[I write as a member of this church for several years, but not someone involved in visible ministry within it. This is a review of this book, I’ve also done a 8.5k word precis]
This book provides us with an understanding of how Colin has overseen the growth of a small house church of 15 members some 10 years ago in East Manchester into a church with an attendance of 300 on a Sunday in some 6 sites. At the core of his approach is a desire to take enjoy the advantages of small churches – some degree of relationship between all the members – with those of a large church – the resources to do training and bigger projects. To this end he has committed to planting on a regular basis rather than allowing any one site to grow into a large church. Certain things – most importantly vision and finance – remain centrally controlled, and the expectation is that the individual sites will remain a part of a wider church unit, rather than aspire to become independent churches in due course. This is in contrast to his first round of planting – some 25 years ago – which resulted in some eight churches in the general vicinity of Manchester – from Macclesfield to Bolton, which are still there, but not showing significant rates of growth. By contrast Christchurch Manchester is seeing a growth rate of some 20% a year.
The major elements of his approach are to delegate everything down to the local sites, empowering them to do what they want within certain approaches, whilst making clear that the expectation is that things will keep moving, specifically in seeking to plant to new sites at least every two years – and probably more rapidly in the future.
The small size of sites means that there is plenty of opportunity for people to fill roles; and there is a willingness to allow different preachers and anchors almost every week. This enables people to develop their skills, to accept the responsibility and ‘Go for it’. Colin has no sympathy for churches who claim to have no leaders available; he argues that this is as a result of an unwillingness to encourage and enable the skills that are there, expecting leaders to emerge pre-packaged – though ironically CCM has been blessed by the arrival of just such leaders – the other authors, Tim and Tom and others have become available because they felt called to Manchester. Certainly now however he is raising up vast numbers of people able to fulfil roles.
New planted are developed on a clear pattern: after a period of the idea for the new plant in a specific location being kicked about for a bit, the potential leader is identified and midweek meetings start. Once these have gathered some momentum, a Sunday service is begun, and the expectation is that this will grow to viability. There’s a strong emphasis on preaching – a solid 30 minute sermon is de rigeur – along with worship – a ‘full band’ is an early priority, as is the availability of children’s work if required. The new site is staffed on the cheap; usually starting with either volunteer leaders or someone only employed for one day a week; the annual budget for a new site is only £13,000, including a staffer one day a week. As the work develops, this may be increased, but of the 10 members of staff at CCM, only 2 are full time; instead some have other jobs, whilst others share the child care with a partner who is also working part time. The overall effect of this is that a new site is not a massive risk or massively expensive, but the returns are potentially enormous if it does fly.
There are a number of dangers in this approach. The most significant is that people join because it’s a good place to be, rather than because God has really worked in their heart. There have been some great testimonies at baptisms; though many are from people who grew up in a Christian family but never really ‘got it’ till CCM, there have been a few where people have come from nowhere. The church is committed to serious discipleship, encouraging meaningful pastoral relationships for everyone. The small scale of sites means there is less space for people to hide, but the reality of every church seems to be that the second and third generation too often is there because their parents were, rather than because they themselves really get it.
From a strict ‘systems’ perspective, there are two issues. First is that there is no provision for solving the problem of a site that keeps growing numerically. Although planting can absorb some people, if they won’t go to the new site, there’s no specific proposal. The student work resolved this by adding an evening service at the same site, and a similar solution may work elsewhere, but it’s not currently planned for. Similarly there is no provision for splitting CCM when it becomes too unwieldy as its scale grows. At present the eldership is a small enough number for solid relationships to be formed, and the overall scale is not too large for a single leader to oversee. At some point, if growth continues, this will no longer be the case. Of course these are both problems which any church would love to have…
Overall this book offers a paradigm that can work amazingly well, has a solid track record and could cause churches to radically rethink their approach to doing church. It comes with several health warnings: it will disturb the comfortable ‘, and it can only work if the whole culture of CCM is present, not just the planting bits. Yet it may enable churches to bring the gospel to many people who are outside their range: the danger is that becoming a church where what keeps their leader awake at night becomes dominated by maintenance.
Bruce Blogs 