Learn Leading from Planting for Rebooting

'Church planting' really is flavour of the month at the moment. A whole generation of aspiring church leaders seems to want nothing other than the opportunity to start their own church and build it from the ground up. This is great news. To see younger believers actually longing for the chance to sink their lives into church leadership is really, really exciting. God willing, lots of them will be able to do great works for his glory.

I do find it interesting that as I read lots of the church planting literature, a lot of it isn't just about church planting. That is, it's not all focussed on the process of starting up a new congregation or local church; a great deal of it is about how to run, lead and grow a church once it's up and going and I think this is a really important contribution. It actually seems to me that one thing that's so attractive about the church planting movement is that it's helping young leaders to see that local church doesn't need to be done the way it has been done in the past and it's helping them to think about far more contemporary, practical and exciting forms for church gatherings.

For Anglicans, this is all very timely. For all the great strengths of the Prayer Book services, their downside is that they can lead some ministers to believe that no fresh imagining of church gatherings or church communities is really necessary. The thinking can be that people will just turn up on Sunday (because they always have and always will due to the fact that Anglican churches are an important part of every local community) and that they will be satisfied with a well-led Prayer Book service. Couple this with the more modern evangelical idea that we just need to 'preach Scripture and they will come' and you can end up with a relative lack of fresh thought about how to run and build engaging local church communities. Hence the huge appetite for the practical leadership lessons in the new church planting literature for those who aren't rusted-on Anglican traditionalists.

But these lessons - and the great risk-taking and permission-giving spirit that invariably goes along with them - are good not just for church planters and for leaders of Anglican churches, but also for those who want to grab hold of what I believe is the biggest gospel opportunity in Western Anglicanism: rebooting, or revitalising, flat local churches.

The decline in the traditional churches in the West actually creates this opportunity. As attendances dwindle and congregations age, all of a sudden there are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of church buildings in prime locations crying out for new leaders to come in and lead them to a new season of life. This incredible infrastructure - fully owned by the Church - is a huge blessing that can really be put to amazing use. But it's tough work. I would argue that it's harder than church planting in many ways.

In a true church plant, the leader builds everything from the ground up. It's a blank slate that they're free to create on. And the people who commit to joining them in the new work either get to be part of the creative processes or else they come along because they're sold on the new vision and plans. But with a reboot, the slate isn't blank. It's covered with the stories of past generations and it's often deeply cherished by the present congregation - even if that's only half a dozen faithful octogenarians! The rebooter has the hard and delicate job of turning the parish around and making a fresh start while at the same time honouring and lovingly pastoring the saints whom they've inherited with their position. It won't do to ignore or marginalise these church members. Neither is it ok to force them to accept radical change at a rate that they can't realistically manage. Tending the flock (1 Pt 5) while making disciples (Mt 28) has always been the tension in church leadership, it's just so much more acute when rebooting.

I think it's so great that passionate and capable young leaders are looking at serving within the Anglican Church. It's great that they're bringing insights and inspiration from the new church planting literature. The Anglican Church hierarchy needs to make sure it knows how to make space for this next generation of leaders to flourish. And I also think everyone would benefit enormously if the considerable wisdom, insights and practical smarts of the new church planting movement were developed further for a the great challenge of starting a rebooting movement within the Anglican world. I only know of one book that explores all this, The Because Approach: Innovating Church for All by Andrew Baughen. Would love to find more.