Yesterday, I wrote about a church in Halifax that had moved from being an FIEC congregation to becoming Eastern Orthodox. Now, some of us might be thinking “what’s the big deal?” After all, as one friend put it, “it’s still a Christian Church” and surely whilst their expression of Christian faith may be different to ours and we may differ on theology, we can agree to disagree can’t we? Further, perhaps we should accept that a church is free to make its own decisions, certainly it’s the FIEC’s longstanding position that churches can choose to affiliate and to disaffiliate. They probably are not losing much sleep about that. Though I wonder if it would be so easy for St Hildas as Hope Church has become to leave behind the Orthodox Church should they choose to become Catholic, Presbyterian or Pentecostal.
Then, there’s the question of church health. Whether or not we recognise the new church as a valid expression of true church, I would want to ask a few questions around the theology. In my previous article’s headline I talked in terms of a Gospel departure. I think when you start moving to beliefs about the communion literally becoming the body and blood of Christ, when you need to meet in a particular type of building (they now use a Catholic Church building because the local school wasn’t suitable) and when your urgent need is to change your name so that you are known by a saint’s name (both the church and its leader) then that does seem to be quite the drift.
Incidentally I would also suggest that there are big, unasked questions about what goes on legally. Can this just be a matter of changing a name and reaffiliating? I don’t get the impression that the Orthodox guys see it that way. They see this as a new entity. I think they are right to do so. Hope Church is no more. A new church called “St Hildas” has been constituted. But that does leave a number of questions around ownership of data and of any assets and resources.
So, there are specific questions about what has happened in this particular context. However, what has particularly struck me is that this offers us a case study in the challenges and risks involved when planting churches, especially into hard to reach areas. There’s a costliness and a fragility to such ventures. Hope Church was planted into Halifax by a church planter trained at Union School of Theology, commissioned and sent by Worthing Tabernacle, an FIEC church and with funding through Union’s Mission fund which I would expect came primarily from South Korean supporters. If the intention was to plant a reformed evangelical church into Halifax, then we have to accept that the particular venture failed. That’s more obvious when a church clearly closes down but as I said, Hope Church has closed down. Those that were involved have started something new. And so, I believe that there are things for us to reflect on from this.
First of all, it got me thinking about what our expectations should be in terms of church planting. What measures do we put in place regarding success criteria.? This is, I guess particularly important when people are investing resources into places. Do we just think in terms of numbers, the classic bums on seats? Or are we thinking in terms of fruitfulness and health in terms of doctrine and culture. Is the church characterised by Biblical faithfulness and godly living?
Secondly, it got me thinking about expectations around planting. I’m currently one of the elders of a New Frontiers Church but I’m also committed to urban church planting both as part of my focus as an elder and as part of a wider mission focus through Faithroots. So, there are two aspects to this? If people come to me and ask for some help and partnership in getting a church off the ground, would there be boundaries and limits to who I would work with and what I would do? I guess there would be and there would be some I could do more and some I could do less with. Broadly speaking though, there’s an extent to which I can work with most Evangelicals even if there are some disagreements. However, if we are talking about churches that we actually want to plant from our church, then it is right to say that we should expect the new church to carry something of our DNA. We are going to want it to share our approach being reformed/baptistic/charismatic and following the same pattern of apostolic relationship. Now, that’s what we would aim for and I expect that even within that, we would understand if further down the road, the church, from a place of maturity changed its mind on some things. By the way, those are theological aspects to the DNA, however there can be others as well. For example at Bearwood Chapel, I had numerous conversations over the years but in fact we only ended up doing one church plant and one revitalisation because we were clear among other things that in our context we were planting multicultural not homogenous congregations. By the way, this meant that the plant used Spanish as its main language and was predominantly Latin American but was never mono-cultural.
Thirdly, there are some important questions about accountability. This is especially important when we are looking at what are often small, fragile churches that can easily be influenced by just one or two people, especially if those people are the founding leaders. There is a risk with plants that they become the private fiefdom of a leader. I think the challenges are greater here with explicitly independent polity but I think that even with some safeguards, New Frontiers and other church approaches may face challenges.
So, my suggestion is that even if your polity emphasises independency that you shouldn’t be in a rush to get there. After all, as we have seen, speedy arrival doesn’t guarantee longevity. Ironically, Hope Church would have stood more chance of surviving as an independent church if it had waited longer before receiving that independence. This would require regular check ins with a sending church. I also would argue that it means that churches that plant should be ready to recall a planter if they are concerned that he is going a bit off-beam and that means they need to be prepared to send someone else in, even for a temporary period of time.
Fourthly, I think we need to keep thinking about how we assess train and call people into this form of ministry. First, and I recognise, that we may not be able to easily discern this, we need to be alert to anything in their character which might present a risk of them getting distracted by the novel and exotic. Secondly, we need to train and prepare people for the right challenges. And here is something that stands out. For much of my time in ministry, the focus of theological training and ongoing mentoring has been the danger of liberalism. What we are being reminded of is that this isn’t the only challenge and we need to be aware of the attraction of more mystical type approaches too.
I would be encouraging those involved in church planting to be learning from what has happened in Halifax and in other cases where church plants have failed.
Faithroots 