Multiplying Churches

Frank Retief was newly married when he started the church of St. James, Kenilworth, Cape Town. The mother church had bought an old building in a rundown part of Cape Town that was ripe for development.

At the first meeting in 1968 just four children showed up. Now St. James's has an auditorium seating 1,500 people, but, more spectacularly, it has spawned 22 daughter and grand-daughter churches in the Cape region.

But this has been far from a cloning operation. The new churches have been planted in all kinds of areas: from up-market suburbs to black townships; from university towns to what used to be called coloured areas.

In the early 1960s, Joe Bell and Frank Retief, now both Bishops in the denomination, were the first of a new breed of modern ministers that came through college. The Church of England in South Africa (CESA) had had a long and troubled history in the country having been rejected by the Anglican church for its biblical stand. The denomination then had just five churches in Cape Town and 'two and a half clergy' now it has over 60 congregations and over 100 ministers in the area.

A passion for the lost

'Church planting and growth of this kind starts with the conviction that people without Christ go to hell - if you really believe that you've got to take risks, take a chance and be prepared to fail,' says Frank. 'Our method has simply been to identify a growing suburban area, and to find out from our church database how many come from that area - and then to ask them not to come any more!'

Of course, they give them a little more support than that. They offer leadership help for the first couple of years, but encourage autonomy very quickly 'Our pattern has been to start with a Sunday School for children in someone's home or in hired premises, and then move on to church services at a later date. We've found it to be the best method of building an adult congregation. Parents will gravitate towards organisations that love their kids.'

But it needs to be done well. 'If you take kids seriously, you put your money where your mouth is. We design our buildings with children in mind and hire full-time children's workers - there are two in our church alone. We have also provided for their proper training.

Different styles

'There's a suburb quite near us where quite a few of our people come from - they have a house fellowship in the area, so I went to them one evening and said: 'Have you thought about doing a Christmas outreach in the area' - it had never occurred to them. We found a Dutch Reformed church in the area that was never used in the evenings. We got permission to use it, and then the families did the rest of the work. They printed some leaflets, they went door to door, they rehearsed their kids to sing in a choir, and on the evening 100 people turned up and heard the gospel. Ten showed an interest. And we have the start of a new work there.'

'We don't just do things in established church buildings, we've used shopping malls, hired venues and done gospel events. My motto is 'If you don't try, you die'.'

This kind of approach isn't always followed, however. 'We now have a thriving church in Stellenbosch, an Afrikaans-speaking university town two hours north of us. It was against the odds that an English-speaking church could be planted there, but we were approached by some people, so we gave it a go. I asked them to find a venue and said that I would lead a weekly Bible study there. So for three or four years, I led weekly studies in the boardroom of a local bank, first with adults then increasingly with students. Today, St Paul's has it's own building and has wall-to-wall students at its meetings.'

The cost

Several things are implied by this approach to church planting, says Frank. 'First, you've got to be prepared to lose people- often key people in your current set-up. Table View is an up and coming area to the NW of Capetown. When we decided to plant a church there we lost two of our key young married men and their families, and a number of other workers. It was a difficult time to re-adjust.

'You've also got to be prepared to put your money where your mouth is: to find money, fork it out and take risks with it. You can't be scared of debt - CESA had no trust funds or treasury to dip into to do its church planting. We borrowed money - took out mortgages to build our buildings, and then paid it back.'

'Evangelism must always be the top priority in any church. And because it is, we need to be prepared to take risks in how we do things. Christmas and Easter are always big times for outreach, but we kept getting calls asking: 'What time is midnight mass?' So, even though the thought of it might be abhorrent to Protestants, I said 'Why don't we do it?' We had hundreds of people coming, and of course we preached the gospel to them.'

Failures

This approach has not been without its failures, Frank confesses. 'We started a church in a country town which was three hours' drive out of Capetown. We made a big entrance, and a lot of noise, but had to shut it down after three months - it was just too far away for us to support effectively. We once organised a big event in Capetown which 8,000 people came to, but it was entirely the wrong kind of programme for the evening. I was embarrassed for weeks afterwards. We're always running big events at St James's and have had a number of horrible catastrophes arranging things, but then 'If you don't try - you die'.'

So, what, in Frank Retief's view, is the key to successful church planting? 'You've got to have a nucleus of people involved who are convinced that the gospel is all-important: that it is relevant and has the power to change lives. It doesn't matter if you don't see results soon - the gospel has its own power. Many of the people we send off start enthusiastically; then we see a third to a half drift back again to the main congregation. They miss the sense of size and activity. But they go back again when they see that it's going and growing. I don't mind this at all: the job is voluntary.

'Lots of encouragement is needed, and I have to keep reminding people that they must never be ashamed to start small.'

Questions for reflection:

* How do you and your congregation handle failure? Are you too scared, or too conservative to try new things?

* Is there a specialist ministry (i.e. children's, youth, adults, senior citizens?) that could be started in a new area that may herald the start of a church plant?

* Frank Retief's testimony is that the challenge of the loss of key people to the mother church, the hard work and the financial risk involved are all factors in drawing people together and getting them working for the gospel. How do you react to such risk-taking?

This article by Tim Thornborough is part of a new book entitled Multiplying Churches - reachinng today's communities through church planting, edited by Stephen Timmis, published by Christian Focus (128 pages, ISBN 1 85792 573 4), and reprinted with permission.

An extract on church planting in South Africa

A passion for the lost

Different styles

The cost

Failures

Questions for reflection:

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