A fellow leader of the Vision 100 network here in Tassie, Brian Vaatstra, has blogged about the importance of ‘Pauline Teams’ for the future growth and speed of church planting efforts. He writes:
I believe that structurally, what our movement needs is the implementation of ‘Pauline Teams’, along the line of the model we find in the Scriptures, so that the work can progress faster & further, by God’s grace….
In Vision 100 it is being practiced more and more with elders leading ministries and involved in teaching/preaching…
Key leaders need to be set apart by elders of key (Antioch type) churches to, on their behalf, lead Pauline teams to reach new areas of Tasmania (eg. Acts 13:1-3). Increasingly the key leaders in the V100 network are providing support to local churches and church plants, but there is no mechanism in our respective church polities to enable this.
We have yet to take the next step of setting apart and sending suitably gifted men and their teams to go and plant churches away from their churches. This will be needed if we are to reach more widely across Tasmania.
Why I don’t like the term ‘Pauline Teams’
A don’t particularly like the term ‘Pauline Team’ for a number of reasons:
- Silly noun adjectives like this generally annoy me. Pauline. Johannine. They just seem a little too silly and I would rather remove them wherever possible. Orwell probably has an opinion about this. If he did, I’d agree with him.
- It seems to betray a dependence on ‘they did it in Acts therefore we must do it today’ method of reading and applying the New Testament that is always dangerous. I am wary of our confidence in discovering methods in the gospels and in Acts. In part this is because I don’t think they were written to highlight these things.
- Why not just say ‘teams’? What exactly do we need? Sometimes a specialised term can shortcut the process of actually defining what you are thinking. A lot of the post, linked to above, could describe any kind of ministry. What is new and unique about the Pauline Teams strategy?
What I think the desire for ‘Pauline Teams’ is getting at
I think Brian is ‘seeing’ something and he feels that ‘Pauline Teams’ captures what he is seeing. But I can’t quite see what he is seeing. Here’s my attempt to try to pin it down a little better.
I think ‘Pauline Teams’ are talking about a strategy which deliberately strives to:
- Hand large amounts of the running of existing churches over to the eldership team and ministry apprentices or recent Bible College graduates
- Identify ministers with ministry experience and clear gifts in church planting. Urge them to devote larger parts of their working week outside their local church in helping establish new churches.
- When planting a new church, don’t just look to recruit the planter, but also their sidekick. The ‘Paul’ may be the minister of an existing church overseeing and working alongside the ‘Timothy’ church planter.
- In this way the ‘Timothy’ bears some of ministry load in the new work and the elders are carrying the load in the mother church.
Some problems I have with the Pauline Teams strategy
- I think we should just keep focusing on recruiting more ministers and church planters, rather than trying to do more with what we already have. The more planters we have, the more we can plant.
- I think the other thing we should focus on is helping churches grow and be healthier. The bigger and stronger our churches are, the more often they can plant.
- Brian’s conviction is that pushing the whole system forward by speeding up our church planting efforts will radicalise the whole system and so invigorate our churches and bring more leaders to the surface. But rather than a separate strategy, this is simply clarifying the kinds of leaders and churches we need: ones that are driving forward.
- I’m not against team ministry and sharing workload among elders and so on. I am a big believer in those things. But I don’t think they are the big solution to speeding up church planting.
- I don’t think we should underestimate the skill it takes to keep leading an existing church well. Although teams can share the ministry load, I don’t think they can replace devoted paid leaders.
- Likewise, I don’t think we should underestimate the time and energy it takes to establish new churches well. This may require less time if it is using the people and resources from one existing mother church (Brian’s experience). But much harder if you’re going further away, with a more disparate team.
Capturing the heart of the thought experiment
The heart of this ‘Pauline Teams’ thing is moving things forward more quickly. Being more bold in church planting efforts.
What if we asked ‘Why aren’t we planting a church every 12 months?’ Or better ‘Why aren’t each of our network leaders planting a church every 12 months?’
That challenges us to think big and fast.
But it also forces us down to Earth. If I asked that to our network leaders, each of us would have reasons why not. And maybe one would have plans to plant a new church. And that would be great. But there would be no obvious ways to lay more ministry work on our plates right now.
So we would have to be prayerfully content, while still prayerfully longing to do more.
