Recruiting a team to help a new leader launch a church is a key part of the CP Loop.

Generally, once a leader is in place, he or she might start forming new relationships in the target area, sharing the vision with existing friends, and prayerfully inviting others to gather around the vision and to help him or her start a new church. The gifts of Launch team members can compliment those of an overall Leader, and as well as leadership teams being biblical, this is also intensely practical given that even the best leaders have "blind spots" and need the perspective of others.

Occasionally a Launch team is available before a first-among-equals emerges - this happened in our Cheetham Hill church, for example. However generally we find this works the other way around.

Recruiting a Launch Team

"In some ways, gathering a team the single biggest task in the Church Planting Loop.  If you can gather a good team around you, all you have to do afterwards is lead that team.  Gathering a team is the first stage make-or-break moment of the church planting loop.   One definition of a leader is that people follow them. In this case, the question is will people accept your leadership and vision?    When you’re planting a church this will be a moment of truth!   Partly for that reason, this will probably be a big topic that we’ll come back to.   

Don’t panic if this might seem a big ask. Don’t panic if we tell you that a lot of church plants shrink after launching before they grow. Don't panic if we tell you to ask people for commitment in an age of low commitment. If you know that God has called you into this and you’re doing it with Greatest Commandment and Great Commission motives (see Page 2*), you’ll be fine."  

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Click on the PDF link below to read the full piece:

Step 4 Recruit a Team FINAL.pdf

Or you can watch a video from Jan 2022 on Recruiting a Team:

A second way of recruiting a team is explored in this video from Jan 2022:

On building a diverse team  

"In some ways, diversity a really trendy topic – there’s a lot of secular material on it and a lot of organisations have it as a goal. There is some good in these... Diversity doesn’t just mean race or gender, or even age, nationality or other characteristics. It can mean a way of thinking, a habit of seeing the world in a particular way that brings a new perspective to a team. And having people who are different, with different gifts on the team is clearly a Biblical principle – that’s what 1 Corinthians 12 is all about..." 

"...It’s also true that diversity isn’t just an issue on the diverse network.  Class is the major division in the UK. TCC, the church (and then two churches) that helped inspire Antioch’s diverse track was, in many ways, very diverse. But even here, if you wanted to see the glass half empty, we sometimes thought we could reach the middle class of every nation, and the working class of none...."

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Click on this link below for the full piece:

Stage 4 Notes on building a diverse team LATEST.pdf

 Recruiting a Team - Alternative Version

There, are, however alternative theories of church planting.     Some of these use much bigger planting teams, often of around 30 or more.     These plants, which transplant a whole church, are interesting, but they’re not the topic of the REAP course, which is built around smaller churches planting smaller churches.

The alternative ideas we’ll look at are those which act before they plant, and which gather a team through visible and concrete action.   There are a number of variants of this.   Church Army theory advocates this. In Antioch we have a few church plants who started something before there was a robust team in place; namely Oldhams Church and Emmanuel Church. There are other examples, as well, such as the Saturday Gathering in Halifax, which grew out of a food bank...

Click below for the full version:

Stage 4 Recruiting a Team Alternative FINAL.pdf

Some good external resources on this theme are below, or click here to move to the next step in the CP Loop.