Church Planting Networks

This is probably for more detail in another set of posts, but it useful to note that there are an increasing number of networks of church plants, church planters, and church planting organizations in the UK. It is an encouraging scene. In the past fortnight, we’ve facilitated a discussion for Growing Shoots (a network in the Black Country; see earlier posts), visited a network in Bristol (Church Planting Initiatives), and participated in a day-long consultation here in Shirley of national church planting organizations on the topic of ‘Developing the Church Planter’. Last weekend we hosted and helped lead training for what we pray will become a network of simple churches, some linked to thethirdplace network. In March, our own network, the Fellowship of Churches of Christ, is holding a forum for church planting which will include several ethnic church leaders who have been planting churches that have just joined the Fellowship. While the challenges of post-modern and post-Christendom England are very real, there is still much to be encouraged about in seeing communities of followers of Jesus formed in these islands.