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Deconstructing Church Planting
Reconstructing a Post-Colonial and Post-Industrial Pneumatology for the Next Generation of Churches
"There's no right way to start a church."
And yet for many generations past, starting churches in the West has devolved into a colonizing equation, reinforcing industrial paradigms. These realities are detrimental for today’s ecclesial innovators (church starters) who, devoid of counter narratives, unwittingly replicate the damaging patterns of the past.
Decontruct Colonialism and Industrialism
Reconstruct New Frameworks for Starting Missional Churches
Discover Narratives From Practictioners
"Deconstructing Church Planting is an intelligent, cross-current, spiritually-guided, innovative approach to church planting. It develops a coherent vision grounded in Scripture, in today’s realities, and in the Spirit’s fresh winds."
Dr. Mark Labberton
President of Fuller Theological Seminary
Nicholas Warnes Reclaims Church Starting As
An Organic Lifecycle With Four Unique Seasons
Through this guiding lens, he critiques the broader system of church starting in North America in order to point to a more hopeful future. In addition to compelling biblical and theological nuance, this book also includes three practical narratives written by church starters, who from vastly different contexts reflect on how they have experienced each of the four seasons of a new church.
Rather than leaning on previous colonial and industrial protocols, the narratives in this book help us wonder: What if we actually included the Holy Spirit in our processes of church starting? With broad theological frameworks as well as on-the-ground stories of hope, this book provides a way forward for creating the next generation of faithful innovation through church starting.
Nicholas Warnes is the Founder and Executive Director of Cyclical INC, and a recognized speaker on church planting, coach for New Worshipping Communities with the PC(USA), and an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. Nicholas lives with his wife, Whitney, and son, Lee, in Los Angeles, CA.
"Nick Warnes has a unique ability to ask the most important questions. And at the same time he never pretends that he has all the answers. At every turn, Nick helps us cultivate the muscles to reflect on personal and systemic realities so that we might be faithful to the Spirit’s leading as we do the work of the Church in these times."
Dr. Michaela O'Donnell
Executive Director of Fuller Seminary’s De Pree Center for Leadership and author of Make Work Matter: Your Guide to Meaningful Work in a Changing World.
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You'll Learn
- Avoid colonial and industrial paradigms
- Learn missional frames for starting churches
- Discover fresh narratives from practitioners
- Lead your team with questions for reflection and action
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"The world of church planting is littered with pragmatic quick fixes and how-to formulas that seldom grapple with the nature of the church as Jesus intended it. The net result is that we now have a lot of churches that do not fully understand their identity in the world. This book is different; in Deconstructing Church Planting Nick Warnes has given us a very thoughtful, theologically weighted, and missionally focussed book. And it's well written…what’s not to like?"
Alan Hirsch
Founder of Movement Leaders Collective, Forge Missional Training Network, and 5Q Collective
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"We’ve long had an inkling that colonial and industrial-age church planting philosophies don’t work in our current century. Yet these dated 'best practices' and measures of 'success' have been so drilled into the church’s psyche that naming the new work of the Spirit can sound fantastical, misguided or even naive. Nick Warnes does this brave naming work for us in Deconstructing Church Planting. The book isn’t a how-to manual. Rather, it deconstructs the adventure of starting new faith communities in a way that invites us to ask what’s truly at the heart of a community of people who chooses to follow Jesus together. I imagine it will simultaneously lead many of our current leaders to cry, 'at last I’m vindicated!' and challenge us to be vigilant about testing assumptions and refusing to underestimate the Holy Spirit."
The Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers
Staff Officer for Church Planting Presiding Bishop's Office, The Episcopal Church
"Some insights about starting churches come only from first-hand experience doing it. Other insights come only from being deeply connected to the stories, struggles, and joys of many (many!) theologically and personally diverse church starters, and noticing the patterns and distinctions within such a large sample. Nick Warnes has both sets of insights, and collects them all into a very readable work, focusing on the early stages of starting a new church. Warnes calls Christians to pay continual attention to the Holy Spirit in our midst, with stories and support to illustrate how this can look in practice. The interplay between research and narratives from particular churches keeps each chapter meaningful on both theoretical and practical levels - a crucial mix that makes this book helpful to church starters, discerning church starters, and folks supporting them."
Rev. Dr. Bethany McKinney Fox
Founder of Beloved Everybody Church; author of Disability and the Way of Jesus: Holistic Healing in the Gospels and the Church
"With integrity and intensity, Warnes calls for a new season of ecclesiastical experimentation that turns away from the mechanistic and modernist approach of church planting in decades past, and recovers the necessary missional emphasis on divine agency at work in the church and world. By doing so, Warnes invites a wider, more diverse set of leaders to partner with God in seasons of communal discernment, organization, public expression and the necessary adaptation that apostolic leadership requires in this beautiful, yet broken world that Christ died to save."
Dr. Ross Lockhart
Dean of St. Andrew’s Hall, Vancouver and the founding Director of the Centre for Missional Leadership
"For years I have watched with admiration the work that Nick Warnes has done with church planters – guiding them from the early stages of discerning their call, through organizing a new congregation, on into seasons of fruitful ministry and reproduction. This book does not just offer church planting theory, but presents a process that is field-tested, and adaptable to churches of various styles, models, and across a host of different contexts. Read it, take in its counsel, and be blessed."
Dr. Tim Morey
Lead Pastor of Life Covenant Church and author of Planting a Church Without Losing Your Soul
“For the last ten years, Nick Warnes has been at the forefront of a new generations of leaders that are thinking both theologically and practically about church planting in the new contextual landscape. As the effects of the pandemic and changing culture have just begun to reveal itself, our focus on how to close churches has hindered the creativity of those that are just beginning. This new book by Nick Warnes encourages and lays a path for those adventurers that are embarking on this journey to creating new expressions of worship. This book will inspire you to respond to God’s call on your life.”
Rev. Sean Chow
Associate for Training and Leadership Cohorts 1001 New Worshiping Communities
“This is a book for anyone who has experienced the call to plant a church but hesitated because they felt like they didn’t fit the mold. Drawing from biological frameworks, Warnes deconstructs the default to colonial industrial models of church planting and opens up pathways for Spirit driven communities of faith responding to the particular calling of God in their particular context. I enthusiastically recommend this encouraging and helpful book for leaders and parishioners who feel called to start churches that are highly responsive to the movement of the Holy Spirit in their communities.”
Jen de Combe
Associate Secretary, Canadian Ministries, PCC
"This book offers a fruitful reframing of church planting for our time. Instead of old models that are increasingly failing, unrealistic, and even destructive in today's world, Warnes offers a Spirit-led, organic, and contextual vision for cultivating new Christian communities that join God's work in local places."
Dwight Zscheile, Ph.D.
Vice President of Innovation and Associate Professor of Congregational Mission and Leadership, Luther Seminary
"Deconstructing Church Planting creates an elegant, helpful and easy to understand framework by which we can view church planting. As a current church planter and someone who works extensively with church planters nation wide, I appreciate the wisdom and insight Nick offers through this work.This book has helped me to identify pivotal questions for discernment as we move into the next season of our church’s life! Every church plant can learn from this book.”
Rev. Shawn Kang
Central & Western Region Associate 1001 New Worshiping Communities
“Nick insightfully guides us towards two desperately needed shifts in church planting: First, he critiques the mass-produced, one-size-fits-all method of starting new churches in favor of a Spirit-guided, artisanal approach. Second, he dismantles a bigger-is-better mindset with a focus on growth via reproduction rather than addition. Finally, he guides planters through the four crucial startup seasons. Nick’s deconstruction is critical to leading God’s people into a flourishing new wave of church planting!”
Len Tang
Director of the Fuller Church Planting Initiative; founder of Missio Church