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You have the vision, the excitement, the passion and the guts to plant a new church! One of the ways to help plant a new church is to get some funding from your denomination or network, so you can set aside quality time to get involved in evangelism, free from the world of paid employment*. Within the Baptist sphere, Home Mission Fund is one source of funding that you might explore. This is a little of our story of joy, and frustration, as we learned the ups and downs of the application process.

We applied for Home Mission Funding to fund Peter Dominey as a Baptist Minister/church planter to start Church from Scratch in 2002. The application process dragged on and was difficult:

• We were going to be a new church plant;
• the goal was not a typical expression of Baptist church with Sunday services and buildings;
• the planting model was more pioneer-planting than the traditional mother-daughter model;
• there would be no constituted church to receive funding;
• 3 sponsoring churches would be involved;
• Peter had no previous experience of church planting.

Not surprisingly the 2001/2 diary was littered with meetings and conversations with Home Mission Fund representatives, Regional Ministers, BUGB Missions Department representatives and Ministry Department representatives. There were the hurdles of misunderstanding to clear and arguments about pioneer approaches to be made. Nobody was against the plan it was just getting people to say "yes" rather than saying "that sounds interesting" that proved the problem. When the grant was finally approved we were exhausted and we hadn't even started planting the church which was to become Church from Scratch. Thankfully, since then, our experience of Home Mission Fund has been very positive and helpful.

Church from Scratch applied for a pair of grants for 2009 to support a leader for the church plant which has emerged and so the church can release the original church planter to facilitate the planting of further churches. Home Mission Fund readily agreed the application for a full-time leader (Peter Dominey) to facilitate the planting of churches in the region and a grant for a full-time leader in the middle of Church from Scratch. The relative ease with which we went through the process with this new application for two posts is perhaps down to a number of factors:

• Our existing track-record;
• Experience in applying to Home Mission Fund;
• Home Mission increasingly wants to support full-blooded mission and is more flexible and seeking to embrace missional initiatives seeking funding.

Here are 10 things we did which seem to have helped our applications for church planting funding with Home Mission Fund:

1. Be totally committed to mission and seeing the kingdom come, this can’t be about maintenance, tinkering or playing at a new form of church just for the fun of it. This is church planting.
2. Be totally committed to the dream that the grant is to fund. Will you find a way to do it if you don’t get a grant? Bi-vocational planting brings many positives as well as negatives.
3. Inspire and involve the wisdom of your Regional Minister. Not just one meeting hoping to get a rubber stamp, but draw on them to help shape the vision. Having a conversation about mission will be a breath of fresh air to them after some of the messes they need to sort out!
4. Don’t oversell. In your application and conversations, let your passion for serving Jesus in this way show, and at the same time talk about your concerns and weaknesses. We’re all on the same side! Be real, be intentionally vulnerable.
5. Have you thought about partnerships? it might be with your Association, other local church(es), a mission agency or ministry. Developing the right partnerships is wise and shows you’re taking this seriously, it brings in other resources and they can contribute funding.
6. Do you know the mission field? Do your local research and show you understand the area in which you are going to incarnate the gospel. Evidence it with anecdote and research.
7. Find people with experience of applying for Home Mission Fund and church planting to walk with you through the process. And remember to include your own relevant experience in the application.
8. If the plan is unusual you could explore submitting a paper to the National Grants Committee of Home Mission Fund and/or the Home Mission Fund people within your local Baptist Association. You benefit from the wisdom of others and it gives the more cautious longer to reflect on and assimilate more radical ideas. Make it clear that you don’t want a yes or no as this is a tentative and exploratory paper.
9. Drink lots of coffee with people. A lot of what happens in the Baptist system is not mission-led but it’s not that people don’t want that. Right through the systems there are people looking out for ideas that are deeply missional which they can affirm and back. Get to know them over a coffee or many coffees. You may know your motives are good but trust takes time to establish and then they will be more likely to back the more risky and innovative. And if you do get the money be proactive in telling the stories of what the money was spent on to encourage those who made the decisions to take further “risks”. Alongside the formal reporting processes we have sent thank you cards when we had our first baptisms and a few pictures since then.
10. Include how and when you will evaluate what you do and how you intend to sustain and keep yourself accountable. If you are genuinely looking for accountability rather than begrudgingly accepting it if you receive the funding that shows your integrity.

We would like to see Home Mission Fund become less risk averse, seeking to fund more church planting and pioneer work. We would like to see far less emphasis on funding Baptist Ministers and increased emphasis on funding mission.

For more information on Home Mission Funding:(now known as Mission Grant) www.baptist.org.uk
For information on Church from Scratch  www.churchfromscratch.org

* This article doesn't set out to explore the rich missional opportunities opened up to a church planter by being by vocational. Would you like to write that articel for the network?