Tim O’Neill
National Leader
Keys to Church Planting Multiplication - Don's Story
What are the keys to church planting multiplication?
Can it happen in Australia?
These were two of the big questions I had for Don Reddin of Adelaide. Today Don is on the National Executive of the Acts 29 Network.
In the 13 years since Don and his wife Bek planted their first church, God has done an extraordinary work not only seeing their initial church being planted in Glenelg, but with a bunch of churches being planted out of this church. But it doesn’t stop there, with some of the churches that had been planted going on to plant new churches.
That’s extraordinary! Church planting to the third generation in less than 13 years!
So how did it all start and what are the lessons we can learn?
In 2010 Don and Bek felt God nudging them to plant a church. Don had worked in radio for 10 years but at the time was associate pastor of another large church. Don says that by 2012 the sense of call to plant a church was so strong, and he was so sure that this was what God was asking he and Bek to do, that it would have been disobedient of them not to.
So they told the lead pastor of the church about their intention to plant. The church was very supportive and were going to send out a team with Don and Bek. But then troubles hit the church, with Don and Bek deciding to stay at the church a while longer so as not to further unsettle the church.
To avoid further disrupting the sending church, as Don and Bek were preparing to leave the church to plant they went to the people who were to be part of the church plant team, and asked them to stay rather than leave with them; the exception being if they felt that in staying they would be sinfully disobedient to God.
As a result, just four 19 year olds went with Don and Bek to plant a church. Don was 31 and he and Bek who was pregnant with their first child were to lead a plant with just four teenagers!
Don told me that in July 2012 “We had our first open Sunday night gathering. We had a couple hundred people rock up, and we thought, man, church planning is so easy. This is wonderful! You just put the word out there and hundreds of people rock up. But then the next week there were 12 of us. And that included the four that came with my wife and I. But again, all very young. So the average age was about 20 when we first started the church with 12 people. And by God’s grace, He did a really amazing work in us and through us.”
After the “soft launch” of CityLight Church in Glenelg in South Australia they “hard launched” in December 2012 and started growing mainly from young people with Don being bi-vocational working full time in radio for three years whilst planting the church.
Less than four years later they sent out a team of about 50 people to plant another church, then the following year they sent out another 35 people to plant yet another church. This pattern has continued with more churches being planted. Now two of those plants have planted new churches with a third soon to plant.
As I listened to Don there were a number of keys that I heard that I believe helped set the scene for the rapid and vibrant multiplication that has occurred. They are:
1.Outrageous Generosity
Talking about one of the plants, Don said “They took probably two thirds of our music team plus half of our elders that were remaining, about half of our top 10 largest givers and half of our preaching team.”
This wasn’t an isolated event. Each of the church plants were launched with outrageous generosity from the sending church. They were sending out their best trusting that God would replenish them, which He has.
CityLight church, that was healthy enough to reach new people, make disciples and grow as a result has been healthy enough to do it time and again as the church has given away their best. In doing this, it has set the new churches up for health, growth and multiplication.
2. Kingdom Thinking
CityLight is an Acts 29 church but not all the churches that have been planted are Acts 29 churches. They are free to be what they want to be. Don also mentioned how the churches that have been planted don’t follow a cookie cutter pattern. For example one church is Charismatic whilst another leans towards being Reformed.
Don says that “we have the same gospel but it’s not like we are prescriptive about how they go about contextualising it in their community.” The overall aim is reaching people and making disciples, not building a brand or a network.
3.Focused Intentionality
Since the first of the churches was planted in Glenelg, focused intentionality has been a key. Don said that “The goal was that we would be proclaiming the gospel, we’d be praying, making disciples, and missionally engaging the culture around us. So we just had those four principles of mission.”
Engaging the culture with the gospel disciples, making disciples, equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, and then multiplying communities became core focuses that shaped the churches and became part of the DNA of who they were and what they did.
4.Healthy Culture
The churches that have been planted out of the initial church were planted with enough people to see a partial transplant of the healthy culture developed in the CityLight Glenelg.
This can be incredibly positive, but it can also be a negative if the culture of the sending church is not healthy. If the sending church is not community engaging, soul winning and disciple making and if a large contingent goes to the new plant, the plant will be infected with a culture that may be counter productive.
It’s interesting that when Don and Bek were leaving their former church to plant, the were in effect blocked from taking a large team, and instead took just four teenagers. This gave them the opportunity to form a culture that would be attractive to the young, and be intentionally focused.
5.Passionate Prayer
Passionate prayer is a critical part of the culture of the churches, and something Don is convicted of. Don says that it’s his hope that they are really marked by prayer.
At one stage they had so many young people but not many older people and the discipleship was falling down as a result. Then they realised that Jesus told us to pray for workers for the harvest, so they did and older people who have greater maturity and who could help provide stability started joining the church.
I love Don’s comment that “We pray and expect God to move and we preach the gospel and expect people to respond.”
Having listened to Don’s story, I’m incredibly encouraged not only in what God has done but in the potential for churches that plant generations of churches to spring up around Australia, reaching people, making disciples and multiplying new churches.
Please pray for Don and Bek and for more people like Don and Bek to be raised up across our nation as workers for the harvest!
Tim O’Neill
National Leader
Exponential Australia
