Online class for Anglican church planters

Two Anglican priests and church planters — and previous guests on the Continuing Forward podcast — will be teaching a 14-week class this spring on Anglican Church Planting. The course meets online Thursday nights (at 7-9 p.m. Central Time) from Jan. 29 through May 14, except Feb. 19 and Apr. 2.

The priests are Fr. Tony Melton (recently featured in the webinar “Always Be Gathering”) and Fr. Michael Vinson (earlier featured in a 2024 talk on “Church Planting in Community”) are teaching the class at Cranmer Theological House, a conservative Anglican seminary in Dallas. Both were interviewed last June about the importance of the book The Great Dechurching, by Joel West of the Continuing Forward executive committee (who is the third instructor).

Like all CTH courses, the PT 601 course is available for current seminary students, seminary graduates, and those who’ve never taken a seminary class. Among other Anglican seminaries, no such class is offered at Nashotah House, and the orientation is somewhat more Catholic (or High Church) than the comparable class at Trinity.

Content

The course is oriented around developing a detailed prospectus (and receiving instructor feedback) for planting a church in a specific location. The class is suitable for current church planters, future church planters, and laity that expect to be involved in church planting.

The initial weeks of the class focus on adapting general church planting advice However, the heart of the course is the instructor’s five-phase model for launching a church plant: Germinate, Gather, Galvanize, Gear Up and Go!

The class schedule is as follows

1. Theology of Church Planting (1/29)

2. Models of Church Planting (2/05)

3. Discernment about Church Planting (2/12)

4. Cultural Context for Church Planting (2/26)

5. The 4 C’s of Church Planting (3/05)

6. The 7 Systems of Church Planting (3/12)

7. Phase 1 – Germinate (3/19)

8. Phase 2 – Gather (3/26)

9. Phase 2 – Gather (Part 2) (4/09)

10. Phase 3 – Galvanize (4/16)

11. Phase 4 – Gear Up (4/23)

12. Phase 5 – Go! (4/30)

13. After You Launch (5/07)

14. Conclusions (5/14)

The readings will include The Great Dechurching and Dan Alger’s Word and Sacrament.

For more information, contact Joel West at drwest (at) cranmerhouse.org.