Recently Alex wrote an article for the Together Magazine about trends he is observing in church planting in England. We’ve taken that article and broken into six short blog posts we hope will get you thinking.
So first, one of the most exciting trends in church planting is the rise of the “anointed amateur”—ordinary believers who feel called to start new worshipping communities. This shift is happening across denominations, and it’s changing how we think about leadership in the church. There is a new willingness to empower everyday disciples to step into roles traditionally reserved for clergy.
The barriers to entry are lowering, enabling more people to see themselves not just as church members, but as disciples who make disciples, and even as church planters. Movements like BigLife and No Place Left are encouraging the formation of small, agile, home-based churches, often called micro-churches. These movements are thriving, especially in hybrid models where traditional Sunday services coexist with smaller, more intimate gatherings.
This trend is incredibly significant because it shifts the responsibility for church growth from clergy to the entire body of Christ. When ordinary believers take ownership of their faith and feel empowered to lead, new and innovative expressions of church begin to emerge. This model not only encourages greater participation but also allows for a more flexible, adaptable church that can meet the diverse needs of different communities.
Revd. Alex Harris, Director of Baptist Planting at St Hild Centre for Church Planting, discusses how he is seeing a move towards church planting across denominations in the UK.
We never meant to start the first church I was involved in planting.
I was 22 and just a year into a radical experience of Jesus – he had walked off the pages of the Bible as friends invited me to explore faith. The ancient church building needed repairs and we moved a struggling evening service into the upstairs of a local Weatherspoon’s. Six months later over 100 young adults gathered weekly.
Over the last 15 years I have had the privilege of being a ‘serial planter’ in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. I am now a Regional Minister for BUGB, based in Leeds, and serve as Director of Planting at St Hild Centre for Church Planting. In 2024 I published a doctorate in ‘Church Planting in Post-Christendom Europe’, researching how the majority of ordinary churches might start new Christian communities because of fruitful evangelism. Ric Thorpe (Church of England), Caroline Khoo-Millar (Assemblies of God) and I co- facilitate the National Church Planting Network that seeks to unite denominations, streams and networks to collaborate in reaching England for Jesus through church planting.
It’s all rather wonderful from those 20-something days. But it is driven by the same desire – that new people get to meet Jesus and new communities and churches emerge, as needed, for them to flourish in. I get to speak to and work with leaders and ministers across the whole ecosystem of our beautiful church in England. These reflections come from seeking to serve across all those Christian denominations and streams. They are certainly not exhaustive but perhaps represent some themes worth considering.
What are some of the things I notice?
The rise of the anointed amateur as the primary planters. I’m seeing a new willingness to ‘have a go’ from regular disciples and a new willingness from those in leadership to empower and celebrate this. This is true across the denominations, with ‘anointed amateurs’ becoming more confident and being more invested in to start new worshipping communities. There is less reticence, and a lowering of the barriers to entry that is empowering more people to consider themselves first as disciples-who-make- disciples, then as proto-church planters as a result. Linked to this is the growth in small church, micro-church, and movements like BigLife or No Place Left that encourage ‘disciple-making movements’ of small, agile, generally home churches. There are growing numbers of ‘hybrid’ churches that have both a conventional Sunday attractional model and an asteroid belt of microchurches who are finding ways to flourish in this mixed model.
The evangelist is moving from a peripheral gift to a central one. It used to be that the evangelist gift was something of a renegade – appreciated but treated with caution. You won’t want an evangelist leading your church – chaos! Often gifted evangelists might find themselves outside the church, working for a parachurch organisation with formal recognition routes difficult to access. All that is changing. In writing On this Rock in 2023, one of the things we found was that the evangelist voice being heard in decision-making and culture-setting places was key to effective church-wide evangelism and church planting. I notice more and more the evangelist voice being centralised, appreciated, welcomed and given leadership. This is a good thing. Some statistics in Yorkshire, where I am based, suggest 0.8% of people are in church on any given Sunday. England needs evangelists. The church is more embracing of this. Alongside this I notice a shift in ministers of churches – generally identifying as pastors and teachers – toward 2 Timothy 4:8. Whatever their primary gifting, they need to ‘do the work of an evangelist’. It’s a need-driven not gift-indulgent response, and better for it.
The beginning of the essential shift of welcoming UKME and GMH communities to lead. It is generally recognised that experience of growth and church planting, and the anointing and expertise associated with that, is within our UKME and GMH communities. Yet, the majority of our senior national leadership and educators – at least in the established and (not so) new church streams – is white. I notice the beginnings of a new intentionality to address that, not only for the vital reasons of justice and diversity, but for missional reasons; to bring the communities and leaders with greatest experience, expertise and anointing for growth into senior leadership, even if (perhaps especially if) it disrupts the historical norm. My own network – Baptist Union of Great Britain – is at the earliest stages of this with vast work to do. But I notice the beginning nationally, across streams, of a shift of welcoming UKME and GMH communities to lead.
There is growing ability to simplify and diversify (therefore multiply). I notice a growing ability to simplify what we understand church to be – to embrace a more minimal ecclesial threshold of what makes something church, and appreciate and celebrate the variety of models, shapes, methods, approaches that might emerge because of that. There is a shift away from the encultured expectations Christians might have about what needs to happen for ‘church’, toward a simple, stripped-down approach. It is a shift away from organisational complexity toward relational depth, with discipleship and mission held by relationships more than events or programmes. Alongside this welcoming of simplification is a growing celebration of diversity. I notice a move away from a spirit of competition between models of church (the attractional verses the pioneering; or institutional verses the relational; between house church and big church) toward a spirit of celebration and appreciation, and even the beginnings of proactive mutual learning. I notice a loss of competitive anxiety toward a sharing of best practice, offering of value and cross- fertilisation of fruitfulness. These dual observations – that we are better at being simple and better at being diverse – mean I see the early signs of being better at multiplication. There is less we need to repeat (simplification) and more ways we can repeat it (diversification) making us more able to multiply new churches and Christian communities.
Our training spaces are responding to all this with training supported by academia but relocated into the apprentice model of practitioners learning from practitioners. Across the streams and denominations, I notice a re-examining and re-inventing of how we train people and who we are being asked to train. Gone is the single stream approach of training a full-time, lifelong career ministry at tertiary level, to a multi-stream approach in your context and, training both full-time and if needed, how is that spare-time, both generalists and specialists, both professional and amateur.
These are just a few of the observations on church planting nationally in the UK. All speak to a growing flexibility and agility amongst churches, leaders and Christians to reach people, grow disciples and start new churches where, when and in the ways they are needed.
I think these observations reflect a national level perspective. But they also work out at the local level, worth reflecting on if – like me – you are a local church pastor, planter, pioneer or leader.
•How do we position the anointed amateur or ordinary believer as the primary agent for starting new churches and Christian communities? How do we move away from the limiting factor of the ‘clergy’ needing to drive church planting?
•How can you move the evangelist voice into the culture-setting and decision-making life of the church more effectively?
•What would leadership from UKME and GMH community look like in your context, and if needed, how is that invited more fully?
• What would it mean to simplify church to multiply church in more places and with more people?
• What training methods and content would more effectively release these people in your church?
I notice some challenges too.
•There is significant pre-planting work needed to bring confident and open faith-sharing into ordinary Christian practice. Generally, lots of Christians are too busy to have meaningful relationships with non-Christians, and we have made the gospel too complicated for where most ordinary people are at. We need to prioritise as Christians having relationships and being able to simply explain Jesus.
• There are growing challenges of how GMH and UKME churches shift from monocultural to multicultural mission, as a second or third generation live very different lives in the UK than their parents’ generation.
• How the inherited wealth and status of our legacy denominations, and the emerging energy and anointing of other streams both within and beyond them, catalyse each other and do not remain siloed behind denominational walls.
Finally, fundamentally reaching people who don’t know Jesus is not an organisational, relational, financial or strategic question, but a spiritual one. Perhaps the last thing I have noticed is a growing recognition and realisation of this, reflected in deepening movements of prayer and fasting. I think it is the fasting I especially notice – a growing desire to fast for the Spirit’s saving work across our nation. And if that is the one thing we do – throwing ourselves at God saying, ‘This much, O Lord, do we want you to move: not just with our hearts and mouths but even our stomachs as well!’ – well, this article will have been worth the writing and the reading.
…to win as many as possible… I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.’ (1 Corinthians 9:19,22-23)
Contributed by: Alex Harris, co-leader of the Firestarters Network and Regional Minister for Pioneering and Church Planting for the Yorkshire Baptist Association
Hi, I’m Dave. I owe a massive amount to the Firestarter community, and was thrilled when I was invited to share a little something I’ve been working on with you all.
Let’s go back. In 2018 the church where I was a leader was at a crossroads: keep on as we were (and expect the same results) or explore new things? As part of my personal exploration of that question, I was encouraged to attend a Firestarter event in Reading. I mean this very literally: thank God!
What I heard challenged, stretched and excited me. People I met have become friends, mentors and colleagues in ministry. And in very concrete ways, it changed my ministry and the way I approach it. But I likely don’t need to convince you how great Firestarters is, and that’s not why I’ve been asked to contribute this blog. No, I’ve been asked to share about a book I’ve written, released next month.
But the reason I start back in 2018 is that it’s around then that I was (in part inspired by Firestarters) really investigating discipleship and disciple-making as foundational to any hope for churches to grow in healthy ways. If you’re a church leader, you know this. We know we can’t do the work of ministry and make disciples by ourselves. No, our job is to equip the saints for works of ministry and to make disciples who go on and make more disciples that we ever could by ourselves. We all know that, especially with our Baptist priority on the priesthood of all believers.
That’s not always how it feels though, is it? The Great Commission vision of disciples who make disciples can feel worlds away from our own contexts. And, at least in my own experience, that’s often because the quality of our discipleship isn’t always up to the task Jesus gives us. The hardware can’t handle the software. If my own discipleship isn’t healthy, what hope do I have of making healthy disciples who can go and do the same?
So that’s what the book is about. It’s called ‘The DNA of Healthy Discipleship’ and it’s all about the kinds of discipleship Jesus had in mind when he gave the Great Commission. I pick up clues Jesus gives in that commission to the disciples, and build up a picture of what I call the CODE of healthy discipleship DNA. That ‘CODE’ is made up of:
Confidence, to let Jesus truly be Lord and King over everything instead of putting our weight on things that can’t hold us.
Obedience, to do what Jesus commands and discover the true freedom found in submission to him and pursuit of his path in our lives.
Dependence, to draw deeply from the well of spiritual resource that Jesus makes available to us instead of acting in our own strength.
Experience, to grow and mature with Jesus over the long haul of our lives instead of settling and standing still.
The book does a few things for each of those. It explores why each is so important and builds a biblical picture, then gives five practical tools for each to actually develop it as a stronger part of someone’s discipleship, and then it applies all of that to the Great Commission itself. It isn’t a practical ‘how to’ guide for making disciples – there are some brilliant books like that out there, but this isn’t trying to be one of them! What it is, though, is a ‘who to become’ guide for anyone who is a follower of Jesus and wants to take that seriously. My hope and prayer is that it will be a gift to Christians who wish to be formed more deeply, and a gift to leaders who wish that for those they lead.
Two of the friends I’ve made due to Firestarters are Alex Harris and Chrissy Remsberg. I’m so grateful to Alex for writing the foreword to the book, and to Chrissy for inviting this article to share a little about it. It’s not an exaggeration to say the book is a crystallisation of things sparked at that very first Firestarters event and have come to discover more and more deeply since.
The book is out on 12th September. If you’d like to see more about it and what others have said about it, you can head to www.davecriddle.com or drop me a line at dave@davecriddle.com.
Contributed by: Dave Criddle. Dave leads a church in Sheffield seeking to do discipleship and mission in creative ways, and learning lots through the process. He’s married to Natalie and they have a little boy called Jed.
Charles Spurgeon said that prayer was the engine room of the church. It is the vital piece of ministry that engages us with the Holy Spirit. Evangelism is always a spiritual battle and prayer allows us to keep moving forward in that battle.
Within the Firestarters Network we believe the most effective way to fight this spiritual battle is through prayer. We have observed that churches that have experienced significant growth through conversions have leaders who are committed to intentional, leader-led prayer and fasting. It is only the power of the Spirit at work that is able to “make his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ”. (2 Corinthians 4:6) Our work then is to join the work of the Spirit through prayer.
What motivates a commitment to evangelistic prayer is an understanding of what is happening through evangelism. 2 Corinthians 4:5-6 tells us that the same God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” is also the one who shines his light into the human heart to give us the knowledge we need for salvation. Thus, when we share the gospel universes are being created in human hearts.
This way of thinking about evangelism can be incredibly liberating because it reminds us that we don’t convert anyone. Those who become Christians do so only by the power of the Spirit. But at the same time, we can be filled with an incredible confidence that some WILL respond to the gospel. Some WILL become Christians. We know this because the great power that created universes, the power that healed the sick and raised the dead is the power at work in people’s hearts.
Therefore, as Christians we can engage in evangelism through prayer, preaching and serving filled with an abundance of hope and freedom knowing that God is powerful and his Word never fails. We need not feel despair or fear because our confidence rests in God and his great power. Our work is simply obedience.
And this we can do!
How exactly do you pray evangelistically?
At Firestarters we believe there is great power in evangelistic prayer. But what exactly are we talking about when we say that we should pray evangelistically? We would break this down into three simple prayers that anyone could commit to praying regularly.
Famous Five
Your Famous Five are five non-Christians that you see and interact with regularly, from someone at the school gate to friends and neighbours to co-workers and colleagues to family and loved ones. This is a list of just five non-Christians that you have opportunity to interact with and hopefully get to speak to them about Jesus.
We suggest you use scriptures to pray for these five, inserting their names into the Scriptures as your prayer that the Holy Spirit would move their hearts toward Jesus.
Proclaimers
Your second prayer is for the proclaimers, those people who are regularly proclaiming the gospel. Paul would often ask the church to pray for him with words like, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.” (Colossians 4:3) We can use these same requests from Paul to pray for the proclaimers we know that God would use their preaching of the gospel effectively in the hearts of people.
Ourselves
Our third prayer should be for ourselves. Scripture is filled with evangelistic prayers we can pray for ourselves with words like, “…make the most of every opportunity…let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:5-6) and “…always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
Sometimes, God will give us opportunities to speak the gospel and we must pray for ourselves that we will be prepared to share the good news about Jesus when those moments come. And perhaps, we might also need to pray that we can do what Jesus said in John 4:35 and have eyes that are open to see that the fields are indeed ripe for harvest.
Everyone Can Be An Evangelist
Evangelism is not ONLY prayer, but it is rooted in, motivated by, and made more effective through prayer. Evangelism is not only prayer, but perhaps, it cannot happen without it. At Firestarters we believe prayer is at the heart of what it means to be an evangelist. You don’t have to be particularly brave, theologically trained, or outgoing to pray. You just have to be faithful and obedient. And that’s why we believe that absolutely anyone can be an evangelist!
The Firestarters Network of growing churches helping other churches to grow is part of our Baptist Movement. In January On This Rock was published – looking at repeatable traits of growth that all churches could embrace.
By mid year On This Rock had sold out its initial print run. Now revised and updated, it is available again. This includes two extra sections looking at Health, Growth and Conflict in the story of growing churches; and reflecting on the cost of being a growing church – generally for everyone and specifically for leaders. The font is slightly increased for ease and some chapters have revised applications and ideas added in.
It remains fundamentally the same book – short, intentionally written to be easy to read and accessible to volunteer leaders in busy lives as well as paid ministers.
This second print run is now available for church ministers, leaders and teams to engage with and is available from the Resources page.
Season 2 of the Firestarters Network Podcast
The second season of the Firestarters Network Podcast began in September with a focus on Evangelism For People Who Don’t Do Evangelism. Throughout the season, hosts Alex Harris and Chrissy Remsberg will explore how pastors and church leaders can equip and enable both whole churches and individuals to do evangelism well and navigate growth. In responding to growing requests from our Baptist churches, the first season explored traits of growing Baptist churches via conversation with various volunteer and paid leaders across the country. Both seasons and upcoming episodes can be found on Apple, Spotify and other places where podcasts are downloaded or you can listen directly from our Resource page. Just scroll to the bottom of the page to find the podcast player with our latest episodes.
Next Firestarters Network Conversation
The next Firestarters Network onsite conversation is in Leicestershire 25-26 September. These are intentionally conversational spaces where volunteers and paid leaders work together, listening and learning from stories of churches that are growing and wondering together the next steps God has for them. You can register for this conversation and see dates of other upcoming conversations on our Events page.
