… might actually be church planting.

Greetings all!

One of the stranger conversations we can have over at Geneva Push is listening to a pastor's plans for their congregation and leading them to understand that the expansion they're planning is actually a church plant. Too often a church leader sees what they're doing as just 'adding another service'. However when that service involves a new time-slot, to another Australian sub-culture, in another location then you're as close to church planting as you can possibly get without using that label. 

So, to help people better understand another facet of church planting we thought we'd devote this month to explaining and discussing hub churches. Hub churches, sometimes called multi-site churches, are a style of planting where the new work keeps strong ties with the planting church and often shares resources and leadership teams across a number of locations. It's one way that pastors of existing churches can practically leverage their advantages to start new works for the Kingdom of God. 

Here's everything you need to know:

The practical points

Hub church for dummies – Scott Sanders explains 'Hub Churches For Dummies', defining the different types so that you can understand which might be most suitable for your Australian church planting context.

Multi-site churches: the when, how and why with Scott McConnell – Scott McConnell, the author of Multi-Site Churches, speaks to Geneva Push's Scott Sanders and answers all your practical questions about setting up a church over multiple sites. 

Lessons learned

Preparing the mother church to plant –  Phil Campbell at Mitchelton Presybeterian Church shares the steps he had to work through with his congregation in order to establish MPC's vibrant hub church ministry.

Lessons from mother-daughter planting – Al Stewart interviews Paul Harrington (rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Adelaide) and Clayton Fopp (planter of Holy Trinity Mt Barker in 2010 – a granddaughter plant) on some of the lessons of mother/daughter church-planting.

Becoming a hub church pastor – Matt Lehmann has a unique perspective on hub church planting. His congregation was a hub plant from Adelaide's Trinity City, and he's about to plant out his own first hub church plant. He tells Geneva Push's Mark Hadley what he has learned from both ends fo the experience.

The Tasmanian test-case

The advantages of becoming a hub church plant – Scott Sanders interviews hub church planter Brian Vaastra on his experiences in Tasmania, alongside Graham Sayer, one of the pastors who works in the network Brian established.

Tasmania's vision for hub churches – From 2000 to the present, there has been a deliberate church planting effort in Tasmania by a network of pastors called The Vision 100 Network (vision100.org). Mikey Lynch shares the key lessons learned from 15 years of concentrating on planting hub churches.

And if that's not enough, or you've got specific questions to ask, drop us a line at Geneva Push and we'll help put you in touch with the right people in the network to get your hub church plans going.

– Ed.