Always Forward is the Provincial church planting initiative for the Anglican Church in North America. They work collaboratively between the Province, Dioceses, and local churches.
Always Forward Director Molly Ruch will be co-leading a pre-conference at New Wineskins Hope for the Nations this September, and she shares her wisdom and experience in a special interview below.
Q: For people who may not know, what is Always Forward?
MR: Always Forward is the office within the ACNA focused on starting new churches. So we work with both church planters—people who are doing the work of getting a church started, those pastors and their teams—as well as churches that are established and wanting to see new churches get started. So kind of the whole spectrum! Also we give any help that’s needed in raising up leaders and assessing them before sending them out.
Q: What first drew you personally to church planting, and specifically training and developing missional leaders?
MR: My husband and I…as we were newly married, he was finishing seminary. We were really open to the Lord moving us overseas to do some type of ministry work in a different location. But God moved our imagination towards church planting and helped us understand the missional nature of church planting, and that here even just in the U.S. (and this is something we teach in our trainings), we should approach the work of church planning as missionaries. We should take time to learn the culture, the history, the current needs, the things in the culture that we’re ministering into. What are the things that they love? How can we connect with both what is needed and what is loved? So, my husband and I asked the Lord, “Move us where you want us to plant a church.” We were living in the Chicago area and He moved us to Minnesota in 2003 to start a church in the Twin Cities area. There’s always missional work that happens within a church, but we’ve been able to both raise up people within the church and send them out to distant shores, as well as raise up people within the church to start other churches in that area. So we see both of those efforts as really strategic mission endeavors.
Q: Always Forward is hosting a pre-conference at the New Wineskins Hope for the Nations conference. Can you describe what that pre-conference will look like and how it connects to New Wineskins and global missions?
MR: Our connection to New Wineskins is that we are very much of a domestic missions agency network. We’re just as interested in “sending” as someone who may be “sent” overseas from one of our churches. We’re hosting a pre-conference that thinks about developing missional leaders. We use the term “missional” because a missional leader is really one who’s not only willing to be sent, but also developing people who can be sent. So it ties in really well with the emphasis of New Wineskins. Developing missional leaders within our churches who have an openness to wherever the Lord leads them is extremely important in the work of church planting, as well as in any kind of global missions endeavor. We use the word “multiplying” as well as missional, so “developing and multiplying missional leaders” means this is an ongoing work. We can’t just rest on our laurels and say, “We’ve sent someone off and we’re done!” Instead we say, “Okay, let’s continue to develop more leaders within our churches.”
Starting a new church never just takes the pastor or church planting priest; it’s always an entire group of people needing to do that missional work. When we’re thinking about sending out people, we’re not just thinking of sending out a church planting priest. We’re thinking, “Who can we send who understands children’s ministry? Who can we send who can lead worship?” So developing missional leaders is for multiple contexts.
Q: So then this could be a great space for people who not only are preparing to be sent, but have already been sent and would like continued support?
MR: Yes, continued support, but also reminding them of continual work. If you think of the passage in Timothy, where he’s raising up people who are raising up people who are raising up people, it’s actually never-ending work, but also never-ending joy and never-ending privilege. But it takes intentionality to raise up leaders, and so yes, whatever point people are at, this would be a great pre-conference to attend.
Q: What are a couple things people may not know about the process of planting a church?
MR: People may think because they’ve been to a church, grown up in church, or even been to seminary, that they can just plant a church. A couple things they need to know about the process of church planting is that it really makes a difference to have training and support. So don’t skip doing the work of training and setting up your support systems. I think actually global missions is better at these things. Before people are sent overseas, they go through an oftentimes rigorous training process and they really focus on their support network (financial, prayer, etc). And church planters often don’t pay attention to those things and recognize that this is such a missional endeavor; you need to be trained and you need that support system in place.
Q: Do you have a favorite story or memory of the work of Always Forward that you can share?
MR: Being at multiple Always Forward conferences, there are people who come who are thinking about church planting. They are beginning to feel like God has given them an idea that maybe they’d like to be involved in it, but it feels too crazy for them at the time. “How would that even happen?” they ask. They’ll come, they’ll ask questions, and then I’ll meet them maybe a year or two later at a church planting training intensive, and you can see the Lord has kept this on their heart. And then I’ll see them maybe two years later, and I’ll hear, “Hey, we just launched! We started services!” All of those stories come with names of people who are coming back to church or have never even been in church. It shouldn’t be surprising, but God continues to really use church planting to connect people who have been far from Him back to His church. That’s been a motto of one church plant: they want to meet people who are far from God.
So that progression, getting to see that progression and meet those people, that is my favorite experience. That’s the first thing that comes to mind as to why this work is so beautiful. You see God unfolding things over years! It’s not quick work. If someone wants quick work, this is not for them.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to say to someone who may be considering attending the New Wineskins Conference and the Always Forward pre-conference?
MR: This is a smaller workshop setting where it won’t be listening to lectures. We’ll be really thinking about, in your own life where God has placed you right now, who are the leaders you can be developing towards mission. It’ll be much more hands-on oriented.
Q: And people can come to this pre-conference even if they aren’t coming to the full New Wineskins Conference?
MR: Right. We recognize there are some people who only have 24 hours, and this is less than 24 hours. So they’re welcome to come, but developing missional leaders is obviously going to be a theme interwoven into the whole conference. And there’s a lot about church planting in the entire conference.
