Only one more sleep until the Church Planting Conference at Moore College.

If you’re thinking about church planting you shouldn’t miss this one. The program looks brilliant and promises to demonstrate the manifold connections between theology and church planting practice. For anyone sceptical about the value of theological education or its relevance to real life church planting in 21st Century Australia - come and listen.

Church planting is on the rise among Sydney Anglican churches. We are planting more churches but more are needed. There is a frustration that we still struggle to effectively reach unchurched people and be evangelistically effective in many plants. How can we reach beyond our comfort zone and reach people unlike us? We also need to help each other think about how to reform structures and systems to better recruit coach and equip church planters. We need to think about different ways to fund new churches.

Significantly, there is also talk of creating a national church planting network off the back of this conference. This is just a week after the news that the proposed “Oz 29” network would not be launched this year. Watch this space for more on that front.

I hope the Conference organisers are able to put audio and video online. I am planning to blog the conference and I’m sure others will too.