Planting Pitfalls: Healthy relationships with parent churches
As part of the Planting Pitfalls series building on his research among struggling plants, Dan Steel thinks about how church plants can maintain a healthy relationship with the parent church.
A significant goal of parenting, certainly in secular terms, is raising a well-adjusted, independent young adult, ready to take on the world. There (usually!) comes a point when we have to say goodbye. And yet, the independence that young people long for can easily create tension through the teenage years. Life at home can be complicated with clashing rules or cultures or values. This can, and often does, lead to conflict in one form or another.
Rather like the frustrated teenager who is longing to be rid of the constraints of the family home, the relationship between a plant and a parent church can often become thorny. Sometimes it’s the desire of the planting team to leave too quickly. Sometimes the parent church is reluctant to snip the cord, or to send their ‘best’ people, or commit finances. It might be a blend of these kinds of factors. It turns out that leaving home can be a minefield.
Two words might help us as we consider how a parent church can plant a daughter church in a way that helps it to thrive: clarity and charity.
1. Clarity
In speaking to planters who struggled a number of stories were told where planters longed for more specific and clearer expectations as to what the ongoing relationship with the parent church would look like.
It’s important to be clear on a number of questions:
Practically how the plant will be supported, and for how long? Is there office space, for example, that the planter can use? How about admin support?
Will it be supported financially? How much and for how long? Is this a realistic timescale for this context?
Relationally – will there be ongoing mentoring? How often, with whom and for how long?
Would the parent church continue to send people in the fragile early stages, if they are needed?
Who ultimately gets to decide if the plant is not viable and might need to ‘come back’? Who gets to decide when this is? Is the church plant aware of this?
To gain and maintain clarity on questions like these (and more), some mother/daughter churches have adopted a Memorandum of Understanding whereby both agree and sign a ‘contract’ before the plant starts to meet. Could this be something that your plant ought to adopt?
2. Charity
As with parenthood, planting a church is costly. In order to plant well both the mother and daughter church need to be charitable towards one another. The mother church needs to allow the daughter church to ‘beg, borrow, and steal’ what she needs to make the launch happen, being as generous as possible to enable this new church body to have the opportunity to thrive. However, at the same time, it’s vital that the plant is also able to show a similar generosity of spirit to the parent church, with an awareness of how much a plant costs the mother church in people, resources, and time. The plant must be generous in its attitude towards the parent church, and it should be intentional about not behaving like a petulant teenager.
This can be further complicated by some members perhaps deciding to join the planting endeavour because they are frustrated with the parent church and see the plant as the answer to their problems. They may think that it’s become too big and the plant will be more intimate. They may think that it’s become too set in its ways and the plant will be more innovative. They may think it’s too traditional and that the plant will be more informal.
Managing those relationships and expectations will be complicated. It can be far too easy and common to find a disgruntled faction within the plant (at times even on the leadership team), keen to break free from whatever they perceive to be holding them back.
Leaving well takes grace
The desire to fly the nest is by no means a bad thing. As with parenting, independence in planting is a key goal. It’s new and exciting, they want to get going and live out the vision: to find a place to meet, to reach the new area, become entirely independent, and cut the cord.
When a church plant launches from a parent church, the reality is there can be a variety of stages towards true independence – relational, financial, and legal. Each one will take wisdom and patience. Impatience on the part of the plant can result in difficulties down the line when help is needed in one or more areas. Loosen the ties too quickly and there won’t be the relational capital there if they need advice or assistance with hard pastoral situations; or if an unexpected cost has come in; or if members of the core team need old friendships to fall back on when they feel weary. Leave too quickly, or don’t leave well, and there is a real danger that there won’t be any support available when it’s needed, and the plant will suffer.
Wise planters listen well and are patient.
Will you partner with us to enable us to give long-term support for healthy church growth?