REC100 Church Planting: From the Altar to the City

REC100 is a vision to plant 100 new Reformed Episcopal parishes throughout North America. But as Canon Michael Vinson explained at General Council, REC100 is about far more than reaching a numerical goal. It is a call for every Reformed Episcopal parish to become a living center of worship, formation, fellowship, evangelism, and missionary sending.

Some parishes may plant churches directly. Others may support new missions financially or raise up future church planters. Still others may begin with something much smaller: an Anglican home fellowship that could eventually become a seed group, a daughter mission, and—by God’s grace—a new parish.

Every parish has a role to play.

The Parish as a Missionary Community

The religious landscape of North America has changed. Many of our neighbors are unchurched, dechurched, or disillusioned with personality-driven religion and shallow worship. At the same time, many are searching for something rooted, reverent, ordered, sacramental, and substantial.

The Reformed Episcopal Church has received a rich inheritance to offer them: the Holy Scriptures, the historic creeds, the Prayer Book, the sacraments, and the ordered ministry of the Church. This inheritance is not a novelty to be marketed. It is a way of Christian life that must become visible and accessible in the communities where people live.

For REC100 to become more than an aspiration, however, it must take practical form within our parishes. As Canon Vinson observed, slogans do not form saints or plant churches. A shared way of life does.

The pattern is found in Acts 2:42, where the first Christians “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.” These practices provide the soil from which missionary life grows:

A parish rooted in these practices can form disciples, welcome the lonely, catechize seekers, raise up leaders, and eventually give birth to new works.

Anglican Home Fellowships

The first practical step is the creation of Anglican home fellowships.

A home fellowship is not an independent small group organized around personality or personal preference. It is a domestic extension of the life of the parish. It remains under pastoral oversight, follows the doctrine and worship of the Church, and flows from the parish altar into the homes and neighborhoods of its people.

A home fellowship may include parishioners, neighbors, friends, inquirers, and those who are simply curious about Anglican Christianity. Its pattern can remain beautifully simple:

Gather for Family Prayer or Evening Prayer.
Read the appointed Scriptures.
Offer a brief reflection or discussion.
Share a meal.
Pray for one another, the parish, the neighborhood, and those who do not yet know Christ.

The Prayer Book provides the rule of prayer. The Scriptures provide the content. The home provides warmth and accessibility. The parish provides oversight. The altar remains the center.

This kind of gathering helps a parish move beyond Sunday friendliness into genuine Christian fellowship. People learn one another’s names, notice when someone is absent, bear one another’s burdens, and practice hospitality as both a duty and a joy.

Home fellowships also provide a gentle doorway into Anglican life. Some people will not initially enter an unfamiliar Sunday liturgy, but they may accept an invitation to dinner. Around a table, through friendship, prayer, and honest conversation, the curious can move from curiosity to friendship, from friendship to belonging, and from belonging to faith in Christ.

From Home Fellowship to Seed Group

Many home fellowships may remain faithful extensions of parish life, and that is a worthy purpose in itself. Some, however, may reveal a larger missionary opportunity.

A cluster of families may live in a neighboring town. Several Anglican inquirers may be traveling a considerable distance to attend worship. A gifted lay leader may emerge. The parish may begin to recognize an area where no Reformed Episcopal presence currently exists.

At that point, a home fellowship may begin developing into a seed group.

A seed group is more than a larger home fellowship. It is a gathering with an intentional church-planting horizon. It begins asking whether God may be forming the core of a future REC mission.

The seed group must remain connected to a mother parish and under pastoral and diocesan oversight. It should be grounded in Prayer Book worship, sound catechesis, hospitality, and the doctrine and discipline of the Reformed Episcopal Church. It should also have a clear pathway for assessment, leadership formation, and possible development into a mission congregation.

The movement from seed group to mission should be slow enough to be wise but bold enough to remain missionary.

Churches Must Mother Churches

Emerging missions should not become isolated gatherings or independent entrepreneurial projects. They need to be mothered by healthy parishes.

A mother parish provides prayer, pastoral oversight, liturgical formation, catechesis, financial wisdom, and ecclesial stability. It may also be called to send leaders, families, and financial resources into the new work.

Mothering a church plant is not merely a program. It is a posture of giving life away.

It may require a rector to send a gifted curate even when his departure creates a real loss. It may require a vestry to place church planting in the budget. It may require parishioners to welcome newcomers into the mother parish and then willingly send some of them out again as the core of a daughter mission.

A healthy parish is measured not only by what it gathers, but also by what it forms and sends.

Forming Future Church Planters

The REC also needs a stronger pipeline of priests, deacons, seminarians, and lay leaders who can plant and renew parishes. Church-planting residencies and curacies allow future leaders to be formed within the ordinary life of a healthy parish before they are sent.

Within parish life, they learn to care for souls, lead the liturgy, catechize, evangelize patiently, practice hospitality, and understand the spiritual character of a community.

Not every parish is able to support a full residency, but formation can begin on a smaller scale. A parish might host a seminarian for the summer, give a deacon meaningful missionary responsibility, or allow an emerging leader to help establish a home fellowship.

The important thing is to begin cultivating leaders from within the life of the Church.

Take the Next Faithful Step

Not every parish is ready to plant a church. Not every parish can hire a resident, fund a daughter congregation, or create a large missionary program. REC100 is not a call to religious busyness. It is a call to steadfastness in mission.

For many parishes, the next faithful step may be very simple:

Identify one household. Invite one faithful host and one capable lay facilitator. Meet once or twice a month for 90 days. Pray from the Prayer Book, read the Scriptures, share a meal, welcome neighbors, and discern what the Lord may be doing.

One home fellowship may not appear to change very much. But one fellowship multiplied across the parishes and dioceses of the Reformed Episcopal Church could become the beginning of a missionary movement.

Parish life becomes household life. Household life becomes missionary presence. Missionary presence becomes a seed group. A seed group may become a mission, and a mission may become a new parish.

By God’s grace, may we become churches that plant churches.