Fellowship of Church Planters International

Statement of Purpose
The Fellowship of Church Planters exists to help churches fulfill the great commission by training, reproducing, and networking church planting teams which plant reproducing clusters of house churches. FCP teams are encouraged to have multiple affiliations as FCP desires to bless other churches and mission organizations.

Fellowship of Church Planters Core Values
The Fellowship of Church Planters is committed to:
1. plant reproducing, linked networks of semi-autonomous house fellowships (churches).
2. network teams and churches to share resources and training.
3. inculcate within the teams and churches a great commission vision. This will be seen
by teams and churches training and sending interns and teams to the unreached world.
4. have church leaders and church planters which will be, in the majority, bivocational.
5. train church leaders and teams using a relational, mentoring approach.

Description of the Fellowship of Church Planters
FCP is modeled after the practices we find in the New Testament where Paul planted churches using teams. He often worked out of a center such as .Ephesus for a time. He would reproduce teams from that center and eventually his team would leave as well. There seems to be no central governing organ or organization for the first century missionary endeavors. FCP attempts to do the same, perhaps in modern terms best thought of like the Internet which has no central control. FCP consists of multiple church planting centers but no central governing organs. Each Church Planting Center will include a church planting team(s) planting networks of cooperating house fellowships with ordained leaders.

New teams will affiliate with FCP by covenanting for mentoring with an existing FCP team leader from one of the Development Centers. The new team will be designated by the mentor either as a Church Planting Development Center, or a Church Planting Pioneer Center.

Once a team has ordained indigenous elders in a network of house churches the churches will be independent of the team. The churches and team(s) may cooperate as partners in further church planting efforts and sending out new teams of church planters to other areas.

A Church Planting Pioneer Center
A Pioneer Center would be one in which there is either no team or no network of house churches. Pioneer Centers are promoted as priority areas to send fully trained interns and commissioned church planters trained in Development Centers. Pioneer Centers would normally arise when a church, team, or prospective team leader* approaches an existing FCP team leader for mentoring. The mentor for a Pioneer Center will develop a time table for getting a team functioning and then enabling the team to plant a network of churches thus becoming a Development Center. Once the Pioneer Center becomes a Development center, it would be expected to actively seek to start or help other pioneer centers. This may happen by the team leader becoming an new mentor to a pioneer center (A team leader would officially be designated a mentor with FCP when he is mentoring 3 teams. To insure quality training we recommend a mentor be training no more than 5 team leaders.) The team itself reproducing and sending a new team to start a new pioneer center. The team may cooperate with other groups to train interns and church planters to go to other existing pioneer centers.

*In cases where teams or churches have dual affiliation (such as FCP teams which are also in Frontiers) the mentor is responsible to work within the existing structures to help the team or churches.

A Church Planting Development Center
A minimum requirement for a Development Center for Church Planting would be:
1. at least one network of interacting house churches (at least 3 home fellowships)
2. a functioning church planting team (consisting of at least two church planters or church planting families).

A Development Center not only plants churches, but is committed to training new church planters, sending out new teams and linking local churches to churches in other areas. A mentor working with a Development Center will help them develop targets for reproducing churches, training interns,** recruiting potential church planters in their network(s) of churches, and sending them to new teams. The goal of this is to keep the team and churches focused not only on their local church planting efforts, but also on the unreached world..

**Interns can come from other Development Centers, other organizations (like Frontiers, TEAM, O.M., etc) or other FCP teams.

Ongoing Training for Mentors and TL's
Mentors will engage in training new TL’s one-on-one by visiting them at least yearly. They will have ongoing interaction (at least monthly) through email reports as the team leaders report progress and barriers to the church planting task. Manuals like House Church Planting in Networks and Building Effective Church Planting Teams have been developed for ongoing training.

Mentoring coordinators will be responsible to set up annual, regional meetings of FCP Team Leaders and mentors can get ongoing training including working with case studies in a collegial environment.

(At the time of this writing FCPI has 4 Development Centers in 3 countries and 6 Pioneer centers in another 4 countries.)

International Network of Home Fellowships
The house churches are not only networked locally, but also should be linked to house churches in other cities and countries through FCP teams. This should be explicit in their church covenants specifying which churches they are linked with. Teams need to encourage churches to link with other churches using their own relationships with other teams and churches, church planters sent out by the house churches to other teams, interns trained in that network of house churches now serving with other teams, ongoing communication and greetings between these churches as team members visit, elders and members visiting linked fellowships, invitations to leaders and members from linked fellowships to visit their fellowships.

Teams should encourage the relationships to be international as well as national and include links to teams working in unreached areas. Once again their would be no central headquarters (hence no denomination) but rather relationships would develop with the natural moving of the Spirit as He brings teams, church planters, leaders, and interns together through the years.


How FCPT can help
If you have a burden to be involved but need help, this can be arranged through contacting the extension coordinator (EC). The following are some possible scenarios:


A. A group of individuals may desire to begin a house church with a reproductive vision, but none of the individuals involved sees himself called to the itinerant ministry of church planter.

Possible aid:

1. A church planter could be sent to work with this group until it gets to the point where it can reproduce spontaneously. Then he and the churches would prayerfully discern whether he should remain and perhaps try to set up a local CP team which could facilitate church planting in other surrounding areas, or return to the team sending team.

2. FCPT could coach the group from a distance, making coaching visits as needed.

B.An individual who believes God has called him to church planting desires to begin plant churches, eventually forming a local team of church planters for the task. Possible help:

1. He could serve an internship (from a few weeks to several months) with a FCPT team, learning directly from our experience here. Then he could return to his area. Some from the team or churches here might return with him to form a team. Ongoing coaching might be available. This internship approach has also been used by ones who are going overseas with mission agencies.

2. He could simply begin church planting while being in touch with the team by mail. Coaching trips could be arranged as needed.


C. An already existing church planting team desires to ally their efforts with FCP for strength, stability and mutual encouragement. In this case they could immediately petition to join the Fellowship of Church Planting teams. Such affiliation does not jeopardize their involvement with denominational or mission organizations, since the purpose of the Fellowship is not to control, but rather to share resources.



There may be other ways FCPT could help. Our desire is to be flexible in the pursuit of the goal.

For more information write:

Jim Frost

90 Scott Road

Cumberland, R.I. 02864

U.S.A.

Phone: 1- 401-333-0563 fax: 401-438-6469

Email: jim@fcpt.org

International: contact Dick Scoggins at:
dick@dickscoggins.com