Frameworks & Analogies for Planning Church Plants and Fresh Expressions

Planning and discernment in context work together. Our article on this site under this heading summarised the shift in emphasis amongst planters and pioneers, from detailed advanced planning to discernment in context. The Mission Shaped Church Report highlighted this. (p. 24)

Now the background principles here (again well developed in the Mission-shaped Church report) are that missionary engagement with our diverse contexts should lead to all sorts of fresh expressions of church. And too much detailed advance planning can tend to lead us to replicate aspects of church as we know it, rather than allow authentic contextual church to emerge through an incarnation, death and resurrection process. Certainly this adventure of letting go of so many superficial assumptions about church, taking only the gospel of Jesus and a few core essentials of church requires us to focus much more on discernment in context and to learn skills associated with spiritual direction.

However, we believe that it would be dangerous to set discernment against planning and dispense with planning. At the simplest level, a cafe church vision as it emerges needs a budget, a childrens church needs to plan child protection, any fresh expression needs to plan training of its team and work out its values.

So our resolution of this developing polarisation is to bring together planning and discernment in what we would describe as phased planning. We maybe don’t need detailed advanced planning, but we do need lots of short-term plans that enable us to implement effectively and responsibly the most recent insights and direction that we gain from discernment (itself drawing on both well researched information as well as revelation!). The following diagram seeks to illustrate how we think these two disciplines need to be held together in a dynamic missional journey.

So what frameworks and analogies have been used by pioneers and planters? And which axes ones best to this developing insight of a marriage between discernment in context and some advanced planning. To consider this and provide you with an outline of the options - here are the ones we know of, with references. We have included a short critique of each which you can assess yourself.

Some of the analogies allow for more flexibility and hence for a greater contribution for discernment or listening for mission.

Listening for mission - Steven Croft, Freddy Hedley & Bob Hopkins (2006) £5 (pack of 5)   Keen to start a fresh expression? Before leaping into action this booklet encourages churches to develop the tools to 'listen for mission'. This involves developing an attitude where you learn to 'multi-listen' to God, to society, to your community, to your church - so that you can find out what God is doing and know how best to join in. This short and accessible guide can be used with church councils, deanery synods, circuit meetings and house groups. To order this booklet, click here to be taken to the resources page.

1. Lifecycle of a Reproducing Church

This is the most long standing framework/analogy for planning the process of church planting and initiating a fresh expression of church. It was first developed by Bob Logan (see his website) from the USA and then adapted by Bruce Patrick from New Zealand in the late 1980s. It builds on the concept that the church is the Body of Christ and that one of its prime functions is reproduction. It has been field tested for years, refined and extended. Many of the stages have helpful links to aspects of planting fresh expressions of church. For example, conception is about discerning the DNA; pregnancy is about differentiating and developing different aspects; infancy involves early stages of instability and the need of support; adolescence often involves review of and re-defining of identity and especially establishing separation and difference from parent. But there are so many more helpful links between these developmental stages and the important aspects of a church planting process.

Critique

• The lifecycle is often critiqued as not being an organic process. But this is a false critique - nothing could be more organic than child birth!

• It is also critiqued as being too linear. This is a valid comment. It can suggest that there is no flexibility in the process. However, if people approach it flexibly that critique can be minimized. Clearly in real contexts many things can happen concurrently and the order can change.

• The link between birth and public worship service can create really unhelpful assumptions about inherited Christendom forms of church. This identification of birth as s public worship service is also limiting as it doesn't easily fit with planting cell church or household church where church emerges differently and there may be no "public worship service"!

• A great strength is that it contains a comprehensive review and checklist of everything that needs to happen at each stage. Once it is freed up from being closed chronological compartments, the principles identified all need to be thought about, planned and implemented.

• European Church Planting Network (www.ecpn.org) have reviewed the planning analogies here and chosen this one with slight adaptation to free up birth from a worship service.

2. Yeast Cell Multiplication

This is an analogy used in Latin America. It has been developed by SEAN (Study by Extension for All Nations), who have been such effective trainers of church planters in Latin America over the years. They have produced a variety of resources, including a booklet on this yeast cell multiplication principle. Click here to visit their website. The diagram that follows, is the cover illustration that links the concept of yeast cell multiplication with the church planting process (Matt 13v13). We have also reproduced here the chapter headings of the booklet. This gives a clear indication of the steps in the process that they consider important to plan and prepare for.

Critique

• This framework is again seen as being quite sequential, but it's strengths are that it is very simple and lightweight.

• It has a high view of the spiritual dimensions of planting as well as the practical process.

• Another strength is that it stresses that all the early stages are about mission engagement and evangelism - only step 10 out of 12 gets to any public worship service... therefore countering the western weakness that church planting = starting a worship service

3. The Tree

This framework/analogy was first developed by Steve Clifford of Pioneer and Soul Survivor. The tree picture gives four broad areas to the planning and development process for church planting. The area of the roots, the trunk, the branches and finally the leaves and fruit. In this scheme, the roots helpfully indicate foundational processes whilst the trunk corresponds to the core elements of vision, values, learders/team and the branches and leaves represent the resulting activities and hoped for outcomes.

Critique

• Growing trees is certainly organic - as is having children! So it meets the legitimate desire for mirroring the organic process of planting a new body of Christ.

• This also has in common with the lifecycle that you can cluster all the important processes and aspects into a checklist, expanding on the headings on the diagram.

• But this pictoral analogy also has the added strength that many of the steps or aspects are illustrated as occurring concurrently - giving more flexibility for order, changes and things being messy ("Mission is messy!" Eddie Gibbs, DAWN congress 1992).

• This links well with the whole principle of discernment in context working together and interacting with planning.

4. Johan Lukasse (and his framework from his book Churches with Roots) (purchase from Amazon)

This is a framework that is drawn directly from St Paul and his team's strategy, as seen throughout the book of Acts. Johan Lukasse has identified the key stages of Paul's planting work that he sees recorded in the New Testament. Lukasse has also understood and applied this progression in his pioneer planting work in Belgium with the Belgian Evangelical Mission.

Critique

• Again this is a very simple and lightweight framework. It is radically biblical and challenges Christendom approaches formed with Christendom thinking and assumptions about church.

• It is centered on discipleship as the heart and motor for mission and developing church.

• It is very open ended with regard to church, allowing culturally appropriate community to emerge.

• Formalised Christendom worship service doesn't feature at all!

5. Bob Hopkins - A possible framework from the Gospels

I have followed John Lukasse's example of wanting to dig back to a biblical foundation for the processes and planning of planting church. Where he starts with Paul in Acts, I have gone back further to Jesus' pattern of establishing Kingdom communities in the Gospels.

Critique

• In many ways, similar to Johan Lukasse's steps in the previous model.

• It is biblical, lightweight and very focussed on discipleship & leadership development. Not at all "churchy".

• It involves community development, mission engagement and kingdom transformation all integrated with prayer and worship.

6. The G.E.T.O.N. and S.A.F.E. frameworks from Fresh Expressions

Fresh Expressions with Church Army have developed an interactive Online Guide for all aspects of planting called Share (link when active) and a booklet called "Starting a Fresh Expression" (available from Resources). Their material is based on distinguishing two distinct phases. The first being preperation and pre-planning and then the second, implementation. You can explore all the details under each of the following headings and give your own feedback to extend and improve the guide.

G.E.T.O.N. - Preparation and Pre-planning

• Getting together

• Exploring Possibilities

• Thinking Ahead

• Organising Support

• Nurtuting Team

S.A.F.E. - Starting a Fresh Expression

In this booklet, the process of implementation is summarised by the following two diagrams.

Critique

• Rather than a simple analogy, this goes for a two stage process round the acroymn and diagram. Some may find this more complex but it certainly seeks to be comprehensive and flexible.

• These frameworks seek to integrate all the most recent insights from church planting and fresh expressions of church.

• The G.E.T.O.N structure of Share can be accessed at any point and so has real flexibility.

• In common with some of the other frameworks, there is no link to public worship service as such and so it is freed up from this Christendom control.

• The interactive nature of this web-based resource uniquely opens all sorts of new possibilities. In effect you will both get to critique it but also shape and improve it. It's your living guide.

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