| 8 Phases of Church Planting
Phase 1: Visioning Someone, usually the team leader, gets a vision for a team in a particular country or people group. Vision/strategy paper written. Covenant of Team Understandings (COTU) developed. Entrance strategies are devised, a team is recruited. Phase 2: Landing The team arrives (often not all a the same time). Language and culture learning. Team dynamics learned. Surviving in a new culture. Entrance strategy implemented, often has to be changed. Often character flaws exposed at this point. Team tested as they work through trials and conflicts. Phase 3: Evangelizing Language is good enough for testimonies to be given. Ways are devised to discern how to contextualize message. Gospel is being shared regularly. Develop understanding of how groups funtion in the culture and how to recognize a man or woman of peace and share the gospel within their group. Phase 4: Gathering (discipling) Professions of faith have been made. Type soil discerned. Attempt to get groups to study Jesus in the Word so a cohesive social group can decide to follow Jesus as a group. Phase 5: Covenanting A number from a cohesive social group have been converted and are ready to commit to becoming a Kingdom family (Home Church). Often peacemaking becomes crucial here. Group decision dynamics tested. L eaders (influencers) emerge. Culminates with the believers covenanting to be church. Phase 6: Leadership development Church planters focus shifts from the group to the leaders almost exclusively. The group begins to own evangelism, shepherding, mutual care that was expressed in the covenant. Discipleship chains set up. Culminates with ordination of elders, appointment of deacons. Phase7: Reproducing The church looks to penetrate other cohesive social networks and start new Bible studies which could develop into Kingdom famlies. Usually a vision statement to this effect is written by the leaders and adopted by the congregation. Culminates when a new group is covenanted to be a church and a network of cooperating home communities are established with a shared eldership. Phase 8: Exiting A second generation of elders emerges either from a new church plants or in the original church which have been trained in discipleship chains. (The elders are reproducing themselves). This phase culminates when the new elders are ordained, some kind of a presbytery is formed, and the church planter leaves. Ephesian 4 ministries functioning under the authority of the elders. |