The bit that caught my eye was the little piece about the restructuring of one of the denominational departments. I know it sounds boring and if you share my suspicion of large organisations you are probably inclined to turn off straight away. It grabbed my attention because, in my humble opinion, it is the most strategic department in the entire denomination. In a time when the decline of Christianity and church attendance is often a hot topic the Mission Department has a vital and significant contribution to make.

Ian Bunce is the new Department head and participated in producing the report on the outcomes of a 2004 consultation on church planting. The department has been re-structured around becoming a resource for churches as they engage in mission. GREAT! This is exactly what we need. Nobody wants some far off department to be telling us how we should be engaging with our local communities. We do need people to resource us, help us, guide us and encourage us. This change in focus is FANTASTIC! It is a result of some other changes in the way the regions are structured. It’s not often Transform gets me excited! There are four main areas the department are working in. They have all been given the obligatory trendy names that will sound dated in a few years. That reminds me of a story about a church pant… I digress, that will have to wait for a blog entry on “trendy names for church plants”.

My excitement began to wain as I looked through the article. Church planting doesn’t get a mention. Well it does, but it depends how you read it. Baptist Churches are quite good at church planting. We have planted on average one a month over the last 20 years. It is true that no one can accurately account how many of those churches survive or if that is the full picture but overall Church Planting is high on our agenda. We are just not good at talking to each other!

The section on the Mission department contains a story about what looks like a church plant (but it is not explicit). There is mention of “Fresh Expressions”. We don’t have to worry about borrowing words from the Anglican Communion. Baptists have been doing fresh expressions since we started. Just because the Anglicans have learned from us about church planting and re-packaged it in a sound bite which is useful for marketing we don’t have to. When we first met to talk about establishing a network for church planters (the network became known as The Incarnate Network) we talked about the use of words and if we should adopt the “Fresh Expressions” label, but decided not to. Baptist Church planting is much broader than a “Fresh Expression”. There will always be a need for a broad variety in the kind of churches that are established. It struck me that it was a real shame that among all the resources listed for people interested in “Fresh Expressions” the Incarnate Network was absent. Here is a grass roots network of people engaged in front line mission and it is apparently not seen as a useful resource. We have much to learn from the many different approaches to Mission and Church Planting that the other streams within the Christian Church offer. It is totally bizarre that we don’t point each other to the stories of Church Planting and if you insist, Fresh Expressions, that are happening within our own networks.

The Incarnate Network does get a little slot of it’s own again, and I noticed that member registrations started coming in again after Transform was published (there are well over 200 people registered now). Church Planting is obviously on the agenda of the Mission Department. I think bringing church planting into focus through the Mission Department rather than a special interest group like the Incarnate Network would have the following benefits:

• Baptist Churches, who are known for their Independence as well as their inter-dependence, would have a clearly focused way to learn from each other about local mission, including church planting.
• Resources could be targeted to areas where there is little Christian witness or influence. This is one of the concerns Stuart has raised in conversation and in his article “Where are Baptists at with Church Planting” (link to follow).
• Baptists would be able to associate all the attention that “Fresh Expressions” receive with something they already do and are good at.

If I were to make an appeal to Ian and the Mission Department it would be this: The restructuring is FANTASTIC. Within “The Edge” please could you bring the church planting into focus in a way that doesn’t exclude people who feel they are “Church Planting” and not “Fresh Expression-ing” as well as those who feel they are.

The issue is entitled “Think Team” and as a church planter, I feel excluded, and not part of the team.

[UPDATE]I am at “The Baptist Assembly” which is a gathering of British Baptists from all over the country. I took the opportunity to seek out Ian Bunce and ask him why Chruch Planting wasn’t mentioned. It is the first time I have met Ian and he is a very approachable and easy to get along with. He spoke with passion about Church Planting and suggested that you can’t squeeze everything into an 800 word article.