Seeds of Hope

Since 2002 key leaders in the Uniting Church in Australia, Queensland Synod, have been developing a shared vision and strategy for church planting in Queensland.

Vision/Strategy

The first step was to recruit a strategy team of 6 – 8 people to engage in ‘Matrix’, a two-year process with CRM.  Key people in congregational leadership were invited as extra guests at Matrix conferences. Members of the team shared vision at the Mission Advisory Forum, Synod Leadership Team, Synod gatherings and at Presbyteries. We wrote articles for Journey, our Synod magazine. We developed a web site, www.seedsofhope.ucaqld.com.au. We developed a database of recent church plants gathering information from each Presbytery. We fostered a viision/strategy for church planting in ‘multiplying churches’ network . We told the stories of church plants in the years before the Uniting Church and in its early days, reclaiming our heritage, as well as the stories of recent and current church plants, reclaiming our passion.

Prayer Network

We appointed a coordinator who identified hub congregations, start and email list. We put prayer notes on our web site. We held monthly prayer breakfasts for strategy team members and  developed a rhythm of daily prayer among team members. We found that pairing up helped. We’re at a point where we need to revitalise this area.

Recruitment of Church Plant Team Leaders and Members

We attended a Matrix course in October 2002 at which we identified characteristics of effective church planters. We worked on a culture of ‘team leaders’ and identified ways in which we could connect with people showing potential in this area. We made a commitment to cultivate a vision for church planting, exposing potential leaders ot church planting models, challenging them to start new initiatives, assessing them for ability and readiness, orienting them for work with new missional communities, and deploying them in appropriate settings.

Support Base

We took the strategy team and six extra people to a Matrix course on coaching church planters in September 2003. We worked on a strategy for training and deploying church plant team leaders in a network, with financial and practical support pacakages and appropriate ongoing training.

Leadership Farms

We developed a leadership training tracks particularly for young emerging leaders. YACMU first developed ‘Entine’ and have now developed ‘Greenhouse’, a team-development project.