“They said yes!” was what I texted to Lyndal in the middle of an Elders Meeting, but the lead up to sending that text had been anything but standard or routine. Our Church Planting Story was beginning but in some ways we never saw it coming.

Nine months prior I put a paper before the Elders, suggesting we venture into the world of church planting by setting up a series of Newlife campuses to fulfil our strategic plan to plant 5 churches by 2021.

For nine months the paper was tabled with the Elders board, but due to the massive number of demanding and exciting strategic issues on the agenda it sat just out of sight.

That was until the night when falling into the strategic item slot on the agenda was written “Church planting paper”. It didn’t take long for us to ascertain that the paper was already out of date, due to the shifting church landscape we all exist in. After some brief discussion, the elders asked for some lower level thinking to be done, as the paper was a high-level plan.

I came away from that meeting excited. Could it be that things were slowly moving forward on a crazy idea that just might work? An idea that until now I’d not let breath in my own soul?

A couple of days later I met with Stu, and after agreeing to a candid conversation he broke the news to me. “You’re not the person to lead a church campus,” he said. “Your leadership style, experience, personality and gifting would leave you very frustrated and I’m afraid it wouldn’t work.”

To be honest, I was a little surprised. He continued, “If you’re going to do this it needs to be a church plant. Completely independent of Robina. So how do you feel about being a church planter instead?”

The feeling was what I’d imagine jumping out a plane with a parachute attached to your back would feel. Only to be told when you’re on the wing of the plane, “There’s no guarantee that the chute will open, but it’s likely.”

I jumped!

“I’m in.”

“Yep, I’m in, I think it’s all leading to that conclusion isn’t it!”

This led us to amend the initial proposal and reshape it around a church-planting model. A Plant is a church that is created out of another church with the intention that it is a separate entity, and after support has been given, this new church establishs itself on its own merit. A campus is centrally governed, led and resourced.

We sent the revised paper to the Elders and gathered together for our meeting. Lyndal and I were thinking the Elders would ask for some more work to be done, that more time would be needed to think things through.

The agenda item was raised and after a brief conversation, someone said: “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t vote on this right now?” Everybody agreed and my hand was the last to go up, as I looked around the room amused and surprised.

“They said yes!” I texted Lyndal.

We were now church planters.

Of course, there were some other things that the Elders asked of us, including a business plan, missional strategy, budget, a SWOT analysis and some other work. But in the space of five weeks, after nine months of pondering, praying, thinking and chatting with many, we were now being sent out.

The adventure begins!

You can find another perspective on this story at http://www.ralphmayhew.com/becoming-church-planter/