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Gathering a core team
Gathering a core team when you go church planting is one of the first tasks you need to do well... We were going to be moving 50 miles to plant in King’s Lynn. We knew no-one there, so we needed to somehow hit the ground running. I felt we could gather more quickly to a public meeting than small groups, partly because of my gift mix and largely because we had the finances to make a big splash. I needed a good size core team to do that.
Draw up a wish List and go get your dream team…
There are two types of people to make up a church planting team. 1) Those that will fulfil your key roles. 2) Other workers – good heart people who will come and get stuck and in time may become leaders. I drew up a wish list of roles we needed filling – a musician, small group leaders, someone in their 20s to gather 20s and work with youth, a kid’s worker and a drummer! I also wanted to start with a leadership team. Bill Hybels talks of the three Cs of finding your dream team – Character, Chemistry and Competency. Character and competency are fairly self-explanatory. Chemistry, though, is also vital – do you get on well with them? Can you build relationally with the people you are after for your team? My leadership recruitment disasters have always largely been about a lack of chemistry and have generally been painful 6 months down the line Having made my wish list, I had a few names I wanted to headhunt. Andy & Jenny were first on the list and would fill musician, small group leader and part of a leadership team. I grabbed them one Sunday to arrange a coffee. “You’re not asking us to go planting with you to King’s Lynn are you?” – This was before it was public news. “Er yes.” Not how I had planned the conversation, but within a fortnight, the shock had died down and they were on board. Another young man Jason had told me; whenever I planted again he would come, so he said yes straight away. Laura had been our first convert as youth leaders and was now living in Leeds. One Sunday night I rang her, to discover she was not going to her church gathering that evening to seek God for her future. “You should come to King’s Lynn, lead the youth and gather 20s.” She was on board within days and gave me the number of another family who were moving to the area too.
Fling the nets wider…
I’d pretty quickly exhausted the people I was headhunting for my wish list and now needed to fling the nets wider. We printed thousands of “Wish you were here in King’s Lynn” postcards and distributed them at conferences and events, which gave us some profile, but no positive contacts. We got a website online and crucially paid for Google advertising to get us on the first page of any web search for a church in King’s Lynn. That modest outlay of £3 a month brought us Kathy, who would be moving to town around the same time us. I also started asking for slots in Church prayer meetings and for preaching invites. Paul and Pat from Bedford who are now small group leaders with us tell their story… “The first we knew about the Kings Lynn plant was a visit from some bloke called Andy Moyle to our church prayer meeting. The idea resonated with both of us and we felt that we should explore it. We began by meeting with other prospective members of the plant and felt God saying to proceed as if it was going to happen. Months of prayer, preparation and some heart ache concluded in a definite decision and amazing blessing and provision by God.” Paul & Pat had been at Woodside for 28 years, so planting was a radical change that has been a real blessing from them and us. Those visits to the Norfolk churches also built relationships that yielded great rent-a-crowd for huge leaflet drops and gathering events before our initial launch. All but one of our core team came because I asked them and so I learnt the importance of being proactive in asking and not relying on media like internet and print to gather people. Conventional planting wisdom says students, 20s and retirees are the most likely to come, but God gave us a much broader team than that. He also providentially worked, so I asked at just the right time too.
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