CHURCH PLANTING

Kingdom People Launching Kingdom Communities.

Since 1987 we have been planting churches all over the UK and Ireland.

Over the last five years, we have intentionally invested more time and resources into building firm foundations to facilitate the healthy multiplication of Vineyard churches around the UK, Ireland and beyond.

Our Church Planting training runs throughout the Vineyard Ministry Pathway, training leaders of all ages and stages for all ministry roles. Our Church Planting curriculum provides high-level training to help plant, grow and multiply healthy churches.

The five steps in the Vineyard Ministry Pathway are…

Vineyard Leadership Essentials

This is a modular leadership training course that will be run in most Vineyard Churches in the UK and Ireland. Covering many of the most important and foundational aspects of leadership, Leadership Essentials is the perfect place to grow in understanding and insight alongside others from your church family.
Vineyard Leadership College

A year-long intensive part-time programme for those experiencing a compelling call to leadership and seeking to invest in that call in an intentional and deliberate way. We anticipate that many of those stepping into vocational ministry or church planting in the coming years, will be graduates of the Leadership College.
Launch Training

A launchpad for those preparing to plant a church or step into church leadership. A series of intensive training environments with follow-on cohorts for support.
Theology Training

We offer our own modular theological training course which lays a solid foundation for Christian life and leadership.
We also are thrilled to partner with WTC, an accredited theological training college with 12 campuses around the UK and Ireland.
Support

As people step into positions of responsibility and leadership within our movement, we have a wide range of support structures and programmes. These are designed to ensure that each person sets out on the right path, continues in their growth, maintains healthy rhythms and practises, and continues for the long run.

Training Church Planters

We have three key steps to train healthy church planters in the Vineyard.

STEP ONE:

A series of events design to invite our movement to live and lead courageously and faithfully, pressing into Kingdom multiplication.

The Cause to Live For

Cause is an annual gathering of students and young adults to be inspired and equipped to extend the Kingdom wherever they are sent.
This includes an invitation to explore church planting.
Attendance ranges from 800 - 900 and continues to grow after the pandemic.
The Call

The Call is a new online event designed to help people discern the next steps in their leadership calling. Whether they want to be trained to plant a church, lead a ministry area, press into succession plans or simply continue exploring God’s call on their life, this is a wide funnel to help them explore their calling.
Our Winter 2022 event was our fifth event and had 195 people attending.
Multiply Summit

The Summit is a catalytic event for a multiplying movement.
The summit is all about gathering those exploring a call to church leadership, those currently pioneering and church planting, and leaders wanting to cultivate a culture of multiplication.
This in-person event happens every other year and attracted 137 people in its first year (2022).

STEP TWO:

Intentional and intensive spaces for Discernment and Training Cohorts.

Discernment
The key components that equip a potential church planter to discern their next steps are:
- Provision of discernment questions that a potential church planter uses to discuss with their Senior Pastor,
- Completion of a Church Planting Candidate Assessment - a highly insightful online assessment,
- Pre-Assessment Questionnaire,
- A Discernment Day with a representative from the Vineyard Multiply Team.
The aim of this step is to discern who should and shouldn’t be planting, but just as important to inform a discussion and decision-making process about where candidates need to press into training and to gain experience. Gaps in their knowledge are filled during their time in a training cohort.
Cohorts

After the Discernment process is complete, we place potential church planters into Training Cohorts. These cohorts are made up of ten people who are planting in the next twelve months.
We gather them every month for Zoom training calls, with specialist themes, speakers and content.
Twice per year each cohort gathers in person for intensive training, teaching, relational investment and prayer.
In addition, these cohorts will gather at a Regional Discernment Day.

STEP THREE:

Equipping Church Planters

Once candidates are approved to plant a Vineyard church, we provide various practical support, including:

Provision of a Vineyard trained Spiritual Director.
Provision of a Vineyard trained Coach.
Advice and assistance to develop a 12-month plan.
Our in-house legal team assist with the licensing process.

We also financially and practically support all church planters with

Logo design.
Website creation.
Marketing collateral design and printing.
Connection with consultants to set up a CIO, which we pay for.
Connection with an insurance broker, with their first year of insurance paid for.
Subsidised database provision.
Reimbursed membership for Thirtyone:eight (who provide DBS checks and safeguarding advice).

Phil & Lisa Crosby share their story of how following God’s call led them to move their life to Myanmar, serving him overseas before returning to plant in Darlington.

Stirling Vineyard Church was planted in November 2018 by Hannah Shewan, and her heart was that it would be a place where people would discover the love of Jesus and that he would show up.

Stories from our Church Planters

Our vision is to see hundreds of church planters, called, trained and sent to every corner of the UK and Ireland to plant churches in traditional, new and creative ways.

The future.

As we step into this next chapter, we want to build on what we’ve already achieved and now plant hundreds of churches around the UK, Ireland and beyond.

With some investment, we can accelerate these plans in four ways.

Four strategic funding opportunities

Whilst we have made very significant progress by stewarding our existing resources carefully and by raising money from within our own churches, we are now looking for particular individuals and trusts who are seeking to invest their wealth in order to make a significant impact for the Kingdom of God. We believe that strategic investment at this particular moment could have a dramatic and long-lasting impact on our movement, causing much greater fruitfulness for the Gospel in our day and in the generations to come.

We are looking for people who would be moved by the following four strategic funding opportunities.

Residency Training Package

This package enables a high-potential leader to spend one year in a strategic staff position with an existing healthy and growing Vineyard church. In this training role, they have the opportunity to learn from some of our movement’s strongest leaders within the context of a faith-filled and can-do church environment. For some of our emerging leaders, this would be a game-changing year of development and growth.

1 year - £30,000

Curacy Training Package

As is common in the Anglican Church, as one church is planted, there is the potential to “plant pregnant”, i.e. to send a second leader to learn and grow alongside the first. This package enables a “curate” (assistant leader) to be supported for the first two years, as a significant part of their own learning journey, with the understanding that they would plant at the end of that term.

2 years - £50,000

Church Planter Support Package

Until now, nearly all of our church planters have worked full-time in secular jobs, whilst planting their churches in their evenings and weekends. This has resulted in a significant slowing of the church’s growth and, in some cases, the church not being successfully established in the longer term. The amount of available time for a church planter is a huge factor in the momentum of a new venture. Therefore this package enables a church planter to either work half-time or full-time on their new church.

Part-time £30,000, Full-time £60,000

Resource Church Planting Package

There are a number of large cities around the UK and Ireland for which the optimal way to plant the kind of church that will have a significant impact is to “go big or go home”. This package enables a new plant to arrive in a city with the resources to launch with a splash immediately in that location. Resources would be used to employ a high-capacity leader, an assistant leader, part-time administrative support and part-time children/families worker for 2 years. Also included are venue hire and other costs.

£200,000

(1)

Church Planting Training and Support Packages

(2)

Church Plant Boost Funding Packages

Across our movement there are a significant number of churches planted during the last 3-4 years that, despite the pandemic, have put down wonderful roots into their communities, are serving the poor and preaching the Gospel and seeing significant momentum. God’s grace is with them, and they have the potential to be large and significant churches in their locations. However the limiting factor to their story is finance. In many cases the church planters are bi-vocational, employed part-time by the church and the rest elsewhere. The rest of the church’s income is spent on missional activity.

A gift of £30k would make a huge difference in these cases. It would enable the planting pastors to leave their other employment and devote all their time and energies to seeing their church established, or to make some other strategic decisions unavailable to them any other way.

£30,000 per package.

(3)

Multiplying Churches Learning Community

The learning community model for church development has been demonstrated in recent years in the UK to have had very significant impact. These learning communities draw teams from a group of churches together twice per year for several years, to learn together from international experts in their fields. A number of Vineyard people have participated in one such learning community run by Kingsgate church in Peterborough that has been operating for 6-7 years.

Our intention is to run a learning community for 30 of the largest and most influential Vineyard churches over a 4 year period. The future growth and health of our movement depends on these churches reaching their full potential in God, and multiplying their influence in the wider movement.

We would tailor the content and style of the community sessions to perfectly match our values and distinctives, and they would provide ample opportunity for the impartation of our movement’s specific vision.

£100,000

(4)

Training Bursaries and Subsidies

As soon as we set about designing our new leadership pathway, it was obvious that we needed to set aside funding to enable full access for all. It is extremely important to us that every aspect of our training is accessible and affordable for every member of our movement. For this reason, we are seeking those who would want to invest in the training of the future leaders of our movement.

Vineyard Leadership College Bursary

£5,000 per student - average

The Leadership College training takes place for one year on a day-release basis, with the classroom elements running on a Thursday in-campus during term-time. Therefore for a student to be able to participate in the college, they must either rearrange their work schedule or drop a day of their working week for the duration of the course.

We consider this training to be absolutely essential to the successful planting and leadership of a Vineyard church. However, some students simply can’t afford to lose a day’s wages, either because their salary is already low, or because their cost of living is so high, or a combination of both. For this reason, we offer the opportunity to apply for a bursary, by which the Vineyard movement covers the cost of a day’s wages per week during the course. Bursaries are awarded to high-potential leaders with a demonstrated need on an evidenced basis.

WTC Theological Study Subsidy

£2,700 per student

One factor in the longevity of our movement is the theological acumen and rigour of its leaders. To this end we are delighted to have developed a partnership with WTC, which is an excellent provider of high-level theological education with a proven track record.

The cost of study with WTC tends to be around £8k for a two year qualification, which is out of the reach of many of our movement’s leaders. We have therefore begun to offer subsidies on a local-church partnership basis. The individual, the local church and the movement will each contribute one-third of the cost. Subsidies are awarded to high-potential leaders or scholars with a demonstrated need on an evidenced basis.