Seven Hard Lessons of Re-planting a Dead Church
Church leadership is hard. There will be times when you doubt yourself, wonder why you are giving your all for this thing, and you feel like it’s not bearing fruit. What has held us during those times has been the real sense that this is God’s work - that the Spirit invited us, and is still calling us into this particular vision.
Our story really does fit the whakataukī “There but for the Grace of God go I.” Amongst the challenges and our own mistakes; God’s grace, the support of an amazing team, and a lot of hard mahi has borne some beautiful fruit. Each context is so different, but my hope is that in sharing our story there’ll be helpful nuggets that offer hope in your own journey.
1. A Move of the Spirit and People of Peace
Seven years ago, we felt an invitation from God to come to Whanganui. As we shared our discernment with friends we found three other couples who also felt a sense of call to Whanganui. There was a real sense of excitement that God was wanting to do something new.
Just before we moved, a friend of ours had a prophetic image of Paul and some others walking up to these deep red doors that had been closed a long time and pushing them open, and a whole bunch of dust and cobwebs falling away. Six of us became a new Urban Vision team and we felt a nudge to move to Gonville. With few rental options, some of us moved into the vicarage next to St Peter’s. It has red doors. Even better, there was a sign on the door pointing towards the foyer saying Main Door. Paul drove around Whanganui to check and none of the other churches had a red door. Was this a sign from God?
One of our team members wisely suggested that we should wait for an invitation from the neighbourhood and so we continued our daily and weekly rhythms that were part of our shared life together: prayer, learning/input, whanaungatanga as a team and manaakitanga to our neighbours (generosity and hospitality).
It was within the scaffolding of those rhythms that our invitation to plant a church happened. While having dinner with some new friends who were youth work and community development legends in Whanganui, we asked how we could best contribute to our neighbourhood. Their response was that what they needed from us was a faith space for their team and our hāpori. They were our people of peace. They were warm to the gospel and had the connections within the community to draw people in. And so we began to dream and eventually started a regular Sunday evening gathering and meal.
2. Make sure the church is dead!
Although there had been no Sunday service at St Peter’s for some years, there was a Wednesday Eucharist service and people with longstanding connections to the church who continued to lovingly maintain the building. As we began to move towards starting something new in the space there were two or three people who struggled with the changes. There was real grief and loss for them as things were changed whilst they still felt significant ownership and hadn’t bought into the vision of a new worshipping community. This grief was often expressed in unhealthy ways. Over the next few years we and others in our team experienced being sabotaged, undermined and slandered within the church and our wider community. We had local leadership who backed us and shielded us significantly. Had the church actually lain fallow before we replanted it would have saved a lot of pain and physical and emotional energy for all involved.
3. Contextualisation
Contextualisation is so important. From the get go, there’s been a sense for us that St Peter’s is meant to be a local church for our neighbourhood. Contextualising has meant making significant changes to our space (when an unchurched friend walked in early on and told us it looked and smelt like a retirement home, we knew some “tweaks” were needed!). Upholding Te Tiriti is important regardless of context, but our local context with a high percentage of tangata whenua meant partnering locally to understand how we could integrate more te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori into our faith space. The changes we made were to make St Peter’s accessible for those who were still to come through the doors. So, for example, we’ve had to simplify the language we use. We take so much church lingo for granted - and normal people have no idea what we’re talking about. At the same time, we’ve used the tradition of liturgy because we see it as integral to faith formation and discipleship - but we’ve written our own liturgy that works for our context and our community.
4. Team
Something that was so important in those early days was having a team that were totally on board and would do whatever needed to be done. Our team members Bishop Justin, Jenny, Chris and Chelsea were amazing! Justin would spend most Sundays on dishes after the service. Jenny would be hosting afternoon tea without fail. Chris and Chelsea were constantly asking what we needed to make things happen, and shared a lot of the different roles with us. Having a team who were also willing to give their all for the kingdom is one of the keys to our church flourishing.
5. Numbers aren’t everything - but they are something.
When we first started there were somewhere around 10-20 adults in a space that seats 120 (six of those were our team). This made it particularly vulnerable for newcomers as there was no way to ‘hide’ and also had the appearance of something a bit cultish. Numbers went up and down over the first couple of years and it hit a really low point in mid-2020. I had begun to experience significant health issues where I was eventually left unable to walk unaided and in significant pain. After two years of giving it our all, maybe it was time to just let it go as a failed experiment? But we remembered that significant moment of call and decided to keep giving what we could and in desperation asked God to show up. And then the next week, a couple of new people showed up. And the week after that another few people showed up. We could see God’s fingerprints all over it! Over the next year we grew to a church of around 100 (whilst our core team battled some serious challenges in their own lives). We’ve seen some beautiful transformation, with people rediscovering and coming to faith. But we still long to see more of it.
7. Go!
We had the privilege of hearing from Oscar Muriu once. He noted that 90% of churches in the world have less than 100 people. The temptation is to be greedy with our best people; to gather an amazing crew and keep them close and use them well within the dream and scheme we have going. But for the gospel and new leadership to prosper, we need to let people not just learn and grow - but also go, in order to learn and grow and reach further. At the end of 2021, our four original team members were released to (finally!) replant another church. It was so exciting! And super painful to lose some dear friends and wholehearted team members.
Rev. Ana Fletcher
Anashuya (Ana) is still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up; but she's totally sold out on Jesus and serving His church and world. Alongside her husband Paul, she's helped kickstart missional communities, faith spaces, social enterprises and community services. They're companions of Urban Vision, serve as priests at St Peter's in Gonville, and are part of the team behind Common Good Coffee. Ana and Paul are also parents to Ishmael and Eilidh who bring joy, curiosity and sleepless nights into their lives.