Craig Corkill is the senior pastor of affiliated church Narara Valley Baptist. He also lectures Pastoral Leadership at Morling College, and mentors younger pastors. We had a conversation with Craig about the journey of becoming a ‘sending church’ and establishing a network in our podcast, Forming Church. A ‘sending church’ commits to planting and supporting new churches, and Narara Valley Baptist is actually podcast hosts Benj & Will’s sending church! In this episode, Craig describes his dynamics around sending: prayer, preparation, promotion, and pain. “The biggest cost in church planting is not doing day-to-day life with those that you send out,” he shared. But this pain is worth it, because having different types of churches means more options for people in the community to find something that fits. “What I love about [our] three churches…is that they’re vastly different to one another, but they’re not set up against the other. They’re set up in a complimentary way.” Craig also talks about the benefit of this during the pandemic, saying: “We learn from other churches that are different than our own. Our church has been able to innovate far more rapidly during this season because we’re in a network relationship.” We agree that a diversity of churches, in local collaborative networks, helps us reach the diversity of people within their neighbourhoods. Every church, big or small, complex or simple, has something to bring into the collaborative space. So, give this one a listen!
This episode contains practical insights for healthy church reproduction. Listen to it all here!
Featuring Jamie Freeman, Pip Miner & Ken Kamau from our Gen1K Mission team, the ‘Forming Church’ podcast explores what evangelism could look like in our rapidly changing world, resourcing the next generation of church planters and urban missionaries. If you’re a pastor, church planter or ministry leader keen to connect with others and discuss missional conversations that have kicked off from the podcast, request to join our Facebook group here.
(The Forming Church Podcast is sponsored by Baptist Financial Services)
(Read about one of our other sending churches here)
