I NEVER set out to get involved in church-planting. But, looking back, I think that, as a teenager, a seed was sown in me when I witnessed my father step out into church-planting. At the time, he was working in a secular job, and faithfully serving in his local Anglican church, but his vicar sensed a call on his life to start a new church-plant.
Having seen how normal it seemed for him to be sent out from one church to start another, I assumed that this is what we do in the Anglican Church, and that it was an institutional “norm”. Nevertheless, when I started training for ordination, I didn’t plan, or expect, to be involved in church-planting myself. As time went on during that period of training and formation, however, there was a stirring that, for a season, I was being called to church-plant, too.
So, six-and a-half years ago, my family and I moved to a new city to take up a church-planting curacy post, with the expectation that, while performing my duties as a curate, we would be seeking where, how, and with whom to plant a church.
The discernment process went on throughout the curacy, and we were always asking ourselves, “Are we ready to plant?” After some time, my wife, Hayley, and I found a promising place and made plans, but it all fell through at the last moment.
We grieved for the loss, picked ourselves up, and started the discernment process anew. We found a new area and, again, dreamed dreams and made plans. After meeting church leaders, the opportunity fell apart again. (The vision for creating a church-plant in that area simply wasn’t shared by everyone round the table.)
This cycle repeated, with more failed attempts. In fact, throughout the three-year curacy, we experienced five failed attempts to start a plant.
This repeated cycle of uncertainty and disappointment forced us to question many things. Later on, however, I could see that God was doing a deep work in us, building character on patience, resilience, dependency on him, and learning to handle disappointment. These experiences, though challenging, have been crucial in our spiritual growth and in preparation for what we are doing now.
EVENTUALLY, through various conversations, God opened a door for me to lead a type of church-planting known as “revitalisation”: the weaving together of an existing church remnant with some new people, to try to re-energise the church for its mission.
When we looked around the area where this revitalisation would take place, I didn’t experience a blinding Damascus-road-style revelation that this was the right location. But I do remember saying “This is going to be difficult.” And, almost as soon as those words left my lips, I sensed the Holy Spirit saying: “Yes, but I will be with you.” With that, we were curious enough to say “Yes” to the opportunity.
The Revd Sam Millard and the Revd Paul Pavlou, at Messy Church
With the Spirit’s assurance (and a deep breath), we landed at St Mary Magdalene with Risen Christ, in Wyken, Coventry, three and a half years ago, to begin the work of getting to know the church remnant that we would weave into, while simultaneously building relationships with the parent church, St Mark’s, Coventry, which would be sending us (along with a few other people, and some funding to help).
After a few months, we migrated from our parent church to the new setting. Even by that point, I realised that I didn’t feel especially “ready”. With church-planting, you are not stepping into something that already has an established formula, or pattern of working, so you don’t necessarily know the shape of the thing that you need to be ready for. Initially, therefore, levels of risk and stepping into the unknown are high: you are navigating your way “in the moment”.
To give an insight into what that first year felt like for many of us: at a Christian camping festival last year, I was trying to set up my tent, and our curate was helping. When we were trying to lay the ground sheet, we laid it and then realised that it was the wrong way round, so had to unpeg it all and move it again.
We ended up doing this about four to five times, because, each time, when I then tried to put the tent over it, we realised that it wasn’t the right way round, or wasn’t folded over in the right shape. On the final attempt, somewhat exasperated by the reshaping of the groundsheet and adjustments, my curate said to me: “This is a bit like our church-plant model, isn’t it?” She was right: we have had to keep adjusting, tweaking, remoulding, and shaping along the way.
ON REFLECTION, initially I realised that I had been overly focused on achieving what I deemed as success in my eyes rather than taking time to appreciate what our context looked like in God’s eyes. This led to mmy being overly hasty, at times, in trying to start things too quickly rather than take more time to be still and build deep relationships with people.
This was partly due to my not understanding that a revitalisation plant differs from a “blank-canvas” plant, especially around pace. If a plant that is started from scratch is a firework, then a revitalisation is a slow-burning candle.
Because of inheriting a congregation, cultures, buildings, and so on, it takes more time to bring people with you when embarking on new ways of doing things. It requires nuanced relationships, and meeting people where they are rather than trying to project them to where you want them to be.
As such, we have learned to engage with our congregation and community as they are, and to assess our ministry accordingly.
In a revitalisation, success involves helping a formerly struggling church to become healthy, with the Spirit guiding us through what we refer to as the “ministry of the one”: working individually with each person, and gradually helping them to progress in their relationship with Jesus, the Bible, and the Church, in a step-by-step walk alongside them.
We also faced challenges in simultaneously addressing various areas of decline in the church (such as tightening operational processes, building works, finances, lower numerical attendance for services), while introducing new elements associated with planting (such as starting two new worshipping communities, and missional activities that had not been done before). This process involves considerable groundwork, experimentation, and the putting in place of new processes; and their results take time to materialise.
One of the young people speaks to the congregation at her confirmation last year
A great deal of the work in helping to gear the church up for its new missional activity and relationship-building with the community has been under-the-hood work; its roots been growing deeper and wider, not immediately visible. Perceived successes may, therefore, appear small, compared with something that can be started quickly from a blank sheet, without a previous culture to work with. But this work is significant in the Kingdom of God.
Our story is becoming one of consistent small cultural changes within the church that we have joined with, and in the connections being made with the surrounding community.
These small “successes” — people we’ve inherited having their faith reignited; members of the community joining our Bible journalling group and learning about God’s word; people walking through the doors simply to see what’s happening (including young people and children encouraging parents to come to church); friendships forged between the existing congregation and those brought to join in the work — have all become valued achievements.
A KEY change we have made along the way, which we find ourselves coming back to time and again, is to prioritise relationship-building over “big vision” strategy, or fancy events.
We have learnt that values and actions outweigh vision and words. Speaking “vision” to people we inherited hasn’t counted for much. They are not as interested in the big picture as I expected. They want to see us live out Kingdom values.
This is parish ministry, serving parishioners.
It is why we have moved away from putting on big community events. To pull off a large event, like the Coronation Party that we held, for instance, or a community barbecue, requires a lot of money and team members.
Our team currently consists of our curate, our PCC, an intern, a part-time community minister, a part-time operations manager and kids worker, and a part-time youth worker — as well as volunteers from the congregation, of course. And, although plenty of people came to big events, we found that we weren’t getting much time to actually chat to people.
So, we have stripped back how many big events we do, and kept the food and the fun (and unashamedly added a gospel element) to develop a regular Messy Church gathering instead. It is cheaper, more sustainable, with a distinctive teaching block, worship, talk, and prayer, and creates opportunities for regular conversations, relationship-building, and discipleship.
The Revd Sam Millard baptises one of the church’s young people
In between the two new worshipping communities that we have begun (the Messy Church congregation, as well as an 11 a.m. Sunday congregation), in addition to the 9.30 a.m. eucharist that we inherited, we sprinkle in light-touch missional work that intentionally seeks to bless people and provide opportunities to talk: Stay and Play for carers and toddlers; weekly hot-chocolate giveaways for local children; Bible journalling; a lunch club for senior citizens (which was also happening before the revitalisation); Alpha; and more, depending on the season.
The focus of all these activities is relational discipleship. This has been a big learning point for us — and is not without its challenges. Building deep and real relationships between a church congregation and also with others requires vulnerability, facing harsh truths, and handling conflict well, all of which takes place when we join with God as a church family, in mission.
For all its challenges, however, we are seeing wonderful things happen: we have built strong connections with our local schools; people’s faith is being reignited within our congregation; we’ve had three baptisms (one of them a youth baptism) and four other young people confirmed; and a greater depth of discipleship is taking place. God has really been at work, and it has been a privilege to help the church to grow in its health once again.
Much of what has happened so far I haven’t felt ready for, despite all my training, but God has held us throughout. He has gone over and beyond in filling the gaps of where I have been lacking in my readiness for leading.
In particular, I came in completely unaware of how long cultural change can take; of how treasured a church’s traditions can be to an existing congregation’s identity; of the intricate care needed to bring different groups of people together; of the level of essential prayer, and of how much we need Jesus in all of what happens.
Church-planting is indeed a challenging journey. But God has come through with amazing and unpredictable provision. The shape of God’s provision has not been predictable, but the promise of his presence with us, to do whatever he calls us to, is, even if and when we do not always feel ready.
Paul Pavlou is the author of Journal of a Church Planter: Window into the life, avaiable via PublishU, publishu.com, at £9.99; 979-8324455927.