WELC 2012 Church Planting Breakout Group Notes

Church Planting breakout Group Notes
Facilitated by Kevin Colyer, 8 Feb 2012, WELC 2012

Introductions

 * Helena- England:Forever Team
 * Jim- Germany
 * Hank- France
 * Lorna- Albania
 * Steve- England
 * Belinda- Bosnia Herzegovina
 * Wolfgang- Germany
 * Linn- Carlisle
 * Corbin- Scotland

Big Questions

 * Is YWAM called to plant churches, but not maintain them?
 * The answer is a definite no – YWAM is called not only to plant, and maintaining them is not against YWAM DNA. Ideally would be to eventually raise up local leaders. Another question is what is a YWAMer!? Although, being a full-time paid pastor in a church would mean that they were no longer with YWAM.


 * Who to cooperate with? How does partnership work?
 * It is hard work, but not harder than any other team. Must have similar goal, but also be able to have own projects and help each other out.
 * Mixed feelings about partnership. Not a problem with partnership, but with partners! When partners change, it can become different.


 * Do we know of a model or way to rapidly get people into church planting?
 * No...


 * How do you go about building a church team or a base/centre?
 * Shared vision. Does it work to have the church plant close to a cosmopolitan YWAM base? Is it beneficial to the church plant, and being able to be reproducible, if too many YWAMers come to it?
 * Alpha course that never ends :-) Fresh Expressions: Cafe Church in a bar... Sweaty church. Messy Church. Liquid church. All this seems to have a great ability to meeting the need of people who wouldn't normally enter a church.
 * Step 1: bring out a statement, raising up profile of CP... step 2: raising people and motivating them to become Cps.


 * What is authentic church? What should it look like? What can we not take out of the equation? 
 * 7 essentials of what a church is: from George Patterson:
 * repent and believe,
 * baptised and filled with the Spirit,
 * love God, Christians and your neighbours,
 * Lord's supper,
 * pray and read God's word,
 * give sacrificially,
 * evangelise and disciple others.
 * We need to contextualise our church, to be appropriate for our context.
 * Hank talked about working with Catholics... have to be able to work with Catholics – for instance having huge meetings in France: but it is made of majority of Catholics. Unity meetings and prayer together.

Action points

 * getting/creating a statement on the importance of CP from the leadership (Jim!)
 * action group to write up essentials for YWAM KB
 * read “You see bones, I see an Army” Floyd McClung
 * Contact YWAM Church Planting Coaches for help and resources