January 2009 - Evangelicals Now - Christian Newspaper

The evangelical community is growing in London and leading the way for other European cities.

This was just one of the very positive messages coming out of the Urban Plant Life Conference held at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster on November 18. Sponsored by the London City Mission (LCM) and with major input from Tim Keller and the church-planting arm of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, this was an outstanding event. Apart from Keller’s excellent, clear and challenging teaching, what made it so remarkable was that it drew together Christians from quite different evangelical traditions all heavily engaged in planting churches.

Marvellous mixture

With about 350 people gathered, the motive for the conference, John Nichols of LCM explained, was that he had met many British Christians travelling to New York to attend Redeemer church-planting conferences and said to himself, ‘Why don’t we save the travel and put one on in London?’ The idea of the conference was to learn, to see what God is doing through various groups and to network to find out if there were ways to help and encourage one another. Later in the day Tim Keller reminded us that perhaps the best way of solving some of the problems we might have within our own groups would be to talk with Christians from a different background who might be more able to ‘think out of the box’ for us because they are not necessarily tied to the same assumptions.

There were Christians from New Frontiers International, Holy Trinity Brompton church plants, The Redeemed Christian Church of God (black majority church) and the South East Gospel Partnership. The conference was marked by an acknowledging of real differences between the groups but a deep desire to respect and learn from one another in Christ.

Gospel renewal

Tim Keller kicked off the morning with teaching on gospel renewal. His contention is that the default mode of the human heart is ‘works righteousness’ — that is looking to some merit of our own as the basis for our acceptance with God. This is so trenchantly antithetical to the New Testament gospel of free grace that left to ourselves we naturally try to ‘get out from under’ this back into some kind of self-righteousness. Liberal churches do so by re-engineering or discarding the great gospel truths, such as justification by faith alone or substitutionary atonement, and make ‘being good’ the basis of salvation. Conservative Christians often believe the great evangelical doctrines theoretically, but at a heart level have slipped back into depending on their sanctification / achievements for their acceptance with God. All self-righteousness, by whichever route it comes, leads to spiritual deadness. Gospel renewal comes when the sheer grace of God in Christ hits the church afresh. Nominal Christians get converted, sleepy Christians wake up and non-Christians get attracted by the transformation they see. This gospel renewal is the DNA which runs through all genuine evangelical outreach and church planting of whatever church tradition.

Later Tim Keller went on to talk about church and culture and contextualisation. Full detailed scripts of the talks were available to all participants.

UK case studies

For the pre-lunch session, representatives of different groups present gave a short synopsis of what they have been able to do, under God, by way of church planting.

Tony Thompson of the NFI church in Luton plants churches and trains church-planters. He gave a short history of the NFI movement which came together around the ministry of Terry Virgo. There are now 200 NFI churches in the UK and about 600 worldwide. They are planting about five churches a year with an aim of seeing 1,000 churches in Britain. They have two kinds of church plants. There are the parachute plants, where, having identified a needy area, people from different NFI churches move into the area and start a work. Then there are strawberry plants (think botany) where a central strong church oversees and plants new churches in its vicinity. NFI have about 40% paras and 60% strawberries and are beginning to plant in many major European cities, including Paris, Dublin, Valencia, Amsterdam and St. Petersburg.

Then Simon Downham, who is vicar of St. Paul’s, Hammersmith (next to the flyover), spoke about HTB church plants. They are part of the Church of England and work at the invitation of the bishop. Given the building, St. Paul’s is a church plant from HTB which began in the year 2000, taking ‘200 of HTB’s finest’ to Hammersmith with them. The HTB approach to planting seems, by Simon’s own admission, less strategic in nature: ‘When the church is full it’s time to plant a new church’. At present there are 20 HTB plants up and running. The core group sent includes a pastor, assistant pastor, administrator, worship leader and children’s worker. They believe that urban church planting needs a building, £50,000 and 50 people.

Richard Coekin talked about the Co-Mission initiatives. Though an Anglican himself, he believes that denominational structures are failing and this opens up many possibilities for church planting. There are 12 Anglican / Free Church plants in the network.

Then lastly, Yemi Adedeji and Modupe Afolabi introduced us to the work of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). They described this as a ‘migrant’ church. Mostly it consists of folk from Nigeria who have come to Britain. The movement started in Nigeria in 1956 but now has churches in about 100 nations. The growth in Britain has been remarkable. In 1989 there was just one ‘parish’. By 1996 that had grown to 24. Now, in 2008 there are 400 parishes across the UK. The great emphasis given by Yemi and Modupe was on what God can achieve through prayer.

RCCG regularly organises all night prayer meetings at the Excel Centre in London, which attract around 40,000 people praying through from 7.00 pm until 5.00 am in the morning (see EN report, May 2006). One of the greatest restraints on their expansion has simply been the obstacles in getting hold of buildings which can be used as churches.

Follow through

The day was most stimulating. There were great question times, though perhaps some blunt and pertinent questions were not asked, like ‘Do your churches grow by conversions or by attracting people from other churches?’ or ‘Are you reaching all classes of people or just one?’ or ‘Why are some of you planting churches in towns which already have a strong evangelical witness whereas other parts of the country have nothing at all?’ However, as a first exercise in getting people together to be encouraged and learn from each other it was a terrific day.

The day was actually the launch of a more sustained consultation on church planting. LCM has arranged five day-long meetings to follow through on what has begun. Some of these will be addressed by Tim Keller. These are to take place, God willing, at the LCM headquarters in Tower Bridge Road, and are planned for January 27, February 24, March 17, April 16, and May 12. They should be well worth attending. More details can be obtained from urbanplantlife@lcm.org.uk.

(There is an interview with Tim Keller in this issue of EN.)

Planting in the cities

Marvellous mixture

Gospel renewal

UK case studies

Follow through

John Benton

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