Global Expansion

by Joanne Appleton

European Church Planting Networkleadnet.org/ecpn

Local Churches in Europe Becoming International Church Planting Movements

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 2

Overview:

Article Summary

Since 2008, a handful of European churches and church planting organisations have been responsible for starting more than 1,100 new churches and missional communities. Their vision extends to other European countries and beyond. So where did the vision to become an international church planting movement come from – and what are the lessons they have learned on the way? From working in partnership, to changing leadership dynamics and being aware of different cultural contexts, these churches are setting an example for others who hear the call to move beyond the local to impact the global through church planting.

Further Reading

Good to Great in Church Planting: Accelerating Growth and Effectiveness in Church Planting

This concept paper identifies principles that churches and networks across Northern, Western, Central and Eastern Europe are using as they transition from being good church planting churches to becoming great church planting movements.

Supporting Church Planting in Migrant Communities

Migrants are often lonely, afraid and vulnerable. Many are also Christians, or open to finding out more about Christ. Churches across Europe are supporting church planting amongst migrant communities – this ECPN concept paper explores how, and some of the issues they face.

Global ExpansionLocal Churches in Europe Becoming International Church Planting Movements

By Joanne Appleton

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 2

Sergi is the pastor of a Ukrainian village church. Several years ago he drew a circle encompassing 100 villages around his church. He told his congregation, “You are missionaries now” and began to train them to reach their neighbours for Christ. His goal: to begin a church in each one of these villages.

Today there are almost 40 first- and second-generation churches in these villages, started through local Christians accepting their mandate to share the Gospel. Sergi’s denomination has asked now him to train other pastors in church planting throughout Ukraine.

His influence also reaches beyond national borders. A Russian-speaking church in Sacramento, California has asked for his help planting churches. And an English church who supports the church in Ukraine wants Sergi to share his principles of how to mobilise their people to plant churches in the UK.

Rural churches in Ukraine are not big. In fact, the mother church that Sergi still leads has only sixty members, but its influence reaches around the world.

Beginning an International Movement

Sergi’s church is part of the Antioch

Movement (www.scpi.org/where), one of the churches and church planting organisations involved in the European Church Planting Network (ECPN). Together these churches and organisations have been responsible for an amazing surge of over 1,100 new churches and missional communities across Europe between 2008 and 2011.

This paper explores the principles behind their exponential growth. We ask how the teams began their pioneering work, and then explore the methods they have used to implement and consolidate their God-given vision for church planting. Finally, we outline where the teams would like to be in five years time.

In the Beginning

1. Believe you can do it.

The churches planted by International Christian Fellowship (ICF, www.icf-movement.org) are very different from those started by Sergi’s church in Ukraine. As ICF’s Church Planting Coach ND Strupler explains, they target “mainstream” culture in urban Europe. Through a combination of high quality celebration services, and relational discipleship in small groups, they reach the 18-30 age group that is missing in many other congregations.

Today, ICF has planted thirty-six churches or sites in Austria, Czech Republic, Spain, Netherlands,

Albania, Switzerland and Germany, including four new plants in the last twelve months. But the original ICF fellowship in Zurich, Switzerland, began as a local church with no intention of church planting internationally. Their first step towards becoming an international church planting movement was believing they could do it:

“The word ‘international’ comes from our beginnings as an inter-church ministry of several churches to expatriates in Zurich,” says ND. “Others liked what we did and wanted to replicate it in other cities, but it was only in 2006 that we received a mandate for church planting, through a prophetic word that said, ‘You will plant 300 churches in Europe.’” That was a big surprise for us—we were always a local church, and we are still a local church at heart, but we felt that this word was from God. Once we believed we could do this, our next steps were to figure out how to make it happen!”

European Church Planting Network

by Joanne Appleton

Global ExpansionLocal Churches in Europe Becoming International Church Planting Movements

One church in Zurich has helped birth 36 churches across Europe, with more to planned for the future. www.icf.ch/about/movement.html

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 3

2. Gain inspiration from others.

For the Bulgarian Bible League (www.bibleleague.org/eastern-europe/bulgaria), inspiration came from seeing what others achieve.

“We are the only organisation from inside Bulgaria who is facilitating church planting,” explains Nikolay Ivanov. “Five years ago, we had a particular model for ministry that we felt we should maintain. Then when we met others through the European Church Planting Network who are passionate about church planting, we realised we could change our model and try new ways of working.

“We already had contacts with a church planter in Spain who was previously part of the Bulgarian Bible League. So we decided to send church planting trainers to support his work amongst Bulgarian migrants.1 Our ideas come from a combination of strategic planning and an open door from God which you cannot do by yourself.”

And the Bible League’s vision hasn’t stopped there. They now support church planting amongst migrants in Austria as well as Spain, and facilitate the Balkan Church Planting Network. This inspirational learning community draws church planters from across Turkey, Greece, Romania, Croatia,

Serbia and Bulgaria and saw thirty new churches planted in the last year through their work.

3. Be open to new opportunities.

More often than not, the vision to go international comes to you! Kirkernes Integrations Tjeneste (Churches’ Integration Service, or KIT www.kit-danmark.dk/uk) equips Danish churches to help the integration of migrants and migrant churches in their neighbourhoods. But the Europe-wide social networks of migrants has presented them with new opportunities.

“Many migrants arrive as refugees and their families can end up spread throughout different European countries,” explains Hans Henrik Lund, director of KIT. “Within the migrant churches, there are many families where, for example, one member lives in Germany, another in Denmark or Norway and another in the UK. But their primary identity is still Tamil, Nigerian or Chinese and their relationships with each other operate across the European borders.”

“We were asked by a migrant in Denmark to help a relative in another country, who told us there was no organisation like KIT where they lived. This gave us the vision to reproduce across Europe what we already do in Denmark.”

Working It OutDuring 2009 and 2010, KIT saw a new migrant church planted each month. In 2011, the numbers doubled to two migrant churches beginning each month. As the graphs at the top of page 4 show, this kind of exponential growth is also common to other ECPN church-planting groups.

Many of the groups featured in these graphs are well on the way to becoming church planting movements (CPM), as defined by David Garrison

“a rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment.”2

Bird and Stetzer add a generational dimension, defining a church multiplication movement as

“a rapid reproduction of churches planting churches with a reproduction rate of 50% through to the third generation of church with each new church having 50% new converts.”3

So what are the key movement-making principles the ECPN churches and church-planting organisations have discovered?

1. Partnerships: stop thinking addition and start thinking multiplication.

Major growth happened when the groups stopped focusing on church planting directly and began to facilitate church planting with and through others. This can only be achieved through working in partnership, either within existing networks, or finding new people who share a similar vision.

IMI Kirken (imikirken.no) in Stavanger is part of the Norwegian Lutheran based Normisjon movement. It was at the forefront of

The Bulgarian Bible League’s influence now reaches across the Balkans and Southern Europe. Adapted from http://printable-maps.blogspot.com/2011/12/political-map-of-europe.html

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 4

the charismatic revival movement in Norway, and it has pioneered many new initiatives in the country including Alpha and missional communities.

However the team realised they couldn’t wait for others to come and learn from them, and that the learning community model was the perfect way to facilitate the ‘diffusion of innovation’4. They invited other Normisjon churches to partner in a learning community in 2009, which quickly expanded from six to twelve churches who wanted to start missional communities. Now they have four learning communities in Norway, including one with youth

churches, with plans start four more in 2012, including facilitating a second generation learning community in the North.

Excitingly, they are also collaborating with churches in Thailand and Cambodia to facilitate the planting of missional communities within these churches. They provide the expertise on how to start a missional community – however they are dependant on their partners to provide advice about how their teaching translates to a very different cultural context.

Another movement discovering partnership growing naturally from

existing relationships is Vineyard DACH5 (www.vineyard-dach.net), the German-speaking branch of the international Vineyard movement. Through collaborating with others the Vineyard Network around the world, their influence is reaching well beyond German-speaking Europe. For example, they are beginning to partner with other Vineyards to reproduce their church planting training in France, Italy and Spain. They also support church planting in Africa through the work of Vineyard MAVE.6

These partnerships are very relational and organic. As Marcus Hausner, one of their church planting trainers says: “I never imagined a situation where we sit together and think ‘how do you reach this country?’ There is strength in this – people like what we do and are attracted to it and we don’t have to sell it, but the downside is that each relationship is different, and that is time-consuming.”

Church planting trainer Marcus Hausner (top) speaking at a Vineyard DACH conference in Berlin.

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 5

In contrast, the Antioch Movement is extremely intentional about the countries they want to reach, which leads to a very strategic approach to partnership. The Ukrainian-based movement is part of the Saturation Church Planting Movement (SCPI www.scpi.org), whose vision is to assist the mobilisation of indigenous church planting movements around the world so that every man, woman and child has the repeated opportunity to see, touch and hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They know this has to happen through identifying and training key churches in key nations.

As one of the Antioch Movement’s church planters explains, they have five principles about partnership when choosing a new international focus.

“We focus on pivot nations because we believe that they can influence the whole area. When we go into a nation, we look for the invitation and a gatekeeper. We don’t just go in cold, we are looking for God’s invitation. Sometimes we have to find the gatekeeper who can introduce us to every relevant Christian structure in the nation.”

Alongside invitation and gatekeepers, the Antioch Movement looks for receptivity amongst the people, a willingness of all the denominations to engage, and apostolic leaders and thinkers. These are leaders who can think strategically about their nation, ask the question “what does God want to do in this place and what does that look like in my lifetime?” and go on to start to work through these concepts.

The strategy of actively seeing out strategic partnerships has also worked for Joe Wilson, who has facilitated church planting with Good News Baptist Church in Belarus and Siberia.

“You begin meeting other people, recognise the connections and follow the leads and you get with the people

God has already chosen – you tell them to start gathering teams to start new churches and you begin to do training,” he explains.

Joe’s vision in Belarus was to plant five churches in fifteen years – but between 2006 and 2009 Joe and his team planted eight! According to Joe, the lessons learned from beginning a network in Belarus has helped the Siberian church planting movement to form much more quickly.

“We began by gathering the people together differently, partnering with people from an existing church who better understood who it would be good to work with. We also viewed potential differently. Our first church plant is only a little over a year old and has already planted another church - as has the church that began this past March (2011).

“These churches are small; and before I would have turned down that smaller project. Now I am thinking no, that’s good, because they are getting the chance for reproduction with something they can handle and they are doing it much quicker.”

Just as partnerships may begin in a variety of ways, a church may develop several different levels of partnership depending on what they want to achieve through it. Network Church Sheffield (www.networkchurchsheffield.org.uk) is a great example of this strategy, with three different kinds of partnership existing within the one movement.

“As a church with a vision to reach Sheffield, we have three bases with around 2,500 people attending,” explains Network leader, Paul Maconochie. “Reaching wider, the Covenant Kingdom Network is a formal network of churches where the leaders are members of the missional community The Order of Mission (www.missionorder.org), and they strategically come under my leadership

on a low control, high accountability basis. We currently have seven churches across six cities in UK and are just about to have three churches from the US join.”

“The third level is around 150 churches in the UK, US and now Holland, where we are taking churches through a training process of building a missional church. This has four distinct phases which includes planting missional communities. When they complete this, they can choose to remain in relationship with us. So far we have seen significant turnaround and growth in 70-80% of these churches.”

A word of caution, however: no matter how exciting the potential in coming together, it is impossible to partner with people who do not share your vision, as KIT found out. In order to support migrant church planters across Europe, they need to partner with national churches.

Members of Network Church Sheffield discuss their missional strategy (top), which includes outreach events such as community meals (bottom).

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 6

“It has been difficult for the nationals to catch the vision to go in and work with the migrants, says Hans Henrik Lund. “Sometimes they are more focused on their own churches and maybe even their survival. If we mention the name migrants, they ask ‘why don’t they come into our churches to help us grow?’ In my experience, the biggest need for the migrant is to have a church service in their own language and that is what makes a home abroad for the migrant—but we do need the support of the local church.”

2. Know your values.

If you are going to find the right partners who share your vision and values, you need to define what these are.

Aarhus Valgmenighed (aarhusvalgmenighed.dk and valgmenighed.tv) has discovered that working within a denomination has led to a greater ‘speed of trust’. They are partnering with churches in Finland and Holland to start missional communities. As senior pastor Keld Dahlmann explains, “we are given a right to speak because we have a common Lutheran background, part of the unconscious fabric of who you are. We have shared values.”

However, if you starting from scratch, working out your values is an important process that takes time. Church planting movement Great Commission Europe (www.gceweb.org) spent a number of years defining eight ‘rocks’—principles they felt could be applied to partnering with indigenous church planters.

“The first four: mission, vision, values and beliefs are the basics that partners align to,” explains Joe Dunn. “The second four: leadership, finances, equipping and partnership, can then be adapted to the context in which they work.

“How each one of these things is handled determines who has the authority and who is leading. So for example if you want to have indigenous leadership, it is important that you are deferring to them and their opinions—rather than coming in with pre-determined answers as to how the church should be structured. At best, we want to leave secondary issues secondary and not impose our views and ideas—rather we are asking who God has put in our path to be a mutual blessing.”

And this strategy is working. Since 2003, Great Commission Europe’s missionary community has reduced from around 60 missionaries to less than 20. In the same period, their influence and church planting influence has been at least five times greater than in the previous fifteen years.

The ICF Movement went through a similar process to GCE when they sensed God’s call to plant 300 churches in Europe. They defined the values that would remain the same even though they are working in different countries and called these their “corporate identity” (see

sidebar: ICF’s Corporate Identity on page 7).

“With these six values, the goal of our movement is clear to people who want to join,” says ND Strupler. “Beyond these values, we are very open for people to be creative and find their solution in their way, but there are no discussions on these values.”

Even when the values are very clear, it takes time for them to be integrated into the life of the church. This is particularly true for groups such as the Antioch Movement who work alongside existing churches in an area, with the goal of these churches influencing others in their nation to reach out missionally.

But even when the values of the church are very clear, it takes time for them to be integrated into it’s everyday life. This is particularly true for groups such as the Antioch Movement who work alongside existing churches in an area, with the goal of these churches influencing others in their nation to reach out missionally.

Current GCE churches Potential GCE churches

The current and potential Great Commission church plants are reaching many countries in Europe. Adapted from http://printable-maps.blogspot.com/2011/12/political-map-of-europe.html

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“We set the foundation and let the church planters we work with know the dynamics of our training pretty early on,” explains one of the Antioch Movement’s church planters. “As the years go on, we stay connected with them and mentor them as they ‘press down’ more and more. So when we see areas where our principles are not in what they are doing, we point it out and say ‘you need to rethink this one’.”

“It takes time but as they start to do it they influence other churches around them. Hopefully we will get to some sort of critical mass that would start to change the whole culture of the churches in their nation – I think it would happen if you had 10-15% of the church practicing these things. In Eurasia we have now identified some of the key apostolic leaders but it is going to be another three years or so before they get to that next level. Stopping things that people have done for a long time is hard to do.”

3. Change leadership dynamics.

The values of a church planting movement are foundational. They need to be identified at an early stage of the process towards becoming a movement and consistently applied throughout. But as the movement grows and develops, organisational structures need to change. One of these is leadership, in particular the relationship of the ‘mother’ church to the wider family. Responses include decentralisation, centralisation and changes in the role of the senior leader.

Decentralised Leadership

Vineyard DACH began in 1999 with three existing Vineyard expressions, and the movement was centred around Bern in Switzerland. However, in 2002-2003, the leaders were challenged to decentralise and become ‘a movement of movements’.

A leadership council formed, with regional leaders who each had executive leadership authority over a region.

As Vineyard DACH became increasingly intentional about church planting, the leadership council created a church planting ‘task force’ alongside those for worship, theology and mission. This team provides centralised resources and training for church planters across the DACH area, with a common “language” and values.

With 49 new church plants in the last five years, there is now the need for a wider leadership base. “We are at a different state,” says Marcus Hausner. “We are bringing new and younger leaders into the responsibility of the movement level at local level, giving us more capacity to absorb growth. Seven years ago, our annual leadership conference had 300 attending – now it has over 500.”

Staying Centralised

Like Vineyard Bern for the DACH movement, ICF Zurich is perceived as the ‘mother church’ of ICF. Growth for ICF has meant employing staff to facilitate the church planting while the senior pastor stays focused on the main church.

OUR DREAM

We dream of a modern church, right on the heartbeat of time. People find here a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In this church people experience true love and fellowship. Gifts are discovered and encouraged. The church we dream of is passionate, constantly growing and has a positive influence on society. May God make this dream come true through us.

OUR GOAL

We help people to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

OUR STYLE

1. At the Heartbeat of Time

We constantly ask ourselves how church needs to be to attract people today.

2. Excited about Life

We are excited about life with God and have a positive attitude towards life.

3. Experiencing Fellowship

We treat one another with love and enjoy life in fellowship.

4. Developing Potential

We support people and help them to flourish and develop their full potential.

5. Giving the Very Best

We give our very best for God. For we value quality.

6. Nothing Is Impossible

We believe for God nothing is impossible.

www.icf-movement.org/about/corporate-identity.html

ICF’s Corporate Identity

Vineyard DACH is collaborating with other Vineyard networks to reach far beyond German-speaking Europe. Adapted from http://printable-maps.blogspot.com/2011/12

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 8

Church planting reach of Aarhus Valgmenighed and Network Church Sheffield. Adapted from http://printable-maps.blogspot.com/2011/12/political-map-of-europe.html

“He does not miss a Sunday–maybe only two or three Sundays a year–he says if the mother church stays healthy, the movement stays healthy,” explains ND Strupler. “I joined the movement when they received the vision to church plant, in order to help strategically think through how the network could happen. Locally I still have a small group and work in discipleship and my relationship with people who are not following Jesus, but I cannot be involved in the weekend programmes because I travel a lot. The other senior leaders all have a local focus however.”

From Senior Pastor to Network Leader

In contrast, Paul Maconochie’s role as leader of Network Church Sheffield has changed radically as their vision has grown—from hands-on senior pastor to network leader, engaging in strategic vision and coaching leaders at all levels of the movement. He sees this as increasingly important as the movement spreads to different cultures.

“The very model that produces high diversity and different kinds of community can also result in an overly strong sense of independence, and at times competition, between different bases and churches,” he admits. “My job is to mitigate against that and help the churches to have a sense of single movement and vision through creating

a strong resourcing centre.”

Like Paul, senior pastor Keld Dahlmann’s role has shifted from being a local church leader in Aarhus Valgmenighed to network leader. He identifies three stages in the development of this network, with concurrent changes in his leadership style.

“The first was when we began with missional communities in the Aarhus church and spread our DNA and

desire to plant through that network,” says Keld. “The next level was congregational planting, for example the congregation in Copenhagen. The third stage is about starting learning communities in our own context and in Finland, where we are bringing other churches into the journey towards becoming more missionally focused.”

Keld has found the language of The Leadership Pipeline7 particularly helpful in defining his growing

Aarhus Valgmenighed Leadership Pipeline

Leading a movement L500+

Leading yourself L1

Leading from the platform L100

Leading others L10

Leading an organisation L500

Leading Leaders L50

ReflectExternal NetworkVision-casting

Self disciplineSpiritual disciplines

Project PlanningNetworkDelegatingLeading outside areas of speciality

Seek and maintain relationsPreparation

CoachingHuddleTeaching

Team meetingsLeader development

Lifeshapes

InnovationImbedding DNATeachingCommunicationProject ManagementSpiritual Battles

Creating CommunityConflict managementActive listeningPersons of peaceSquare (situational leadership)

Must win battlesLeading StaffDaily ManagementWar Rooms Finance

HuddleVisioncastingSpiritual Gifts(Pentagon)ApprenticeshipPersonality TypesSpiritual Praxis

Father/Mother

GenerosityPartnership

MentoringGood to GreatUnderstanding strategy

Taking the leadLearnabilityAccountabilitySpiritual maturity

Eternal mentoring Implementing strategy

Team work

Leader Level Skills Values Time

Read more in the ECPN Concept Paper European Snapshots

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 9

role as a network leader rather than local pastor. The aim of a leadership pipeline is to grow leaders from within an organisation. As new Christians attending Aarhus Valgmenighed are discipled they learn to lead themselves and go on to lead others. Those with ability and calling are trained to lead leaders and lead from the platform, eventually leading an organisation or movement (see chart on previous page).

Key to pipeline thinking is that each stage has particular skills, time applications and values. Making a turn along the pipeline requires stopping doing what is required for the lower level of leadership, and taking on new responsibilities. For Aarhus Valgmenighed, for example, those who are “leading leaders” spend time in team meetings and individual leader development, whilst the next stage of “leading from the platform” involves project planning, networking and delegating.

As Keld explains. “Five years ago I had twelve direct reports; now I have five, so I have become much more intentional about who is direct reporting and I am beginning to release staff to lead others.” He admits however that it is a challenge to explain the shift in emphasis to the local church.

“The local church identifies the changes, but can find it difficult to deal with, even though we have this intention and call to be more than just a local church. They ask ‘What does it mean for us, the people who knew this church before this church planting dynamic was so strong?’, ‘Why is the pastor travelling all the time?’. There needs to be balance and we are still in the process of working it out.”

4. Change how you train.

The Aarhus Valgmenighed leadership pipeline has enabled them to identify the kind of leadership training required at all levels of the movement.

They are just one of the ECPN teams who are at the forefront of innovation in church planting training within Europe.

In September 2010, ICF launched a college (www.icf-movement.org/college) to train pastors and worship leaders for ICF church plants. The first year of their course is at ICF Zurich and includes training in leadership, theology, communication skills, church planting and teamwork as well as the ICF values. The second year is based on of their multisites, where they will have first-hand experience of leadership within an ICF church, and the chance to find where they fit within a church planting team.

Vineyard DACH has also developed a skill-based training process over 16 months, meeting for workshops every eight weeks and online learning between times. The training content was developed through interviews with over 50 successful and unsuccessful church planters, and includes five areas of competency: evangelism, strategy, leadership, team, and youth work.

Their training implements some of the learning community principles into their training. For church planting movements who are working primarily to facilitate church planting through other churches, learning communities provide an ideal vehicle for training as

well as fostering innovation and new ideas.

“We used to have conferences where there might be a lot of talking and you would be very inspired for two or three days,” reflects Joe Wilson who has church planted in Belarus and Siberia. “In the learning communities, the teams set goals for which they are held accountable. This immediately increases their effectiveness.”

The Bulgarian Bible League also uses learning communities with their church planting training in Bulgarian cities, or within the Balkan church planting network, with excellent results.

“In the past we were trying to teach and train people,” explains Nikolay Ivanov. “This learning community method means we step backwards and let the people take over and learn from each other. And an unexpected outcome is that leaders with greater potential are attracted by these methods.”

Nikolay’s advice is to persevere when introducing new training methods. “In the beginning we were a bit discouraged – people resisted the effort to be more organised and strategic. After the second gathering a lot of people came to us and shared that they are finally starting to understand the importance of planning and that their ministries changed dramatically after they started being more strategic.”

5. Change funding methods.

Changing from a local to an international focus also requires a change in funding. In today’s challenging economic climate, greater flexibility and innovation is required.

One way to fund the work is to require financial contributions from the church planters. Participants in Network Church Sheffield’s learning communities pay to take part, and the churches who are part of their

Vineyard DACH’s conceptualisation of their training programme. Picture from www.xn--grnderzeit-beb.org/training/trainingsaufbau.html

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 10

Covenant Kingdom Network also contributes to the movement. Network leader Paul Maconochie takes inspiration for this funding model from the apostle Paul, who “went to the new people and brought with them the spiritual benefits of what he did. In return, he asked them to help financially support the people in his original church. I would love to get to the position where we can put money back into the central resource church – to me this would be a sign of our fruitfulness.”

Funding can flow two ways however, and a local congregation can be inspired to support international church planting when they experience it first-hand.

“Our involvement in Thailand and now Cambodia has opened people’s eyes to what is possible,” says Steve Bruns, Network Coordinator from IMI Kirken. “They have come back totally on fire and are willing to give financially and work on teams and travel back again – the congregation has taken ownership.”

But you need exercise great care as investing a lot of outside finance directly to the new church is often unhelpful, as the team from Great Commission Europe have discovered.

“When we began we had a couple of church plants where large teams came in and a lot of funds were raised to start the churches. We quickly learnt that this created a Western dependency which made it harder to be indigenous,”’ explains Joe Dunn. “Having large missionary teams took away the incentive for nationals to accept the responsibility of service, initiative, ownership and leadership.”

“There are issues even for the individual church planter from a more affluent culture. If they tithe their income to the local church, its budget is disproportionately inflated by their contribution. This is not replicable to new churches or sustainable when the

missionary moves out of that context. If you want things to be reproducible, you have to be very careful.”

6. Adapt to the different contexts you work in.

Church planting in Europe takes place in many different contexts, from the liberal societies of Scandinavia and Western Europe, to post communist Eastern Europe. Moving beyond your national borders means that organisational structures you have at home may not always work in other contexts.

In Denmark, KIT gathers migrant church planters together centrally for training, as it is a small country with good transport links. Supporting church planters in other European countries has meant a changing to a local focus within these countries, explains Hans Henrik Lund, KIT’s director.

“Pastors of migrant churches don’t have the time or money to gather in a big international setting–or even to travel across a large country–but they can feel very isolated, so we are creating more of a city-wide focus within several countries. It was a blessing to sit with pastors in Athens recently who are meeting for the first time and discovering they are not alone in the city, there are others in the same situation, and that together they can do bigger things than they could do apart.”

It’s not just geography that makes a difference; it is also important to understand how people relate to each other in a different culture. The Antioch Movement are learning to adapt their training methods from Ukrainian to Central Asian society.

“In Ukraine, our training is based on imparting information from the front, whereas in Central Asia is has to be much more relational,” comments a church planting facilitator. “Central Asians spend a lot of time just sitting

down and talking at meals and then at the end of the conversation they will get to details and make some decisions. So we are exploring how to train around the table with a small group of leaders–three people from only three or four teams at a time–rather than lots of teams at once.”

The aim is to move from knowledge to understanding to action and decision – what youare going to do in light of the information you have gained.

You create inflection points through deciding what you are going to stop doing, and what you are going to start.

Ask three questions:

What is – what has occurred over the last 6 months?

What could be – new ideas and imagine the possibilities

What will be – planning and decide on what to do based on the information you get on our time together

The following attitudes are required:

Presence – you need to be present and actively participating.

Teacher/learner – you can teach people what you know, and learn from others who have expertise.

Honest conversation –don’t just tell everyone what they want to hear; have honestconversations.

Discovery – learn from models that are very different and ask ‘why is that working andwhat is the genius in the idea and principle behind the model?’

Learning Community Principles Used at ECPN

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 11

The greater the difference between the cultures, the more contextualisation needs to take place. A team from Norway’s IMI Kirken are involved in church planting learning communities with Lutheran churches in a rural part of Thailand. While the church structures are similar, the societal structures are very different.

‘It is very much an authoritative society where the pastor is in charge and everyone defers to him,” explains Steve Bruns, Network Coordinator at IMI. “So even though the learning community is about involving lay people in church planting, we are very intentional about having the pastor involved.

“But we also ask the leader to assign other people responsibility for individual action points, while they maintain overall responsibility for the church. So you are empowering people and delegating authority, but in a way that is culturally appropriate for them.”

This empowerment has had dramatic results, releasing a “flurry of activity and growth” in the churches, with church members feeling for the first time that they are able to start missional communities in their own villages, says Steve

Moving ForwardWhen they began their journey with the European Church Planting Network, the churches and organisations featured in this paper were in a radically different place from today. As their vision for church planting has grown and capacity for action has expanded, God is giving them even greater vision and courage to be involved in his mission.

Aarhus Valgmenighed wants to see 100,000 Christians in Denmark, and the re-evangelisation of Europe,

through working wherever “there are open doors or we have a level of influence,” says senior pastor Keld Dahlmann. However, Keld is adamant they work in partnership with others: “We can’t do it alone—we have to do it with others and see where God leads us,” he says.

For IMI Kirken, the dream is to “multiply everything”. The church is exploring the potential of multisite church planting. There are also opportunities within the Normisjon movement to help revitalise the small fellowships, as well as working with youth churches and children’s ministries across Norway. And in Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia their Agenda 1 learning communities have the potential to help church leaders start a new movement of planting missional communities that are indigenous and relevant to their context.

The Antioch Movement’s goal is also multiplication, from the “pivot nations” into surrounding countries. Their strategy is clear: whatever God is going to do, he will do it through the church. They are now also part of Global Fellowship (www.gfmission.com) which launched in November 2011, facilitating church planting movements around the world. Global Fellowship national teams are already operating or being formed in the Caribbean, India, USA and Argentina in addition to Ukraine. The Antioch Movement is playing a key role in the Continental Team for the Russian Speaking World ,with South East Asia forming another Continental Team.

“I would like to look back and see that we have inaugurated and catalysed church planting movements in five or six new countries,” reflects Joe Dunn of Great Commission Europe. Their United for Europe 2014 initiative highlights opportunities to serve in

Albania, France, Romania, Moldova, Lativia and Sweden, in partnership with national Christians in these countries. “We want to create teams with European and other international workers, recruiting from churches we have planted,” he adds.

KIT’s vision is to move from supporting migrant church planters in a small numbers of European countries, to facilitating a network throughout “at least 90% of European countries.” “We have a strategy now that works,” explains KIT’s director, Hans Henrik Lund.

Other churches include specific numbers as part of their target. ICF wants to see 300 churches planted across Europe by 2016, through multiplying current churches and sites and starting new ones. The Vineyard DACH movement has a vision for 500 churches by 2020, growing from 75 Vineyards today. Network Church Sheffield’s vision is for 20,000 people reached in Sheffield alone, with five times that many through their network of churches. “There is a long way to go,” admits Paul Maconochie, “but if our current network learning communities begin to run their own learning communities then it should be possible.”

But perhaps the greatest takeaway from these churches and organisations is summed up by Joe Wilson, who has helped to form multiplying church planting networks in Belarus and Siberia. As these networks now collaborate with the Latvian Baptist Union with the vision of reaching another part of Russia, he says, “We have learned our vision was too small, that God is always trying to do bigger things and make us become much more than we were. Every time we have stepped out in faith, God supplied what was needed, and we have done more than we ever expected we could.”

European Church Planting Network • Global Expansion 12

Contact UsFor more information about Leadership Network Europe, visit http://leadnet.org/page/europe, or contact Nicola James at nicola@nicolajamescommunications.com (UK) or Peter Dyhr at peter.dyhr@leadnet.org (Europe)

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Endnotes 1 For more information about their work read Supporting Church Planting in Migrant Communities available from http://leadnet.org//resources/download/supporting_church_planting_in_migrant_communities2 David Garrison, Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost Word (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2004), p. 213 Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers by Warren Bird and Ed Stetzer (Jossey-Bass, 2011)4 You can read more about how ECPN teams are using the learning community model in the 2009 paper Good to Great in Church Planting: Accelerating Growth and Effectiveness in Church Planting available from http://leadnet.org/resources/download/good_to_great_in_church_planting_accelerating_effectiveness5 DACH stands for the German speaking countries in Europe: Germany(D), Austria (A) and Switzerland (CH).6 For more information about how Vineyard MAVE began, read Supporting Church Planting in Migrant Communities available from http://leadnet.org//resources/download/supporting_church_planting_in_migrant_communities7 Chanran, R., Drotter, S,. Noel, J.(2001) The Leadership Pipeline San Francisco: Josey-Bass 8 Download the brochure from http://www.gceweb.org/assets/gceweb/u4e14brochure.pdf

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About the Author Joanne Appleton is a freelance writer and Communications Manager at Redcliffe College, Centre for Mission Training in Gloucester, UK. She co-edits Vista: communicating research and innovation, about mission in Europe, and is completing a postgraduate MA in European Mission and Intercultural Christianity. She is married and has two daughters in their late teens.