As the next1000 Summit approaches I thought I would cheer us up with the story of how the British equivalent stalled.
This is a condensed version of Martin Robinson's account of the rise and decline of the British church planting movement in the late 80s and 90s. Tomorrow his reasons why it stalled.
In the late 1980s something new was taking place in church planting in Britain. Church planting had always occurred but now it was becoming intentional.
In 1987 Bob and Mary Hopkins pioneered Anglican Church Planting Initiatives (ACPI) which led to a number of church planting conferences hosted by Sandy Millar at Holy Trinity Brompton.
At the same time Baptist pastor, Steve Chalke, founded Oasis which offered one-year mission placements for young people Frontline Teams. Spurgeon’s College (Baptist) formed a partnership with Oasis and provided a three-year course to train church planters.
Rob Frost (Methodist) developed Seed Teams that worked within existing churches to move them into mission and in church planting.
The Hopkins worked with Lynne Green of Youth With A Mission (YWAM) to facilitate church planting.
Roger Forster, was also connected with Lynne Green. His ICHTHUS movement was busy pioneering new models of church planting in south east London. ICTHUS was one of a number of new church networks that were vigorously planting churches—Pioneer led by Gerald Coates, Harvestime led by Bryn Jones, and New Frontiers led by Terry Virgo.
In the midst of this ferment, the Bible Society held a consultation on church planting in February 1991 to test whether a new movement was developing. The consultation was jointly sponsored by the Bible Society, the Evangelical Alliance and March for Jesus.
Seventy church leaders attended the Consultation representing 20 denominations and networks. Martin Robinson, the Bible Society’s church growth consultant, was the chair.
Just before the consultation Roger Forster (ICTHUS) and Lynne Green (YWAM) attended an event in Singapore that profiled the work of the DAWN movement in the Philippines.
They wondered if DAWN was the catalyst that was needed to propel the incipient church planting movement towards becoming an instrument for re-evangelizing Britain.
The consultation agreed and established Challenge 2000 (now Together in Mission) as an interdenominational agency with a full-time worker. It’s mission was to implement the DAWN strategy in Britain.
The first DAWN Congress was held in February 1992. Six hundred church leaders attended representing every major denomination and network. The Congress set the goal of planting 20,000 new congregations by the year 2000.
Within a couple of years, every major denomination had official plans, policies or reports endorsing church planting.
A second (and final) Congress was held in 1995 but it’s leaders were unable to face the reality that it’s goals were not being achieved.
As early as 1996, there were signs that many of the attempts at church planting seemed to run out of energy and simply stopped.
The experience of the Assemblies of God (AOG) is instructive. The Assemblies committed to planting 1,000 new congregations by 2000. A doubling of their congregations. At the end of three years, they had started 200 new congregations. They were on target.
But then the planting stopped. Some of the new initiatives closed and most of the new congregations did not continue to grow. Of the 200 initiatives, only 50 new churches were successfully formed.
During the same time the Assemblies closed 30 pre-existing churches, leaving a net gain of just 20. The AOG experience was mirrored in other denominations and networks.
By the late 1990s the goal of planting 20,000 new churches had slipped quietly away. Why?
“Planting Mission-Shaped Churches Today” (Martin Robinson)
