New Process for Assessing Church Planters Dr. Alan Avera, ONA Interim Director
The Board of Outreach North America voted in November to change our process for assessing potential church
planters. While the traditional Church Planter Assessment Center (CPAC) process has been helpful for many years, it has not been a panacea for ending church plant failures. ONA is now shifting to a one-day Concise Assessment Process (CAP) for assessing pastors as potential church planters. A key advantage of the CAP is that it can be used by presbyter- ies on a local level, equipping the presbytery committees with an assessment tool they can use. Another key advantage is that it can be used on an as-needed basis when there is just a single candidate to assess. The goal of the new process is to be a lower cost, but highly effective, single day, presbytery led, ONA assisted, Concise Assessment Process. The CAP process relies on presbytery leadership, careful reference screening, a few key leadership instruments, a
structured interview, and some practical leadership, worship, and preaching exercises that will give a presbytery criti- cal insight into the capacities of a pastor and his wife to plant an ARP church. In the CAP process, the assessment team will compare a candidate to simple biblical categories for pastoral leadership, such as prophet, priest, disciple-maker, and shepherd. ONA will work with each presbytery to train and equip a coordinator to help the presbytery run the CAP process.
ONA will also help presbyteries train assessor teams. The CAP comes out of a process Dr. Tom Hawkes was developing for Florida Presbytery. ONA had a task force meet
with Dr. Hawkes to fine-tune what he was developing for Florida for use in all ten of our presbyteries. After a thorough discussion, the Board of ONA then approved the CAP process as our new ARP assessment process. Morrie Lawing was part of the task force that fine-tuned the CAP to recommend it to the Board of ONA. “Compared
to previous assessment models, CAP rightly emphasizes three primary as- pects of church planting,” Lawing said. “It focuses on presbyteries’ role to ordain and evaluate church planting ministers. It focuses attention on the primacy of preaching and means of grace. It focuses on the scriptural quali- fication of the minister, and it makes less of a distinction between pastor and church planter. I am very encouraged about the direction that the ONA Board has taken.”
Competencies to be assessed in our new 1-day process:
The Planter between God and His people • Prophet- Proclaims God’s Word boldly • Priest- Sanctifies himself and God’s people to worship God • King- Leads God’s people to fulfill God’s vision
The Planter among God’s people • Disciple-maker- makes disciples for Christ • Shepherd- moves in love toward God’s people • Servant- works for the glory of God and not his own
The Planter’s personal life • Son- lives by the love of the Father • Husband/Father- nurtures his family well • Brother- lives in community with others
Morrie Lawing with Michael Hill.
The Hill family: Sarah, Michael, and Lionel.
Helping You Reach Your Community 14 The Associate Reformed Presbyterian
Outreach North America
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