Why church planting learning experts gather together.
Several years ago, we launched the inaugural meeting of the Church Planting Leadership Fellowship (CPLF). Church planting leaders from over sixty denominations meet together twice a year to share resources, connect, and collaborate about church planting.
Because it is a membership-only group, there are questions that arise regarding the purpose, goal, and strategy of the CPLF. To better understand the purpose of the CPLF, it may be helpful to understand what it is NOT intended to do.
A Learning Alliance
The CPLF is NOT intended to create a joint alliance to plant churches. Such alliances do exist, but churches or denominations in such alliances need to be theologically similar. That’s not this group. It includes Anglicans, Pentecostals, Baptists, and more. The intentional diversity that makes the CPLF a powerful asset would make it a terrible alliance for church planting.
Instead, the CPLF is designed to create a context for mutual learning with other Great Commission partners. To unpack that further, “Great Commission partners” are denominations and networks that desire to see women and men come to faith in Christ through church planting.
What’s more, these “Great Commission partners” are ultimately passionate about best learning practices. That’s why every meeting has one or more particular themes assigned to it. All the speakers and affinity groups are focused around the theme(s). Examples (from past meetings) include urban church planting, African American church planting, international church planting, and the house church movement.
Some participants may find particular topics to be more personally pertinent than others. One denomination’s polity may not allow house …
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