute stories, which has really added spice to the book. The book will take you through preparing to be a planter, the qualities of a church planter and then the process of planting a Church with its ups and downs. A very helpful book and warmly recommended by Terry Virgo as "a great encouragement to anybody pondering the possibility of starting a new church." - do pre-order now!

To get to the next step of 400 churches in the UK, we are going to need to plant just under 200 more churches. One of the most exciting events in the "Towards 400 initiative" is base camp. It's a new conference to help find and train the next 200 church plant leaders. This October Base camp will be one of the main places lead planters will be assessed and trained. It'll be a chance to hear from seasoned planters and interact with others on the journey to planting your first church. I have developed a Facebook application as a lighthearted way of doing an initial assessment of whether you have what it takes to plant a Church - why not try it now?

In this video Mike Betts share his vision for church planting in Northern Europe.

Church Planting in Northern Europe from Andy Moyle on Vimeo.

In it he mentions the 15th Century Hanseatic league, which was an important trading organisation amongst the Northern European ports. King's Lynn was part of it and will be celebrating its part in trading with Northern European nations this summer in a Hanseatic festival.

Mike felt that God was going to bring those kind of links spiritually as churches are planted. We are keen to be part of all that God is doing as we look to plant more churches in the Wash and the Fens and into Northern Europe! 

What is your evangelism style?

Bill Hybels wrote a great book "Becoming a Contagious Christian" a good few years ago - in it he argued that we are all wired with different styles of evangelism. He made his case from Scripture, giving examples of the different ways we find it easiest to reach out to friends, family and neighbours with the Gospel. I have taught it many times to encourage folks to see that being evangelistic is more than just the "confrontational" types who are happiest doing street preaching and the like!

1. Confrontational - happy to confront people with the truth
2. Intellectual - great at apologetics
3. Interpersonal - great at making friends
4. Invitational - loves inviting people to events
5. Serving - loves to serve people in the love of Christ
6. Testimonial - loves to tell their story
7. Power - loves using prophecy, word of knowledge and praying for the sick (I added that one!)

I recently wrote  my first facebook application "What's your evangelism style?" - it'll help you find which is your most natural style and point you to resources to help you....

Once you have moved, gathered your core team, talked to other local church leaders, you need to gather your first 50. Fifty is a viable number for a public Sunday morning launch. It's enough people to make things work and for it not to rattle! So where do you get they come from?

People join a plant for a number of reasons

1. Pioneers - they have moved to the area because of the church plant
2. Moving Area - Christians moving into town for a job move etc. Often they will join a plant because it is the most friendly and welcoming church and hungry for the extra bodies.
3. Lost to the Church - these are Christians who have given up on the Church for various reasons. Some will be a pain because they have unresolved issues and have left every other church in the area. They are more like wolves in sheep's clothing. However, I have found that a lot of "lost to the church" people have been genuinely hurt and heal up in a grace filled New Testament church. Church plants also attract all the Christian nutters and people who would love to be a big fish in a small pond for all the wrong reasons - so you do need plenty of discernement, wisdom and grace. We have been genuinely blessed by many "lost to the church" folk who have healed up and got back in the battle.
4. Non-Christians - as you meet people, you find those "men of peace" who are open to the Gospel.
5. Moving Church - lastly you will gather those who have been surviving in a dead church or who aren't enjoying where they are at and are waiting for you to come. It's not the kind of growth we are looking for and you need to make sure people leave their old church well before you let them join you. I have sent people back to their pastor to leave well. 

We have tracked how people have come to us - because I want to make sure we are growing through salvation and bringing the prodigals home.

How do we gather those first 50 then?

In those early days you have a window  of opportunity being the new thing in town. For 18months you will gather those who are lost to the Church and those moving church, but that will tail off. The key is to lay foundations for evangelistic growth at the same time as benefitting from the freebie growth which tails off.

 

1. Encourage your core team to be building friendships with non-Christians.
2. Brainstorm ways of getting the message out cheaply and effectively. That helps get ownership for the task from the core team.
3. Leaflets - I have real faith for leafletting. It's a numbers game though - 1 visitor for every 1000 leaflets!
4. Town centre give-aways - printed balloons, hot cross buns... which give you a quick window of opportunity to invite people to what you are doing. Just handing out leaflets will mean you will be litter picking later. A 30 sec chat while giving away a freebie will get a leaflet in the pocket and not the street!
5. Treasure Hunts - 
6. Meet people for Costa regularly and get used to sharing the story and vision for the plant in a 30 sec, 3 min and 30 min chunks.
7. Get a banner put up in town - one those wires the council use for Christmas lights - you'll need permission from the shop, the landlords and the council and then insurance too. Quite a
8. Posters in every doctors surgery and anywhere else there is a notice board like supermarket, community centres etc.
9. Use the web - website, Google adwords, facebook and so on - but there is no substitute for getting out there and meeting people face to face.

 

  

Setting up as a Charity

Church plants exist for charitable purposes under English and Welsh law – that is we exist to spread religion! As such when income grows to more than £5000 per annum, there is a statutory duty to register as a charity. An added benefit is that as a charity, you can register with the Inland Revenue for gift aid tax relief which will further boost income. This article outlines my experience in setting up as a Charity in two church plants and is in no way intended to be legal advice.
This article is about registering as a charity in England and Wales – different rules apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

At the point of formally establishing the charity you must have more than just vision and ideas. You need to be able to demonstrate to the Charity Commission that you are financially viable and ready to operate. Some evidence of income, or prospective income is normally expected .

What type of charity?

Currently there are two types of charity – charitable trust and charitable company
A Charitable trust is simpler to set up and operate. The disadvantage is that the trustees are
personally liable for debt, third party claims and so on.
A Charitable Company is registered with the Charity Commission and Companies House. The charity is then a legal entity in itself and any liabilities are to the Charitable company not the trustees themselves. An incorporated charity does not eliminate all risk but it does significantly minimise it. Charitable Incorporated Organisations are new type of charity that is due to start sometime until at least  2009. They are as yet untested and untried and Stewardship Services and Independent Examiners are both not recommending them.

How do I set up as a Charity?

If you are going to become a Charitable Company you will definitely to pay to get it done. Two well reputable organisations well experienced in charity formation, which do charitable trusts and companies are:
Independent Examiners – www.indepentexaminers.co.uk  01243 555611 Daryl Martyn is very willing to
give an hour’s free advice to Church planters.
Stewardship Services – www.stewardship.org.uk 020 8502 5600.

When setting up The Bridge Church, I used Stewardship Services and found them excellent. Second time round in King’s Lynn we did it ourselves pretty simply. The Evangelical Alliance have produced a model trust deed for leader led churches, which separates eldership from trustees and makes sure elders/leadership teams  legally lead the Church! Using the EA model trust deed and filling in the blank allows a fast-track approach which has takes some plants just two weeks to become a Charity for very little work.

A Checklist

1. Choose your trustees and get Enhanced Criminal Records Bureau checks done for them. Getting CRBs is usually the main hold up! When I last applied, the Charity Commission wanted to see them. Daryl Martyn of Independent Examiners reports that is no longer the case, although they would still need to be done. CRBs can take 6 weeks to come through. Some Newfrontiers Churches have umbrella status for handling CRBS, or you can use a local body for which an admin charge is made… http://www.crb.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=349 to find an umbrella body. You will need each trustee to provide identification documents in the application process http://www.crb.gov.uk/pdf/crb11%20guidance.pdf
2. Create an ex-offenders policy statement http://www.adventuresofachurchplanter.com/forum/download/file.php?id=3 is the CRB’s generic one
3. Create a child protection policy http://www.adventuresofachurchplanter.com/forum/download/file.php?id=2 is an example
4. Search the Charity Commission database for your intended trust name to make sure it is unique
5. Download the Evangelical Alliance model trust deed and notes and fill in the blanks. http://www.eauk.org/resources/publications/trust-deed.cfm
6. Hold a trustees meeting to sign the deed.
7. Download and fill in the charity Commission forms from http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/registration/regpack.asp
   CC5a - Application for registration  - you will only need to fill in parts for a fast-track application using the EA model deed.
   CC5c - Trustee declaration. Make sure each trustee has a copy of CC3 - The Essential Trustee: What you need to know
8. Send off the forms, policy documents and CRBs  A number of recent plants have done the DIY approach with success. Their experiences are in the Church planters forum http://www.adventuresofachurchplanter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6

Kev and Em Riley really have gone on a Church planting adventure - moving to Gdansk in Poland to plant Grace Church Gdansk. They have organised a Poland weeked 17-19th July for other adventurers to taste the plant too.

Kev writes.... Someone once said, “What happens in Gdansk, moves the world”.The beginning of a world war, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe – both world changing events, both rooted in the history of Gdansk and yet today, Jesus is at work in this city far more significantly... he’s building his church here! As a family, we’ve lived in Gdansk, Poland, for seven months now and are seeing God do amazing things among us! With no links here whatsoever, we’re experiencing God’s blessing among us in a powerful way - thirty-two people gathered to a social event, the establishment of an English writing course with students from the university, relational links into neighbouring Kaliningrad.

If you ave a call to church-planting into a pioneering situation (particularly Northern Europe) then this weekend could be life-changing! If you’re a student, consider coming with us. Spend time learning another language and culture and study (in English) in an excellent university. If you’re a family, come over and see what’s involved in relocating and starting over. Pioneering families expressing authentic faith and love are vital to building the church here! If you have an overseas call into Northern Europe, then come and see how God is leading us to be involved in other nations, even at this early stage of our life as a church.

This weekend will give you a good sense of what Gdansk is like as a city and you will come away with a clear idea as to what we are about as a church plant. You will meet pioneering people with a heart to see Jesus’ rule established in the earth and you’ll eat great food! It just doesn’t get better than that!

Download a pdf about the weekend...Poland weekend.pdf

When Paul walked round Athens in Acts 17 he was getting a feel for the place and working out how he could communicate the Gospel to the people there. That's now called "ethnographics" . Paul walked round, observing, talking to people and getting distressed by the sheer scale of idolatry. Verse 16 "While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.", verse 23 "for while I was walked round and looked carefuly at your objects of worship, I even found..." 

Church planters need to do their demographic research to get a statistical feel for where they are going to plant. They also need to do some ethnographics - walk around, ask questions and get a feel for the place too.

For instance, when preparing to move to King’s Lynn Idiscovered that 10% of the population were from Eastern Europe by doing mydemographic research. Wandering around, I found 3 “Russian” rather than “Polish”shops. Polish shops are springing up all over the UK as the UK population hasgrown by some 500,000 Poles since 2004. Doing a little historical research, Idiscovered that King’s Lynn has a historical link with Russia from theHanseatic period and that link has continued. Talking to the Russian shopkeepers,people in the shops and listening on the streets, I discovered that the EasternEuropeans were mainly Russian speakers rather than Lithuanian, Latvian orPolish. I then discovered that none of the Protestant Churches were activelyreaching Russian speakers, so we then looked to recruit Russian speakers to thecore team to reach them. In the last 18 months since starting The Gateway Church another Russian shop has opened up!

Get your core team to wander round too and talk to people to get a feel for your new patch.

Avoid questionnaires and surveys, but look to have naturalquestions depending on who you are talking to, that flow from the socialcontext (jobs, schools, housing) to internal stuff, like hopes and fears, to religious life (church and religion) to world-view. The purpose is to listen and learnand you may only find out information from one category.

Your core team will gain a lot of ownership for evangelisingin the plant by being involved in this process. It will be helpful toincorporate brainstorming what you have all learned at the core prayer/visionmeetings.

 

1. What brought you here?
2. What do you like or dislike about living here?
3. What kind of church does this place need?
4. What’s the toughest thing for you when you consider faith and spiritual things?
5. If you ask God one question what would it be?
6. Are things the way they ought to be?

 

 

This year we want to see a Russian speaking small group established at The Gateway Church from among the 4500 or so Eastern Europeans in the area. Daniel & Alisa Foytik are key in that - last year they did a great job making contacts and serving the Russian speaking community - to the point that we have had some glowing testimonials...

Louise Heinemann, Project Manager,KLARS 

KLARS is a small local charity, providing advice and information for newcomers in their own languages (for details see www.klarskl.org.uk). We average 410 clients a month, but with only two full time and two part time employees, volunteers are a vital component. Alisa and Daniel Foytik helped us as volunteers throughout 2008, and were marvellous. They were cheerful and conscientious, reliable and hard working, coming regularly to our drop-in sessions, and taking endless trouble to resolve people’s enquiries and problems. They helped us and our clients enormously, in a very practical way. The queue in the waiting room is much longer now.

We miss them also in the wider context; they ran an international café which gave people background information on specific areas (e.g. health provision), thus forestalling some of the enquiries we now have to field.  More importantly perhaps, they were helping to foster a group feeling amongst new arrivals,  and people were beginning to share issues and help each other more.  They were beginning to participate in wider community events, such as Around the World at the local Food Fortnight event. Daniel and Alisa organised a table of food which was one of the high points of last November’s event,  raising awareness, and helping local people to see the positive side to migrant workers. 

 

PC Pat Kavanagh, Norfolk Police

Daniel and Alisa Foytik are two young people who have given their time freely to assist me to break down the barriers of distrust that exist between the non-English speaking members of our community and new arrivals seeking advice and assistance from the police service. With their help I have been able to explain our processes and procedures in order to overcome the expectations that the police can solve many of the problems that new comers encounter; housing issues, rent and tenant disputes as well as pay and conditions problems relating to employers. This has resulted in less demand being placed on police services and the raising of awareness of organisations willing to provide specialist assistance and advice. 

Great News...

A charity has offered to match all funding we get up to £6000! We have got £2760 pledged so far. Can you help - we would love to bring Daniel and Alisa back to see the breakthrough. 4 people gift aiding £80 a month would cover what we need to make a real impact among Russian speakers. More details at www.adventuresofachurchplanter.com/russianministry2009.pdf!

A good website is an important tool in your publicity armoury. It's an anonymous way for people to check you out and quickly communicates your vision, values and what you do. The look and feel communicate that as loudly as the words! Vision and values are caught as well as taught. So it is worth doing well.

That said websites are just one tool, so you need to spend time and money in proportion to impact. Most people who had just moved to the area came through our website - because when you move, most of us would type "Church townname" into Google and pick one!

Ask yourself these questions before you start? 

What type of site?

Static - simple site that gives the who what, where and when and doesn't need to be updated. Quick and cheap to do

Dynamic - larger site that needs updating regularly - but make sure you do. There is nothing worse than advertising last year's Christmas event on the front page. 

Who is it for?

New visitors, church plant members, Christians and/or not yet Christians - probably all four. So think about what you want to say and how!

How will visitors find it? 

Once your site is built, you need to submit it to search engines - Google is the most important, the other important seach engines will follow. Your site will rank pretty lowly to start off with, but you want to be aiming to be on the first page of results for a search like "church townname".

1) Pay for advertising with Google adwords - set up a campaign for the most likely keywords people will use to find you "church townname" and set a budget of at least £30 per month - each click to your site will probably be around 10p and the most expensive month for us was £3. The £30 per month budget is to ensure your ad is actually shown!

2) Optimise your site for search engines...

The basics are important.

i) Domain name - www.churchnametownname.com - having the word "church" and your town name help show the search engines those are keywords.

ii) Title tag - "church name town name - page name" again shows what is important to the search engines

iii) Good readable content that has the keywords in it with some friendly looking photos

iv) The most important stuff towards the top of the page

v) Link to other related sites and get them to link to you.

How to build a site 

Look at church sites you like and get a quote - the designer is usually a link at the bottom.

Find a techie to do one for free. 

Have a look at our Church plant website package - we have a church plant website template with simple admin interface, calendar, password protected members address list, small group admin, and sermon uploads. Try it here!

A word of warning

Websites and blogs are one tool - but can be very time consuming - watch the time and cost vs impact ratio! Mark Driscoll advises against church planters blogging on the Acts 29 blog!

Last year saw an amazing start to our ministry with Russian speakers in Kings Lynn. Daniel & Alisa Foytik came over for the year from Tver, Russian on voluntary workers visas. They were fantastic at making contacts and getting right into the heart of the Russian speaking migrant worker community. Kings Lynn is a dormitory town for fruit picking, flower picking and farming and fishing industries of the Fens and the Wash and we have at least 10% of our population from the Baltic States.

 

 

 

They are back in Russia for a break. Alisa tried for a job in a local school, but unfortunately didn't have enough points on the immigration scheme for a more permanent visa. We would like to bring them back for another year - we believe that the brekathrough of Russian converts getting added to the church plant is just round the corner. They ran a successful Alpha course just before they came to the end of the year.

The issue for bringing them back is finance. Our start up grant covered their costs last year and so we need to raise £1000 a month to cover their living expenses - flights, accomodation, food allowance and ministry costs. 10 people sponsoring them by £80 per month gift aided would cover that. Can you help?

Please download their newsletter and sponsorship form  

Found a very interesting online journal Themelios for pastors and Biblical scholars. Tim Kellers article on the Gospel for the poor and  James Hamilton's article on Acts were particularly interesting!

 

Who do you want on your church planting core team? 

So you have worked out you have the characteristics of a church planter, you've realised from Acts 18 that most people will come because you ask them, but who do you ask?

1) Make a wish-list of the skills in the plant you will need in the early days 

 

• Potential leadership team
• Gatherers
• Worship leader
• Preachers
• Administrator
• Kids worker
• Finance
• Welcome team - catering, hospitality...