In the last chapter of Planting Missional Churches, Ed Stetzer draws on Church planting: The next generation by Kevin Mannoia, which itself is describing Bob Logan's system. The elements he describes are a great roadmap for Vision 100 here in Tassie:
- Parent church network: The group of existing churches who are discussing and encouraging each other in church planting. Vision 100 was born out of such a network. If you're a Tassie church, you can always become a partner with us.
- Profile assessment system: The way to assess the strengths, weaknesses and gifts of potential planters. We have only just adopted a draft system in December 2008. I think that a failure to do this well has caused problems in the past. I hope we can really build on this in the coming year.
- New church incubator: Fellowship and mentoring to help church planters. We also adopted a draft system in December for doing this kind of work. Again, our failure to do this well in the past has been a significant problem.
- Pastor factory: How funny is this name? The Ministry Training Strategy has served this role in the past for us and it is hoped by some of our churches that Church Based Theological Education will, in some cases, do this even better. But how funny is the name 'pastor factory'?
- Church planter summit: A conference that initiates the church planting candidates. We started a the Vision 100 Leaders Conference two years ago which may serve this purpose in the future. You can read a review of last years conference on the last page of our November newsletter.
- Maturing church cluster: What makes this a cluster rather than a network? Nobody knows. But this what helps a newly planted church gradually move towards being a mature church. I think we will need to put some careful thought into church establishment and renewal in the next five years here in Tassie, or else we'll end up with a bunch of small churches going nowhere fast.
- Strategic planning network: To focus wisdom and energy on encouraging new church plants and renewing existing churches. Our Vision 100 committee is fulfilling this role too. We'll be having a strategic planning session on January 19th, in fact.
- Harvest 1000: The fund raising body. Jo and Emma are the two people on our committee involved in fundraising and they're doing a great job. We are trying to focus fundraising on concrete church planting initiatives, as it is easier to give to a project rather than a general idea for most people.
