New Churches, Places, People, Ways

Columba's Bay, Iona, Scotland

Lessons from a church plant movement in the U.K.

The recently launched Gregory Centre for Church Multiplication is founded on a powerful legend. As the story goes, Pope Gregory the Great, after seeing a blond, white-skinned slave in Rome and thinking him to be an angel, was inspired to send missionaries to the Saxon’s land. History then records that in 597 A.D., a monk today known as Augustine of Canterbury reached Britain. By the end of that same year, he had baptized thousands. For all his work to preach the gospel and establish churches, Augustine came to be described as a founder of the English church.

Ric Thorpe, a bishop in the Church of England, wants to follow in Gregory’s footsteps by raising up another generation of leaders to plant new churches and revitalize existing churches. 

“Today it’s eight times more likely for an 80-year-old to be in church than an 18-year-old,” he says. “Historic denominations thrive on looking back, so I say, ‘If we’ve done church planting in our past, what if we do it again to lead us into the future?’” Read More

I wish that article writers would do their homework and get their facts straight about Augustine's mission. Augustine and his followers landed in a Saxon kingdom that had a Christian population and set up their headquarters in an existing church. Augustine never ventured outside this small kingdom. After Augustine's death his mission almost met with an unhappy ending. His followers fought amongst themselves who would become his successor.

Augustine tried to set himself up as pope in what would become England. He insulted a delegation of Celtic bishops by refusing to get out of his chair and greet them. They turned around and went home. The Celtic Church, not Augustine's mission was largely responsible for the re-evangelization of the British Isles after the invasion of the pagan Low German tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes. The Church of Rome, however, chose to give Augustine all of the credit because he was after all one of its own.

Among the reasons the Anglo-Saxon Church would eventually adopt the practices of the Church of Rome was that the Roman Mass was shorter and less wordy than the Celtic Mass and the Roman clergy were earthlier than the Celtic clergy. Roman bishops could own lands and thralls to work the lands. They could enjoy wine and other worldly pleasures. Celtic bishops took a vow of poverty and lived austere lives. Roman bishops rode horseback. Celtic bishops walked.