About this ministry

June 2021: See updated mission of this website.

The Church Planting Task Force is sponsored by Forward in Faith North America, and directed by Father Chris Culpepper. At the end of the 2015 International Catholic Congress of Anglicans,  Fr. Culpepper was appointed as the advisor to FiFNA for church planting.

Mission

Growing the Body of Christ means both growing the number of churches and the number of active disciples in each church. Because worship is local and congregational, growing the faith means planting new churches to reach existing and potential Christians where they live. The Great Commission calls Christians to go and baptize new disciples in the name of our Triune God.

While there are numerous (often valuable) church planting experts, books and other resources available, much of the advice has a decidedly Evangelical orientation. The mission of the task force is to help plant Anglo-Catholic churches that are faithful to the principles of FiFNA.

Goals

We have identified four goals:

1. Capture and disseminate best practice. We need to learn how successful church planters have combined proven knowledge of Christian church planting and Anglo-Catholic churchmanship. 
2. Coaching and mentoring church planters. We need an infrastructure to deliver advice to prospective and existing church planters across the entire life cycle of a new parish (e.g. scouting, building a team, launching, growing, structuring and regularizing).
3. An institutional commitment to support church planting. Historically Anglo-Catholic clergy and laity have lacked a missionary orientation, and thus both our leadership and institutional structures must be transformed to emphasize creating new churches and new disciples.
4. Develop the theology of Anglo-Catholic church planting. Many church planting resources have an Evangelical orientation, and we need theological and pastoral guidance suitable for planting and growing healthy Anglo-Catholic parishes.

We will be providing additional information on each of these goals.

Members

The initial members of the task force were appointed in November 2015.

Contact

For more information about the task force, contact

Fr. Chris Culpepper
Rector, Church of the Redeemer
E-mail: frculpepper@ctrfw.org
817-386-3000

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