Unusual Church Planting Rule

Strange Things in Xenos
or Why Xenos will never be a model for other churches

35. Unusual church planting rule - Xenos grows through house church multiplication. Each house church immediately lays plans for planting another church as soon as they begin. Because Xenos honors those who are successful church planters, most leaders have a high view of church planting. But in the excitement to plant new churches, we always face the danger of failed groups. We are clear that failure cannot always be avoided, or that we should even be overly worried about this possibility. If fear of failure grows too great, the church becomes overly conservative and growth suffers. On the other hand, careless or impatient church planting results numerous failures and loss of morale in the church. Each time a house church fails, a group of people are affected, usually in a very negative way. How should the church strike this balance between carelessness and impatience on one hand, and fearfulness and perfectionism on the other?

At Xenos, we have found that one rule has helped to strike this balance better than any other measure: we hold churches responsible for the churches they plant. If one house church plants another that fails, the planting group knows they must receive the people in the failed group back into the original group. People returning from a failed group are usually demoralized and unhappy. A lengthy period of recovery is usually necessary, and overcrowding is almost inevitable.

Because all our leaders know they will have to take back any still-born group, nobody wants to plant a group that is likely to fail. Leaders are generally eager to plant churches, but wary of planting poorly led groups. We think this is just as it should be. The quality of groups increase, but groups are still planted at the maximum level of aggressiveness that can be sustained over the long haul.

There are exceptions to the "take your failed group back" rule. In cases where the failed church was planted a long time ago, the planting church may no longer be identifiable, because they may have split into several groups. We will still usually call on those groups to take some people each. On other occasions, the connection has grown so distant that we ask people in the failed group to reassimilate into any group they choose.

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