This is the personal view of one member of the church plant and does not necessarily represent the views of its leaders or congregation.
Emmanuel Dundonald church started in June 1990 by about 60 people from Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon volunteering to start up a church plant in the Dundonald Road area of Wimbledon, South West London.
The location of the church plant was very much dictated by the availability of accommodation and the options locally were not great. Dundonald Primary School did, however, become available, and the church has been there happily ever since, It is a good marriage because the school derives a welcome income from our renting the building for every Sunday of the year. We benefit from having a building in a good location in a heavily populated residential area; the school carries no overheads for us other than the rent, and it offers us a hall for our Sunday morning service and any number of classrooms that are tailor-made for Sunday School classes.
Why we started
The reason for starting a plant was that the main morning family service at Emmanuel Church had become full to the point of overflowing and this was thought likely to restrict further growth at Emmanuel. Other possibilities for tackling this happy problem were considered, such as introducing another service into the Sunday programme or embarking on an extremely expensive building programme. But a church plant had the great advantage of developing the outreach of Emmanuel. Many of us felt that this was a great opportunity to put into practice in a new and exciting way the teaching from which we are privileged to benefit at Emmanuel.
Two other important background points should be noted. First, Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon, is a proprietary chapel, set up under trust in the middle of the 19th century, and having no parish; therefore, any church plant by Emmanuel would inevitably take place in someone else's parish. Secondly, for a number of reasons it was not possible to start the plant at that time with its own full-time minister.
So a cross-section of the Emmanuel volunteered to pack their bags and set off into the unknown. Five years on, what have been the successes and failures and what have been the lessons learned?
Success and failures
The strength of the fellowship has been a real feature of the church plant. There is a sense in which those who have soldiered on in these early years have come to rely on each other through thick and thin. This really is God's family, and it is always a sad day when an individual or a family has to move on. 'How will we survive without X or Y?', one hears it said. This commitment has been demonstrate, for example, by those who have faithfully taught in Sunday School or Pathfinder groups week by week over a long period of time sometimes at the expense of their own nourishment from the weekly service. In a church plant, it is without doubt a case of all hands on deck.
The fact that we started the plant without a full-time minister, relying on part-time assistance from the staff of our mother church, has meant that the infrastructure of the church has been run almost entirely by the laity, and some lay people have worked very hard indeed. The implications of this are that frustration and a sense of isolation can arise; leadership has been by committee and can sometimes be tentative; and there is little time or energy left over for outreach, which after all was the original vision behind the plant. More people need to be freed up for that work. On the bright side, an interregnum holds no fears for us!
After the establishment of the plant it became clear that the founding members had volunteered to help set up the new venture for a variety of different reasons. For example, some had volunteered because they thought there would be greater opportunities for evangelism and others because they were seeking a freer form of worship in more informal surroundings or the chance to take part in leadership. All this made the task of identifying and then promoting the direction of the plant that much more difficult.
One disappointment is that we have not really succeeded in bringing new people from the local community into our fellowship; growth has mainly been from other Christians wanting to join us. This lack of growth has not been, I think, for lack of effort in terms of publicity: we have held a number of high profile events in the community, which have been well received.
Meeting in a school
Here are some possible reasons. Some people may be put off by the fact that we meet in a school or may think, because of that, that we are some sort of sect. Many of us live outside the immediate community and therefore are not socially part of it. We have no mid-week meeting place, outside a few homes, to hold events of any size that might attract outsiders. Some might say that our services have reflected the culture of our mother church and have not taken account of the culture of the community.
The problem, however, in our case has been to get people across the threshold in the first place. The plant is faced with some tricky problems such as whether we should change from the old, familiar format of services to a different, more culturally sensitive format in anticipation of new members arriving from the local community; the arrival of such new members may be slow in happening and in the meantime the new format may not satisfy the old stagers.
A major difficulty has been the problem which the church plant evidently posed for the established structures of the Church of England. The incumbent of Emmanuel Church has always been an Anglican minister, licensed by the Bishop; the church is entirely self-financing (rather than paying quota and having its expenses paid out of diocesan funds). For these reasons and the fact that it is a proprietary chapel, Emmanuel Church took a little time to achieve 'respectability' in denominational terms, and its daughter church experienced similar problems after its inception. Happily these have been minimised due, in no small measure, to the efforts of the vicar of the local parish church; he has been keen to build up links between the two churches in spite of their very different traditions. Our suffragen Bishop has been intent on encouraging this process. It has been a joy to witness the growth of the relationship between the two churches from a somewhat difficult start.
One of the more interesting points for debate is the relationship between the mother church and the daughter church following the establishment of a plant. For my own part, it seemed natural to begin loosening existing ties with the mother church. For example, I thought it logical for my housegroup to contain only Emmanuel Dundonald members and for Emmanuel mother church members to join a housegroup set up exclusively for that church. I felt we could not look over our shoulders the whole time; bridges needed to be burnt for the sake of the future. Events have proved that this thinking was over-simplistic. When the Bishops allowed us to go ahead and appoint a full-time minister, it was on the basis that the new minister would be on the staff of Emmanuel and ultimately answerable on the Emmanuel leadership. There were sound reasons for this. But because we were still a small fellowship and accommodation and salary for the new minister had to be found, we were to a substantial degree dependent on continuing and greatly increased funding from the Emmanuel mother church. In the event, they responded magnificently and the necessary funds became available through an appeal conducted over only a few weeks.
Since July we have had a full-time minister, Richard Coekin, to take us through the next chapter in the life of Emmanuel Dundonald. It is a terrific appointment, and there is not doubt that the gospel is going to be faithfully proclaimed through his ministry with us. Although it is early days, he has already identified a need for people to concentrate on doing one thing to the best of his/her ability rather than being spread too thinly. In mid-September a meeting was held of the whole church to clarify the direction and objectives of the church and to launch new and bold plans for the year ahead - a sort of spring clean in the autumn.
Lessons learned
1. The need to select the site and accommodation for a plant carefully so that they can provide the various facilities required for the kinds of activities that will bring the community at large in touch with the church fellowship.
2. The desirability of establishing the plant with the help of a full-time minister (resources permitting) not least to equip and facilitate the laity in outreach.
3. Having identified a clear vision for the plant, the desirability of selecting and commissioning members of the plant who are in accord with that vision, as opposed to appealing generally for volunteers.
4. The need to avoid at the outset any unnecessary friction with the local church by means of ongoing dialogue.
5. The need to ensure that the inevitably high workload is spread appropriately between single and married persons and that the single are not used as the workhorses; the needs of all have to be met.
6. The ongoing maintenance of the relationship between the mother church and the daughter church, which if neglected can be costly. (It is a two way process, involving exchange of information, vital prayer support, and resourcing both in terms of manpower and finance - over possibly a long period.)
7. The realisation that mistakes are going to be made, which should not be surprising because it is a pioneering venture; we need to listen to God at all times; God speaks to us through our failures as well as our successes.
8. Praise God always for his many blessings; we are constantly looking backwards to remind ourselves how far he has taken us and the great things he has done for us along the way ... and where he is taking us.
