Church Planting - Dealing with Weakness and Failure

Revd Graham Horsley

There’s no such thing as failure – only feedback!

We cannot deal well with failure if we do not take seriously the risk (or should that be faith?) element in church planting. New congregations are vulnerable even when planted well. However we must also accept that not all new congregations are planted well. A survey of a number of new congregations in the Baptist Church showed that many of the leaders did not actively seek outside help for their projects. Most had not undergone any training and some had not even read a book on the subject! 
Experience of a large number of Church Plants shows that the most common reasons for failure are: 

• Poor planning

• Leadership issues

• Inward focus / poor outreach

• Cultural blindness

• Lack of team dynamic

• Part-time

• Lack of resources

Poor planning

In their book “Enabling Church Planting”, Bob Hopkins and Richard White suggest that every church that is considering planting a new congregation should take time to identify the fears of the whole congregation (and possibly wider community?). The easiest way is to set up buzz groups by dividing the congregation into threes or fours and get them to write down all their fears. At the end of this process, a working group can analyse these fears under four main headings:

• 1. Things that will never happen – irrational fears.

• 2. Things that need not happen – identifying issues which need careful planning to minimise.

• 3. A price to be paid – there is a biblical principle of sacrificial giving being at the heart of Christianity. The bible also reminds us to count the cost and check that we have the resources and the willingness to pay.

• 4. Too high a price – at this time, in this place, with this group of people we cannot proceed.

It is vital that sufficient time is given to this planning process before any public launch of a congregation. A small team will be very stretched once weekly worship begins – it is in the pre-birth phase that detailed planning must take place. There is often a temptation to rush this phase. There are a number of planning lists and time lines in circulation from healthy new congregations which will help a planting team to establish a good planning process (ACPI have them on file).

It is also noticeable that there has been a change in emphasis in the planning process in recent years. In the early 90’s teams generally had a clear idea of the sort of church they wished to plant and the sort of people they aimed to attract. The planning process was therefore primarily about developing programmes and equipping people to resource those programmes. The emphasis is shifting (and needs to shift further) towards a much more incarnational approach. How are people in this community searching for spiritual reality and how can we come alongside them in that search and share the Good News of Jesus Christ in a relevant way. This is a slower process and is much more about relationships than programmes.

Leadership issues

This problem can manifest itself in a large number of ways and is the single most important factor – with good leadership the other problems can be minimised. Some of the key leadership issues are:

• Tensions between the leadership of the sending and the planted churches.

• Different vision and values among a leadership group (“vision + vision = division”, George Barna).

• Leadership that has been so shaped by a particular expression of church it is not capable of doing things in new or different ways.

• Tensions about the place of ordination in leadership.

• Leadership which is easily threatened and becomes defensive

• Leadership being undermined by unresolved issues of sinfulness in the leaders themselves. Often these sinful habits relate to money or sex. The intense nature of a pioneer situation tends to exacerbate rather than reduce these problems.

Christian Schwarz has observed that whether a leader is task or people oriented is not relevant providing the leader understands their primary role to be enabling others in ministry . The cell movement has observed that the gender, age and academic abilities of a cell leader are not important, but their prayer life and the amount of time they spend with the people they lead is.

Inward focus/poor outreach

• The larger the planting team, the more likely it is that this will be a problem. 

• Sadly it is also true that ecumenical church plants sometimes spend so much time pleasing their parent denominations and wrestling with the spiritual heritage of their team members that they have little energy left for mission and evangelism. 

• It is surprising how often church planting teams are set up without ever consciously seeking the gift of evangelism in some of the team members. 

• All institutions will naturally become inward looking – it requires great determination and constant vigilance to prevent this from happening.

Cultural blindness

This problem is a form of cultural imperialism. An existing and valued church culture or evangelistic programme is imposed on a community where it does not resonate with the inherent values of the community. The cultures/programmes may be good in themselves and have a proven record of effectiveness – they are not appropriate for this particular community and lead to failure. Many years ago Bishop David Sheppard asked why churches depended on importing middle-class leaders onto council estates to run churches whilst the trade union movement managed to find leaders from within those same communities. The trade unions worked with the culture – the church too often worked against it.

Lack of team dynamic

This is closely related to leadership issues. A bad leader can damage irreparably the dynamic of a good team. However, a good leader needs a balanced team in order to do her/his best work. This is partly about the spiritual gifts present in the team. It is also about the human personalities in the team and the way they interact. There is a huge amount of secular material about building healthy teams, much of which is appropriate for Christian groups. However, in some secular models results are much more important than relationships and personal growth – in Christian work, the results are very much centred around relationships so it is important that the team dynamic models this.

There is a particularly difficult phase in a church plant when new members come along after a successful launch. The team has to change mentality from being a close-knit group with deep relationships to becoming a congregation that is open and welcoming of new people and able to cope with the changing group dynamics that every new member brings.

Part time

This is partly about planning. Do we have the people resources to do the job properly? Are church planting members properly released by the sending church or are they expected to shoulder extra burdens with no relief from existing ones. Is there a proper agreement about the length and the intensity of the commitment that team members are expected to make?

Lack of resources

The primary resource for church planting is the people who are involved. However, other material resources can improve or hinder a plant’s prospects of success. Is there a suitable place to meet? Will the developers of a new estate set aside land for community facilities (not necessarily a dedicated church building)? Has the sending church set aside sufficient financial resources to support the project? When will the new congregation have to pay a quota?

Transition from Weaknesses

Confrontation

• Acknowledge that a problem exists

• Don’t just “try harder” if something is not working properly

• The natural first reaction is defensiveness – this needs working through – often the second meeting to discuss an issue goes far better than the first because people have had a chance to think things through

Consultation

• Involving the whole team in discussing a problem is often the first stage in solving it

• The exception to this is when the attitude of one team member is adversely affecting the whole team (then the pattern in Matthew 18:15-20 should be used)

Clarification 

• Identify as clearly as possible where the problem lies

• Avoid depressing generalities (it’s all going wrong) 

• Aim to identify specific problems which have identifiable remedies

• If there are a number of problems, identify the most important and work on that leaving the others to one side until later.
  Confirmation

• It is often helpful to talk things through with someone from outside the situation

Communication

• This is a problem, this is what we are doing about it, this is what we expect to happen, by the way you’re a great team and together we can get through this!

Comfort / Encourage

• Some problems are largely solved by persevering in the face of difficulty – the leadership response in these situations is to reassure and encourage

• Encouragement is often received better when demonstrated as well as spoken

Challenge

• Some problems require a change of approach – the team or the programme needs reshaping

• If the team feel valued they will usually rise to the challenge.

Footnote – the place of “Spiritual Warfare” in all the above

In describing problems frequently encountered in Church planting, I have focussed on the manifestation of the problem rather than the root cause. Different people will interpret the above problems in widely differing ways. If a team is having relationship problems is it a spiritual attack, difficult personalities or a lack of communication. Whatever the root of the problem, its remedy will involve both prayer and honest sharing.

It is difficult to identify a particular category of problems as “spiritual attack”. This is not to deny the reality of spiritual conflict. Depending on your theological approach it is either an all-pervasive reality, such a rarity it’s not worth considering, or somewhere in between! By advocating an approach that deals with the manifestation of the problem rather than the root cause, we do not have to identify whereabouts on the spectrum we belong. It is also difficult to find descriptive language that is accessible to the wide range of Christian experience within the Anglican Church.

In Paul’s letters to the young new Testament Churches, he almost invariably begins and ends his letters with an exhortation for the Christians to be steadfast in prayer. It is the quality of a regular spiritual discipline that is the most effective weapon in spiritual warfare. The idea of maintaining a personal and corporate devotional life is one that resonates with all traditions of spirituality. Emphasising the positive benefits of the spiritual disciplines enables us to dip into the rich treasury that the various traditions have developed for all our benefit.