The following guidelines have helped us and others in setting up teams. We offer them as a helpful starting place for you.

Church Planting teams with FCPT are set up as follows:

1. Existing churches serve as sending bases to the teams. It is important to distinguish the teams from the churches in this way. The teams do NOT send but receive. The churches send out the church planters. Churches should be aggressive to recognize and send out church planters to teams. Church Planters sent out from them are the second way the churches fulfill the great commission (the first way being reproducing in the local area). From experience we would expect that the majority of these church planters would be tentmakers (self supporting through gainful employment).

A. To be part of the FCPT, a person must be sent by a church and received by a team.

B. New church planters would, for the most part, be assimilated into existing teams where senior members would have a mentoring role with the newer members. As teams get up to four or more family units, new teams would be encouraged to bud off from these larger teams. The newer teams would likely target new areas. If the teams are in a cross cultural situation, they would encourage nationals to join their team with the future goal of starting a national team to penetrate their own people group.

C. Some churches of may ask for help in sending teams to areas where we have no teams. In this event, the petitioning group will be asked to appoint a man to serve as a team coordinator (TC) and build a team around this man. Once he has a team, consisting of two or more family units, he will be called a team leader (TL). Men from existing teams may decide to relocate to work with this new emerging team. FCPT will work with teams and not single church planters. A team does not consist of a husband and wife but a minimum of two family units.

D. In some cases, members of churches may decide to relocate to other parts of the country and show interest in forming a team. In this case this person would be designated as TC. He may be encouraged to recruit from existing teams as well as other members of the church (with the OK of the elders of course).

E. FCPT affirms the importance of the role of churches in this effort. FCPT is seen as a part of the effort of the local church to fulfill the Great Commission. What the churches are doing locally in evangelism and church planting, the teams are doing extra-locally. We will do everything we can to keep the churches up to date with the progress of the work. Regular reports will go to the churches through the Church Planting Bulletin which will come out quarterly and we encourage annual conferences.

2. FCPT believes in the autonomy of church planting teams along the lines of Paul's apostolic bands. FCPT exists to network teams in such a way that new teams will benefit from the experiences of older team leaders who will mentor them. Resources and personnel can also be exchanged between teams as new opportunities for church planting arise in other areas. FCPT exists on the premise that all our resources belong to God and His kingdom. Thus they are to be used by Him as He directs. There is no place for protecting a single teams "turf".

A. We would ask team leaders of teams who desire to be part of our mentoring networks to work through the following with a more experienced TL who would serve as his mentor.

a. A Covenant of Team Understanding (COTU) or constitution detailing how the team will function. This would include how the team makes decisions and who will function as a contact person with FCPT. For FCPT purposes this contact person will be classified as TL. (See appendix 2)

b. A Strategy Paper which will outline the approach the team will use with respect to planting reproducing churches. A paper on Strategy is also available from FCPT. (See Appendix 3)

c. Church Planters checklist to find out where he has experience and where experience is lacking.

B. Mentors should evolve naturally as TL's with less experience seek the mentor to help them. Our hope is that mentoring networks will be developed in different geographical regions. The expectations of the parties will be written down in a covenant between the TL and the mentor. A sample covenant is in Appendix 6.

a. Some TL's will want minimal involvement with their mentor consisting of phone calls, letters and monthly reports exchanged between the TL and the mentor.

b. Heavy involvement with the FCPT could include regular coaching visits from the mentor, e-mail capability through the East Providence electronic bulletin board, use of the manual, handbook and related training materials, request for recruits from other existing teams, requests for interns from some sending churches or missionary agencies, etc.

c. Most teams will opt for something in between. All involvement will be agreed to by the TL, mentor and the sending church (or agency).

d. Many teams going overseas may opt to go with an existing missions agency. Partnership agreements can be explored (as with Frontiers). Although some teams may desire to remain just with the FCPT. It is understood in those cases that the sending church will likely pick up responsibilities for the home end of the team. Groups such as Antioch Network (Phoenix, AZ) can be helpful in facilitating churches to do this. FCPT will help the churches work through structures to facilitate their team.

FCPT exists to help churches spawn teams that would be effective in church planting. Our experience shows this to be a process that is punctuated by stops and starts which can be quite discouraging in the long run. Mentoring and reporting are designed to help teams and churches be in it for the long haul.