Get your church assessed for planting
If you're a senior pastor looking to plant a church, this assessment process will help you assess your churches readiness.
Planting a church is hard work. Reach Australia wants to help churches plant healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches - and stay healthy doing it.
Whether you’re looking to plant a church to reach those in the cities, suburbs, country, coast, a specific culture or within a marginalised community, the church assessment process will leverage the experience of our network to help you work out how to plant a church that reaches the lost and keeps your sending church healthy as you do.
As well as working with the church planter, we'll help the senior leader build a plan so they can plant strong, stay healthy, and move towards becoming a multiplying church that reaches the lost. Again and again and again.
"Church planting was unknown to me, something I’d never thought of doing. The assessment process affirmed that I could plant a church.”
Ben Ho
Church planter of Centenary Evangelical Church in Brisbane
The assessment process
Phase #1: Understanding the context
This phase is about pulling together the information needed to work out where your church is at, who you’re trying to reach, and what impact this plant will have on the church as a whole. This involves the gathering of data for the sending church, understanding the church model you’re considering and the area you’re wanting to plant in or people you’re wanting to reach. If you already have a church planter, we’ll begin a conversation with them around being assessed alongside this process. The gathering and analysis of this data usually takes around 2-3 weeks.
Phase #2: Assessment meeting
Once we’ve gathered the information we’ll need around the possible church plant, we’ll organise a face-to-face 4-hour consult where we’ll work through the information you’ve provided, and help identify the roadblocks/pitfalls you’ll need to consider, as well as the opportunities to take advantage of. This meeting is best done with your wider leadership team so you can wrestle though the questions together.
Phase #3: Report and recommendations
Once the consult meeting is complete, we’ll build a report for you, with recommendations as to your next steps, as well as resources and connections to help you make them.
"The people who assessed me really cared about me. It wasn’t about ticking a box, it was - “How can we help you? How can we put you in the right direction for growth?”
Thomas Kite
“I was very reluctant to do the very long questionnaire. I was quite overwhelmed by how many questions there were. But the forced self-reflection was actually just what I needed.”
“Sometimes you and your circle become a bit of an echo chamber. It’s great to have an outside perspective to press into things and make you think differently.”
“The process felt like a huge amount of trouble and inconvenience to my life, but it helped me be aware of how my weaknesses could affect my family and the church plant.”
“It was so thorough. The things they said I needed to work on were spot on.”
“The questionnaire enabled the assessors to really understand my strengths, weaknesses, temptations and blind spots.”
“Getting assessed is a lot of work. But it’s worth it. The assessors are very sincere and generous in their efforts to understand you.”
“Assessment pushes you to know who you are and what you bring to the table. Then someone pushes back and asks questions. It’s uncomfortable, but helpful.”
“It’s a humbling experience, especially as we thought about the demands church planting places on families. Assessment has helped me understand that I need to invest more into the home.”
“It helps you to examine what’s in your heart and your desires for gospel outreach. It gives you multiple lenses on your own character - your weaknesses and strengths.”
“The process isn’t telling you exactly who you need to be. It’s about using the way God has made you and shaped you, and using those strengths for his kingdom.”
“It’s a rigorous process. There are a lot of heart-searching questions. It can be quite confronting, but it’s done in a pastoral way.”
“The time and effort is costly, especially if you’re already in full-time ministry. But the benefits far outweigh the costs and time that you put into it.”
“Even if you don’t get a green light to go ahead with church planting, the benefits of doing it still outweighs the cost of time. You’ll get clarity on what would be best for you.”
"It gives you an opportunity to self-evaluate. Is this really what I want to do now that I’ve understood more about myself?"
“I learned I needed to focus on team-based ministry. I’m not the kind of person who can just go out on their own. I really love how assessment brought that out.”
Got 15 minutes?
Do the Church Planter Questionnaire
Even if you’re a senior leader, get a sense for what the kinds of character and competencies we look for in church planters, and how they fit with different church planting models. Get the results emailed to you instantly.
Got 5 minutes?
Read this article featuring four people who have gone through the assessment process.
Got 10 minutes?
Listen to 25 short episodes on the Church Planting Australia podcast. Find answers to all your questions about the who, where and how of planting healthy, growing and evangelistic churches across Australia.
Got 30 minutes?
Listen to this episode from The One Thing podcast on the assessment process.
Drop us a message to apply to get your church assessed
Got questions?
We want to see hundreds of churches evangelised into existence across Australia. And we desperately want to help you move towards that – but we know from experience that there are factors that can make planting the path now.
While God is ultimately in control, we know that humanly speaking there are factors that help churches plant healthy, as well as factors that help sending churches stay healthy so they can multiply again quicker. We want to help you do both – that’s the point of this church assessment.
There’s a number of factors that we explore in the assessment might put the brakes on churches planting. Here’s some examples:
- What will be the impact on the sending church? If you take 40-50 keen adults out, how long will it take get momentum back?
- Are you currently reaching anyone? If at your current church you’re not seeing people come to know Jesus, there’s a good chance that transplanting that same DNA to another location will have the same result. We’ll work with you on how to build the health you want to plant elsewhere.
- Do we have the right church planter? Different church planting models require different kinds of church planters. As we explore the kind of plant you’re doing, we’ll also be able to help you explore whether you’ve got the right person in place.
That’s not an exhaustive list, but we want to assure you that we’re all for planting BUT we’re also all for keeping churches healthy as they do it.
As with a church planter, the ideal time is about 12-24 months from your anticipated launch date. This will give you enough time to consider the recommendations, and make any course corrections needed, so that when you launch you launch well.
Depending on how much information you have, and how readily accessible it is, it’ll most likely take about 3-4 hours to gather all the data to send to us. From there, it’ll take about 2 weeks for us to prepare the data into a form we can use on the day.
Following the assessment, we’ll aim to have the final report for us to walk through with you done within 2-3 weeks of our assessment meeting.
If you’re unsure whether it’s the right time for your church to have this assessment, just use the contact for below and we’ll give you a call to discuss. It’s better to ask the question earlier rather than later.
It’s free. Generous Christians who want to see our nation won for Christ partner with Reach Australia to cover 100% of the assessment costs.
