Australian church planters gather

170 delegates converged at the Wesley Centre to 'Turn Talk into Action', a one day conference aimed at gathering current and emerging church planters to move towards establishing a nation wide church planting network with the hope to see church planting explode across Australia.

Al Stewart chaired the conference and kicked it off by sharing from 2 Timothy and talked about the quality of a leader, that being the: The Soldier, The Athlete and The Farmer (2 Timothy 2). He said the single human factor to church growth is leadership and he shared some alarming stats that showed that mainstream denominations are currently not growing but declining.

Al gave an overview of what a national church planting network would look like in terms of vision, core values, benefits and opportunities. In essense the network will be a 'network of networks' with the following values:

1. Church planting as a key strategy to church growth
2. Commitment to evangelise
3. An entreprenuerial culture
4. Flexible training and study of scripture
5. Real engagement with our culture

Andrew Heard shared his experience with planting an independent church in the central coast, Central Coast Evangelical Church (http://www.ccec.com.au/). Steve Chong spoke about his success and mistakes with his first year planting kirkplace (http://www.kirkplace.org.au/). We also heard from other guys and their church planting stories from all over the nation, including the Woolongong area, north coast, Brisbane, Tasmania and Melbourne. I met Guy Mason who started a church in a pub in Docklands, Melbourne, (www.docklandschurch.org.au). Awesome stuff!

We had dinner together and I got to meet a great bunch of guys. We spent the rest of the night brainstorming ideas and giving feedback to Al, Andrew and Steve on our thoughts of the potential church planting network. An area of contention was the network's relationship with Mark Driscoll's Acts 29 Network(http://www.acts29network.org/). Pro and cons where discussed with being an official branch of Acts 29 or being an independent Australian church planting network.


Despite the debate, everyone is excited to see the establishment of a church planting network in Australia which will hopefully tip a church planting movement across the nation. Expect to see the launch of the network later this year...