closing a church plant
Such a helpful story from this Swedish church planting couple on how their church plant came to an end, c/o
Steve Addison's blog.
Here is the first part:
"While in Sweden recently I had the good fortune to meet Johan Pernryd. We discovered that we shared a common experience of starting a church that we eventually had to close down. Here’s Johan and Philippa’s story. . .
How did you get involved in church planting?
We were students in Uppsala, Sweden (Johan studied to be pastor and Philippa to be psychologist). Halfway thorugh our studies we were asked by our church to lead a church plant in the city.
We had already been thinking and dreaming of church planting so after almost a year of prayer. We had prophetic words from different people. We felt sure of what God wanted and we decided to go for it.
We began to meet with a group for prayer, dreaming and talking about what a church in that area should and could be like.
In August 2001 a team of 10 adults started the work with the blessing and support of the motherchurch.
How did it go?
After a year we had about 20 involved in our housechurches, we were connecting with people and involved in different ways in the area.
We decided to start Alpha in the spring 2003 there was a lot of positive energy in the team.
But then we also faced some challenges.
Already after six months we were struggling with a conflict within the team on issues of sexual morality and leadership. When you’re not so many a conflict like that is hard to handle and it took a lot of our energy for almost a year.
We survived and the work continued but it is hard to say how much damage it did to the group and the work...
What led to closing the church plant down?
After four and a half years we made an evaluation together with the motherchurch and our denominational leader of church planting, Manfred Rusner.
Everyone in the team answered three questions:
1. How do you feel about our work, where is your heart?
The answers were overall positive. Many wrote how it helped them in their relationship with God and this was the way they wanted to do church.
2. How many do you share your faith with or have invited to our events?
We got a list with 43 persons that we thought was a really great and satisfying number.
3. How long are you going to stay?
Here we realized that half of the team were going to move when they finished studies or of other reasons.
We started to pray and discuss alternative ways to continue because we felt it was impossible to go on like before.
After three months walking like in a fog we started to se our path forward. It was a hard decision but we agreed on ending the work and to bring all our experiences in to other ways of serving the Lord."
The rest is here.
