The Plant Course is about the why, what and how of starting a new worshipping community. It’s delivered through interactive and community learning, with excellent content from experts and live examples given by those who have done it before, to leaders and core team members who are about to launch a new worshiping community. This covers the vision and values of the Plant Course, and the facilitation style and key roles.
The vision of the Plant Course is to enable 1000s of church plants to be launched over the coming years in every part of England. It creates an encouraging and innovative space in which church planters and their teams can pray and work together to produce workable, God-empowered plans to start effective, healthy new church communities appropriate to their contexts.
The course began in 2010, arising from a demand for church planting training from around the country and from Bishop Ric Thorpe’s experience of planting a church at St Paul’s, Shadwell, and subsequently sending out three church plants and an evening congregation over the following 10 years. The volume of interest and enquiries was such that he devised the course to share the principles and practicalities of church planting with those launching church plants. The course has grown and developed since then and engages many different models of planting churches in multiple contexts and from the full range of church traditions. It is now being multiplied across England and overseas.
The Plant Course is not a series of lectures based on the classic classroom model, but rather is an interactive experience based on a learning community model. Its starting point is the belief that much of the learning is already in the room and therefore the greatest value for the participants will be having the space and time to engage together with God to create the plans for their church plant. They will go on a journey of learning, praying and planning together over a two-month period. This requires active facilitation from the team delivering the course.
The watchword for the course is that if we keep doing what we currently do, we will get the same results. We therefore need to do something new to reach the 92% who do not currently come to church in England. The Plant Course is all about doing new things in new places to reach new people in new ways. This means that culture change is always a key factor in planting churches, and the content and manner of delivering the course reflect this.
Although the Plant Course encourages our active engagement and our very best efforts, it recognises that the only power to reach England with the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God. The course has the conviction that God is doing something through church planting in our nation and sees itself as part of a broader movement of the Spirit of God in our time. Each day of the course begins and ends in prayer and is punctuated by prayer throughout. This is more than tokenism.
The New Testament model of church leadership is plural, and the Plant Course reflects this; it is not for individual church planters but for lead planters and their teams. The course encourages church plant leadership teams to begin as they intend to carry on – by praying and working together. Each day of the course includes substantial white board time for each church planter and team to develop practical plans together.
All church planting should be under authority. In Church of England terms, this means that each church plant will have the explicit authorisation of their appropriate bishop. Authority brings blessing and protection, and the ability to get things done. This is for both practical and spiritual reasons.
The Plant Course recognises the breadth of theological and church tradition and aims to work with any church planter and team who happily subscribe to the Christian creeds. Each day begins with a thought from the Bible, working through the book of Acts, to locate the course within orthodox Christianity. The course is led under the auspices of the Bishop of Islington and the Gregory Centre for Church Multiplication, but is not an exclusively Anglican course. Working with other denominations is seen as a positive thing.
The Plant Course is a practical course aiming at real action and puts a value on the experience of other church planters. Their stories and wisdom are a key element of the course, and are integrated throughout, featuring case studies, testimonies, interviews and site visits at points throughout the course.
A mixed cohort of ages, stages and church traditions gives church planters and their teams increased opportunities to learn from each other. The Plant Course encourages the sharing of skills, knowledge, wisdom and experience of the course participants, and mutual learning. The course begins with the participants subscribing to mutually agreed ground rules for their interaction throughout the sessions.
The Plant Course is geared to the answering of ‘How?’ questions rather than ‘Why?’ questions. It is focused towards specific projects, not general theory. Throughout the course, the learning is applied to the situations of each church planter, team and context.
Vision is vital to the success of each church plant, and the Plant Course aims to help every church planting team to understand the why, what and how of their plant and to be able to communicate it clearly. The course requires every team to articulate clear plans for their plant and to engage in homework each week in preparation for the following day of the course. It culminates in a presentation to a panel of experienced practitioners who will critique these plans. For some, real funding is dependent on this presentation. In addition, throughout the course, each church planter and their team develop 45-second, two-minute and 15-minute presentations of their church planting plans so they can share their vision succinctly with various audiences.
The course represents a substantial shift away from the expert lecturing the student to a sense of partnership between the church planters and their teams, combined with expert input, the Holy Spirit, the experience of others and the wisdom in the room, all facilitated by the team delivering the course. There are a number of roles for this facilitating team, although some of them may be held by one person.
As culture change is such a key feature of church planting, it is helpful to have a team member with the authority and profile to embody and articulate this, both from the point of view of the wider Church and within individual church planting contexts. For instance, for the London Plant Course, this is a role fulfilled by Bishop Ric.
The success of the course depends largely on having the right people attending at the right stage in their church planting plans. The Plant Course has a bias to action and is for teams who are at the point of actually planting a church. Accordingly, a consultation process is needed ahead of time to assess the appropriateness of each potential church plant for the course, to encourage those who may not be at the stage of launching out with their plant onto some other course or training more appropriate to them, and to communicate to each potential church planter and their teams the expectations of the course. It cannot be emphasised enough how important this consultation process is to the successful running of the course.
As the core methodology of the course is facilitation, it is crucial that this role is performed with skill and diligence. Ideally, there should be more than one facilitator for each day, and the balance of the facilitation team should reflect both genders, different contexts and ethnic backgrounds. The facilitator will agitate the process and help coach each church planter and their team through the course.
This person manages the communication with the cohort before, during and after the course; looks after the payment of course fees; and enables the practical set-up of the room, the technical requirements of the course and the catering.
Experts in particular fields are needed for the delivery of each session, such as planning, finance, contextualization, self- and team-leadership. Wherever possible, experts should be practitioners, rather than academics.
The ideal is to have interviews with church planters and their teams who have planted churches very recently, rather than a couple of years ago, so that both the learning and experience are fresh.
These are people with a large pool of contacts who can come and take part in the delivery of the course. They will, for instance, know many recent church planters from a variety of models and church traditions, people like Diocesan Secretaries and safeguarding officers.
As has been emphasised, the Plant Course is for those who are on the point of actually planting a church, preferably within the next six-to-nine months. The Plant Course is for those who have:
Facilitation is just as, if not more, important than content.
As communicators, we can focus too much on having great content, but we need to put the same energy and expertise into helping our audience engage with it so that they leave committed to our pre-defined purpose for the day.
Be clear each day on where it’s going. Content is key, but not enough – you need strong facilitation throughout the course. You need to agree the overall purpose of the day then keep the discussion on target. “Where are we in relation to …?” Facilitation is a leadership role because it gets the group from where they are now to where they need to be. Keep remembering that content is key, but not enough in itself.
When looking at the agenda and content, ask “How can we involve the group experientially in the learning process?” Good processing tools are break-outs in pairs and groups, as well as Q&A in the plenary. Use white boards or the equivalent frequently.
When planning the sessions, ask “Does the speaker have all the answers? Is this ‘tell and sell’”? or “Do we want to find a solution in the room?” There will be more buy-in to a solution developed by the participants themselves. Also, it’s better to apply theories and tools to live situations rather than keeping the discussion abstract. Spending 10 minutes on a model and then 20 minutes applying it has more impact than spending a whole 30 minutes simply examining the model.
One of our main jobs when working with the cohort is to ask questions, either from the front or around a white board. Think of things to ask in advance. Great questions lead to great conversations by involving and drawing people out. At school, we were judged by the answers we gave to questions, but in the workplace, communicators should be judged by the questions we ask. The right question shows great understanding. “You look like you have a question about this?”. “Do I sense that you disagree with what was just said?”
Ask people what they want to get out of the sessions. Ask them how they would like to interact together as a group and make sure everyone signs up to those ‘ground rules’ e.g. phones away, speak up when you disagree etc.
Get everyone to say something very early on and keep involving all participants. If people have not made a meaningful contribution within the first 20 minutes, then they probably won’t all day. Be clear at the start that you want interaction and questions. Be clear about how and when. If someone has not contributed, gently try and draw them in. Consider speaking to them during the break to check they are OK. Use questions such as “How do the rest of you feel about this?” to encourage everyone to share.
Regularly check throughout the day on the group’s energy and change things around often to keep the energy up – listen for questions, laughter, alertness, and mix up the speakers instead of having one person presenting for the whole day.
Has no-one said or asked anything for some time? Do people look alert and engaged? Has there been any laughter? If not, make a change. Even just ask people to stand up and stretch for 10 seconds. Check and sustain your own energy levels too.
Is there an elephant in the room? What are the unspoken or hidden concerns? This will keep energy high. Keep the group focused on constructive conflict and solving problems instead of complaining or criticism.
It’s really important to respect stop and start times. People may want the toilet and stop following because they are more focused on the time if the sessions start to overrun. Having clear start and stop times help with engagement and productivity.
A semicircle of chairs is ideal with no desks or barriers to prevent interaction. Keep the room at a good temperature, not too hot or cold. Natural daylight is essential and check the acoustics. Can you be heard without a microphone? Avoid distractions such as people wandering through the space.
Move the discussion to a conclusion, action and commitments. Help the group focus on what they can do and establish a ground rule of ‘a bias to action’. Be clear about action points, focusing on who is doing what and when after the meeting.
Before joining the course, it is important to ensure that the ‘right’ people are doing the course at the right time. This is not only for the individual’s benefit, but also for the rest of the cohort. We recommend that the Gatekeeper undertakes a consultation with all possible church plant leaders to understand their position and ensure that it’s an appropriate time for them to start the course.
Do they have authority to plant?
Have they gathered others to work with them?
Preferably 6-12 months before they plant
Are they clear about who they are trying to reach?
