Over the past ten years Christian Community Churches (VIC & TAS) has prioritized church planting as the primary driver of growth and renewal of our movement. However, we weren’t far into our church planting strategy when we realised that God was not calling us to invest in ‘church plants’, but instead to invest in pioneer ‘church planters’. And rather than us proactively recruiting these church planters, they self-identified by self-deployment in ministry with a specific demographic that they believed God had called them to reach.

Typically, our new church plants are instigated by a married couple who are both gifted evangelists. As a couple they have a strong sense of calling to the unchurched in a specific local community, and if they are not already living in the target demographic neighbourhood, they will move into the area. They will then engage in activities and community service initiatives that connect them with large numbers of local individuals and families, and through this community engagement they will start to introduce people to Jesus. Once they have a critical mass of new believers, they will begin to meet regularly with them. It is generally at this stage that other believers join them, and a new faith community will emerge.

A recent example of a pioneer church plant is WynLife Church located in Wyndham, Victoria. This church was planted by Jimm and Pynqi Gorgonia. Jimm and Pynqi moved into the Wyndham community in 2021. They soon discovered that the local Food Bank was in desperate need of volunteers and leadership. They volunteered, recruited other volunteers, and it wasn’t long before they were running the food bank. By 2023 they and their growing team of volunteers (mostly believers) had developed meaningful relational connections with over 5800 people. Over this two-year period, they also established music, arts, and sports outreach ministries. As they built deep supportive relationships with those they served, they were able to pray with them, share their faith, and guide many into a relationship with Jesus.  

In May 2023 WynLife Church officially launched in a disused church building. Over the past two years the church has seen 61 people give their life to Jesus, baptised 28, conducted marriage workshops with 20 couples, commenced a youth ministry which now has 30 young people participating, started a mid-week prayer meeting that is attended by around 50 people, and currently have 198 people who are regular attenders of their morning service, notably from 23 different ethnicities.

They have also planted another faith community with 20 families who are home schoolers who originally started using the building to have ‘meetups’ every Friday. As Jimm and Pynqi built relationship with these families, they were invited to do music sessions with the kids and teach them about the Christian faith. Many of the families became believers, and eventually a new faith community emerged that has a dedicated leadership, is self-determining and self-sustaining, and holds a ‘church service’ every Friday.

Pioneering planters evangelise churches into existence. Of all church planting models, pioneering plants consistently have the fastest ‘community relationships’ growth rates and the highest percentages of new believers. However, they also have the slowest numerical growth rates of church ‘event’ attendance and require long-term external support (particularly financial) to achieve self-sustainability. Typically, the pioneer church plant will take one to two years before they hold their first ‘church service’ and will require at least five years of external support before achieving self-sustainability. Because of this long gestation period, it is challenging to secure the long-term funding required for these plants to grow and thrive. But God seems to be raising up an ever-increasing number of these evangelistic couples who are pioneering new faith communities across Australia. Hopefully, as we tell their story, more and more established church communities will be inspired by and invest in these faithful risk-takers and accelerate and optimise their impact across our nation.