We can never guarantee that the ADVANCE! trajectory is successful in your context, but we do see some very promising fruit already. The advantage of ADVANCE! is that this is one of the few things that has been developed in the hard soil of mainland Europe. In addition to that, both Alpha and DBS are proven and tested tools, that’s why we included them in our program. Since we also added the elements of coaching, sharing with peers, yet keep the trajectory simple, we strongly believe this will be fruitful!

Yes, we need to make sure we first build relationships with those who don’t yet know Jesus. This is why we start with the phase of Missional Lifestyle.

We will never say that multiplication is easy. It needs to be done intentionally and the leaders really need to have a vision for multiplication. It also needs to be repeated time and again, since vision tends to weaken. There is an emotional barrier because people experience multiplication as a loss:  they have been walking alongside people as their friends and now are getting sent out to form a new community. However, we have seen that it works. Since we are still in the beginning stages, we need to gain more experience to learn the lessons in order to improve the training.

Transitions need to be prepared well and people need to know in advance what will happen and what the difference will be. In the ADVANCE! trajectory, the biggest transition is from Alpha to Discovery Group.

Quite often, after the Alpha weekend the people from the group will even start to ask that question themselves: how to continue after Alpha? If they don’t, you could raise the question. You might suggest the idea of a Discovery Group and ask them, for example: “How about continuing with another weekly series of 7 meetings, about the wonderful message that Jesus shared on what it means to follow him (Sermon on the Mount)?” This might help to introduce the Discovery Group phase well and prepare for a smooth transition.

Halfway through the Discovery Group it would be good to raise the question of what to do next after the Discovery Group. The fourth meeting of the Discovery Group series on the Sermon on the Mount speaks about “How could my connection with God grow?” This would be a good moment to discuss with those who are open to this how you could move on. You could share the next step of building a community with loving relationships (internally) and then decide together if you could do some meaningful things for your neighborhood (externally).

As soon as you developed a Missional Community, you need to be sensitive to when and where you could address the topic of multiplication. Address in the initial stages of the Missional Community the vision of the ADVANCE! trajectory with the group. Train new leaders on the job, send people out to form new Missional Communities with the vision to reach a certain people group or location with the Good News. When three or four Missional Communities are formed and function well, it is time to announce the formation of a new Intercultural Church Plant.

A great danger of church planting is that the organizational aspect of the Sunday meeting takes too much energy. That is why we have developed the idea that the communities themselves take care of organizing Sunday meetings. Every community is responsible once in a while for organizing the Sunday service. That keeps the burden light and helps to stay focused on the vision for the community.

We want our people to share their lives with others, and we don’t want to become too heavily organized. During the training we will share some ideas to make sure that you do not add activity after activity to the weekly calendar. Besides that, our advice would be to decentralize as much as possible, so that the focus lies on the communities.

Regularly we hear people say that DBS is only for non-mature Christians. Actually, that is a common misunderstanding. If a Christian leads a DBS, this will help him/her grow. Of course, there are always opportunities to delve deeper into Scripture. Studying Scripture is relevant for everyone at whatever stage the person might be.

In every church plant, the question pops up: “How to feed those who know Christ and want to grow in him?” We have developed some courses and materials which can be used as an addition to the normal Sunday meetings.

Many people in Europe don’t like things that are prescriptive. We understand that. Yet, if you want to climb a high mountain, you want to go there with a mountain guide, don’t you? You prefer to hike together with a group, instead of doing this all alone, right? In the ADVANCE! trajectory we have combined the tips and tricks of church planting. We would challenge you to climb the first time with us, later you may try different tracks yourselves. We would like to encourage you to take advantage of what others have learned already.