Church Planting FuelBox

With these major shifts taking place in the way we understand and process knowledge, there must be corresponding changes in the way we actually operate as a church. Eddie Gibbs points out that there are a number of things that we will observe in new paradigm churches. 

Firstly new paradigm churches will have a leadership that recognises the centrality of worship and emphasises a transformation encounter with the living God. I believe that a missional church will see people being converted. Those people need to be encouraged to belong to an authentic community. In that community worship needs to be a vehicle for people to experience the power of God for their own lives. This is not the only place that it happens, but it is a central one. The church gathered becomes the place to refuel the passion, remind people of the mission and refresh them in the presence of God. In some respects the local congregation which has a missionary orientation looks no different from any other congregation. Praise and worship of God still stand at the centre of the life of any congregation. The very act of worship declares and proclaims the truth to which the Christian community bears witness. I think that we do a reasonable job in this area. We do see our services as times to be encouraged and sent out. We do not claim that the life of the church is only contained in our services.   

In new paradigm churches, the leaders are concerned with equipping the people of God for mission in the world. They are committed to identifying, training, granting peer support to and mentoring their fellow leaders. They empower people and are ambitious for them. As has been outlined above the discipleship rack of New Life has been built around these premises. The discipleship track interacts with the small group structure to provide a flexible delivery of training based around the “just in time” principle. One of the leadership areas we need to develop is that of the evangelist. Although it is the call of every Christian to be a witness, not every Christian is an evangelist. We need to identify those people who have this gifting and help them to use it. As Martin Robinson says, whatever the precise makeup of an evangelist, such people do exist in most congregations. However their natural giftedness can be enhanced by specific training. At New life we use a gift survey to help us identify specific gifts and there are specific modules in our training track, such as “Becoming a Contagious Christian”. 

The leaders of new paradigm churches are accessible and vulnerable, and they have earned the authority they exercise. They minister on the frontline alongside their people. As has been pointed out already there is a basic mistrust and rejection of any sort of patriarchal structure when it comes to leadership. However even in a post modern world there is always someone who is the leader. As Frank Tillapaugh points out sharing the leadership of the ministry with others does not mean that a church should not have a leader. Many writers have pointed out that even if the structure of the church is designed for co-leadership, a leader will still emerge. But the leadership that emerges is very much the idea of first among equals. There is no privileged position for the senior leader. There is only the respect earned by working on the frontline with everybody else. . I see myself as the leader of the ministry team and the congregation. I see myself as the primary custodian of the vision that God has given me to be implemented for our congregation. But I also see myself committed to an empowerment model. I draw constantly from the talented people I have in leadership around me and am always seeking how to help them improve in their own lives.  

Another important facet of new paradigm churches is that they are aware of cultural values and trends and relate the gospel to the community outside their walls. They are as comfortable mingling with the unchurched as with church people, and are able to gain their confidence and trust. Some aspects of this are addressed through our discipleship track using modules such as contemporary issues. However I see the use of the services as a key to dealing with this subject. Through the use of panels, discussion groups, video clips, drama and preaching, we use the service times to keep this area in front of the congregation. What we seek to communicate is how to engage in the community around us in simple, easy to understand ways. 

Another feature of new paradigm churches is the move from bureaucratic hierarchies to apostolic networks. Gibbs argues that these networks are more fluid in their structure, more empowering and more diverse. What is of greater interest are his comments that networks gain added strength and influence through partnerships with yet other networks as they from relationships that work to their mutual advantage. This fits in with the idea of city reaching outlined by people like Ed Silvoso and John Dawson. The principle is that the collective working or networking of the church in a city has a far greater opportunity to see that city won to Christ. The mutual advantage is that there are many congregations working toward evangelism in a city and their combined effect is greater than the lone congregation. We are part of two such networks, one operating in Queanbeyan and the other in the
Canberra region which includes Queanbeyan. 

Finally, new paradigm churches are assured of the continuing presence of the Lord with them. Despite what is going on around us, we still have a credible message. God is alive and well. We do experience His presence and He does answer our prayers. All is not lost. I think that this is a prevailing attitude at New Life.  

At a completely pragmatic level we are seeing few people come to Christ and few people released into the harvest. I do not think we have been successful in helping our people see the need and urgency of the mission task. At the end of the day numbers count and we are seeing less than 10 baptisms a year. Even though numbers count we are committed to measuring our success by more than numbers of people saved and baptised.  One measure of whether we are being successful is how healthy we are becoming. We have completed a Natural Church Life survey and found the measures of church health outlined by Christian Schwarz to be helpful. Interestingly, according to the survey we are weakest in the area of passionate spirituality which I think reflects the “churched” nature of many of our people. We also measure the percentage of people in small groups and the number of people involved in our discipleship track. One of the signs of health is the ability to reproduce, to plant another missional church which is a principle of all God created organisms including thechurch of
Jesus Christ. New Life is yet to plant another missional church. Part of the point of having a discipleship track is to unleash the laity as Frank Tillapaugh puts it. He suggests that a school approach to training divorces people from the real world they live in. Training needs to be done on the front lines. If anything our discipleship track is a little bit too like school in its presentation. We haven’t developed the mentoring side of the process well enough for it to be really effective. On the positive side we are committed to the principle of reproducible leadership. In our selection of training materials we try to use material that works for us and that have sufficient instructions included so that new leaders can quickly gain familiarity with the material so that they can use it. This includes courses like Becoming a Contagious Christian, Cleansing Streams and Alpha. The goal is to not be dependant on years of formal training before being able to release someone to lead. Overall I would say that we are not very effective as a missional church. If we were being effective, I think that we would be seeing numbers of people coming to Christ, numbers of people growing and maturing in their walk with the Lord, we would see one or more churches planted, we would see the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit and we would see the transformation of the culture of the city we live in. I don’t see that.