Church Planting Learning Community

At Auckland Church Network, our desire is for the Church to grow & thrive in our city and across our nation Aotearoa New Zealand. We believe there is need for a church planting & multiplication movement across the next generation. For churches to plant churches who plant churches.

We are sponsoring a learning community to springboard and resource church multiplication across New Zealand.

Register your group here

What is a learning community?

In this context, it's a group of committed leaders coming together over two years to learn how to plant & multiply in their own contexts. To learn from experts, to learn from one another, and to constructively hold one another accountable to growing & multiplying the NZ Church.

What is the intended outcome of this learning community?

Our hope is that it spurns a movement of future planting & multiplication, a New Zealand-made toolkit, and active planting partnerships that emerge from our learnings and engagements over the two years. There will be plenty of time in the in-person meetings for your group to strategically plan towards your multiplication goals.

Who would be in the learning community?

13 churches / denominations. Each with the senior leader and 1-6 other leaders, who have the collective influence to make decisions for their own church / denomination.

What are the key aspects of the learning community?

The bias is for multiple models that allows everyone to pick various ideas from various models that can be tested in the streets
Focus on developing our own contextualisation for NZ and specific church movements
Exposure to best practices from the UK, Europe, Australia, America etc
Exposure to different models of planting including microsites, multi-sites from resource churches, fresh expressions/missional communities, and autonomous plants.
Facilitated by an external skilled practitioner who is not tied to any particular model or approach and has access to a wide network
Developing best practice for multi-ethnic plants
Action-oriented: people involved are committed to planting at least one church by the end of 2025.

What is the content of the learning community?

The content would be determined by the needs of the group and learnings from global best practice. For example:

Clarifying models (microsite, multisite, fresh expressions, autonomous plants)
Leadership pipeline to develop planters and team
Assessment tool/ planter profile
Coaching/support/mentors for planting
Financial models for planting

What is the financial investment?

Each participating church or group would be invoiced $1600+GST around the time of each of the 4 intensives, a total of $6400+GST across the 2 years. In addition, travel & accommodation costs for each intensive.

Auckland Church Network would provide sponsorship and seek additional trust funding to cover remaining costs.

Brent Dolfo

Brent Dolfo has more than 35 years of experience in senior ministry leadership and has coached and consulted worldwide with movements such as Alpha International as well as with churches in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Europe.

He also has served as a designer and facilitator of Learning Communities on various continents with subjects ranging from Church Planting, Generosity, Digital Engagement, Evangelism and Leadership Development. Brent is married to Diana and they have three adult children- Braedon, Keynan and Tanika.

In his spare time, Brent is chairing the host committee for the 2022, 2023 Canadian Track and Field Championships.

Who would facilitate the learning community?