Tim ScheuerTim Scheuer is contagious. If you meet him it doesn't take long before he's sharing his vision for reaching Aussies through church planting.

1. Why did you join the Church Army?

I was serving with YWAM Sydney and attending an Anglican church. It was through that church that I connected with the Church Army. I was impressed with their commitment to discipleship and evangelism among people on the margins.

Church Army is all about pioneering evangelism. It’s about the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel among people who have been overlooked by traditional churches.

2. How did you get involved in church planting?

I heard Bob Logan speak back in 1993 and got excited about church planting doing church differently. In 1995 I took up the challenge of making it work in a church plant in Branson Missouri. We focused on marginalized and broken people. It was a tremendous learning experience.

I learnt how to gather a team, engage and connect with people who are totally unchurched. How to make disciples and build them into a community of faith.

I learnt to do church outside the building.

3. How does church planting fit in to the Church Army’s calling?

The Church Army has been intentionally moving beyond just doing evangelism to evangelism that results in church planting. We want to start churches for people who don’t fit into a traditional church culture.

4. How are you turning that vision into reality?

We’re articulating a compelling vision that challenges people to exercise faith. God is looking for people with audacious dreams.

If we can do it without God it’s not faith. You have to step out intentionally and take a risk to reach people.

I ask people, “Does your faith make God sweat or put him to sleep?”

5. How have you seen God at work?

I’ve learnt to put the vision before the provision. We step out and commit ourselves to projects that have required more resources than we currently have. If God hadn’t showed we’d be broke.

In the last five years we’ve had a 500% increase in expenditure and our income has matched it and our staff has also grown five-fold.

6. How have you seen God come through out in the field?

Our plant in Berkley is a great example. It’s a working class town that has been a graveyard for churches. Wayne Pickford has outstanding job of putting together a team that is reaching the community in unorthodox ways.

How many pastors do you know who stage wrestling bouts to attract people? They’ve implemented “adopt a block”. After less than twelve months over 100 are connected with the new church. Thirty-five new believers have asked to be baptised. The team has grown from five to twenty-five and some of the new team members are people reached by the ministry.

Now Berkley is becoming an on-site training centre for future church planters.

All of this because people were will to step out and take a risk in faith.

7. How do you find good church planters?

Any way I can!

I look for someone with the right heart, more than talent, experience or training.

I ask myself, Deep inside do they yearn for lost people being reconciled to God? Do they feel the heart of God for broken people?  Do they live it in such a way that they reach lost people? Do they leave their comfort zone and rely on God for the sake of lost people?

I share the vision and see what rises to the surface.

Recently an Anglican minister with twenty years experience volunteered for church planting. He told us even if he wasn’t chosen to be the lead planter, he still wanted to be on the team. He’s willing to give up parish ministry and a stipend in order to reach lost people in a public housing estate.

Something is happening in his heart and he’s prepared to get out of his comfort zone.

8. Tell us about the Global Gap Year program. . .

The purpose of the Gap Year is to “ruin young lives for the ordinary”.  We want them to experience authentic Christian community and radical discipleship in the context of real mission.

The program was piloted in Australia and is now spreading overseas to the UK and New Zealand.

It begins with a three month residential course followed up by six months in a local mission base serving as a team member alongside a skilled pioneer. They get to see a healthy model of ministry that is reaching lost people. It’s a taste of local mission that will ruin them for the ordinary.

Some of them will go on to become church planters they will all see themselves as local missionaries for the rest of their lives.

9. What are you learning about church planting movements?

You have to be intentional about systems that facilitate risk taking and have potential for rapid growth and multiplication.

We’ve put in place our leadership farms for future leaders, like the Gap Year. We have our assessment process for church planters backed up with coaching and “just in time” training.

We’ve created a Local Mission Base leaders’ forum. We put high risk planters in the room together to share their pains, their failures and successes. It’s a high voltage learning community.

All our Local Mission Bases are intentional about making disciples and growing future pioneering leaders. You can’t train leaders away from the harvest field. At every leave we’re growing workers in the harvest for the harvest.

I’m also learning that you have to create a culture where people can have a go and make mistakes. Our Church Army culture is fun, exciting, and we expect to see God do things they had never dreamed of.

Most important of all you must keep the main game the main game—reconciling people to God through Christ.

10. What’s next?

We’re adding a lot of new Local Mission Bases and we have many more in the pipeline. Challenge to get those mission bases multiplying and raising up leaders.

As we plant churches we now have to get them multiplying.

The Anglican culture is hesitant to release lay people into ministry without formal training. But the only hope of impacting Australia is the rapid multiplication of pioneering leaders.

We need to train the workers as they go. Just like Jesus did. That’s what Church Army does. It’s our heritage going back to our founder Wilson Carlile.

Not everyone is comfortable with that. My prayer is that when people see the Prodigals coming home to the Father, they’ll get excited and join the party!