Tag: church planting

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GENEVA Church Planting Australia

Church planting is so hot right now! Good. Below is a letter from Andrew Heard and Al Stewart with further information about the new Geneva Church Planting Network.

GENEVA church planting

There is much happening at the moment in the world of church planting. It is exciting stuff! In all of this a number of people have asked for clarification regarding the new church planting network called Geneva. People have wondered what it will be doing and what it might offer.

Geneva will be run by a board of Australian church planters which will include Al Stewart, Andrew Heard and Mikey Lynch. Its purpose will be to help reformed/evangelical networks and denominations recruit, assess, train, coach and mentor church planters for placement back into their various networks and denominations. The passion of Geneva is to establish not just culturally relevant growing church plants but ones that are grounded deeply in reformed theology and so able to be kept from simple pragmatism and fads. This core value is critical for establishing churches that are best able to pass on a vibrant gospel to future generations.

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Independent Church Planting in Australia

Steve Chong, Guy Mason, Mikey Lynch, Andrew Heard and Al Stewart are currently in Seattle at the Acts 29 Bootcamp/World Church Planting Summit. Here’s some exciting news from Mikey’s blog to follow up from the church planting conference last month:

Independent Church Planting in Australia

Room 338, Hotel Nexus, Seattle. It’s 12:20am Tuesday morning here. We’ve settled on something. Something that may, possibly, under God’s sovereign hand, define the next few decades of evangelical Christianity in Australia.

We will lead an independent, Australian church planting network, with warm friendship and support from Acts 29. We are building to a launch in Melbourne and Sydney in late November 2009. We’re agreed to move ahead with it and Acts 29 are keen to give their support to us.

It’s big and scary stuff. Next time we meet back in Australia, we’ve asked Al Stewart to lead a devotion with us on the topic of right, godly fear. (From here)

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Uluru Church Planting Crew

Al Stewart, Andrew Heard and Steve Chong hosted an Australian Church Planting conference yesterday with the aim of turning talk into action. Al kicked off in the Bible and described the job description of a church planter: Soldier; Athlete; Farmer. He also spoke about the nature of the gospel and why it’s worth suffering. Solid and challenging stuff. Chong, 1 year into a church plant in Kogarah, shared some reflections as a rookie with things they got right and things they got wrong. Heardy, 13 years into a church plant on the Central Coast, spoke about thing he wish he knew when he first started.

Represent!!

Some common threads: how hard it is plant churches; the urgent need to plant churches around Australia that will proclaim Jesus; the desire to get out there and do it! There are a bunch of networks currently planting churches around Australia and so the question is: what type of network of networks could be formed to help plant more? And what would its relationship be to the Acts 29 Network?

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Church Planting

I’ve been a bit discouraged by the number of nit-picking blog posts and comments during the last couple of weeks since Mark Driscoll’s visit to Australia. While the negative response of a number is discouraging, there is so much that’s encouraging!!

In the last couple of weeks I’ve spoken to so many people who are fired-up for living for Jesus and being on mission with Jesus. There is a infectious vibe amongst young guys who are keen to plant churches and grow up for the sake of Jesus and the gospel. For that I’m thankful to God for the way that he has used his servant Mark Driscoll in encouraging Australians in this regard. Here are Driscoll’s 18 points from the clergy conference, here’s the mp3 and here’s some stuff from Burn Your Plastic Jesus.

Who’s up for planting a church???

(pic from here)