In communities where there is no effective church presence, we believe it is right to plant/transplant new congregations to focus on outreach and younger generations. Church plants can be clergy-led or lay-led, and can be from any church tradition. Church planting at its simplest means starting a new worshipping community expressed as any variation within our mixed ecology. Church planting is nothing new – all of our current churches were once “plants”.

We’ll continue with planting projects already underway at Haven Church Gosport and Ryde on the Isle of Wight. And we’ll launch major new church plants, each aiming to serve hundreds of new worshippers, in the following places:

• In Fareham, we’ll gather a planting team at St John’s Fareham then plant at St Peter and St Paul Fareham, under the leadership of an experienced planting priest across both parishes. It is envisaged that this new worshipping community will provide a further church plant into the new 6,000-home development at Welborne in 2027.
• In Portsmouth we’ll plant from Harbour Church (a fruitful HTB-style church) to develop new church congregations at the two Harbour satellite locations of Harbour City and Harbour Copnor. For a sustainable operating model we will share staff resources across all the three Harbour sites.

In addition to our “tried and tested” large plants, we’ll also be exploring smaller scale intra-parish planting by means of:

• Four Flourish pilots – church-school partnerships that aim to deliver a thriving children and youth worshipping community based in the school. The pilots started in September 2024 in Bembridge C of E Primary School, Isle of Wight; The Bay C of E school (primary and secondary sites), Sandown, Isle of Wight; and Horndean C of E Primary School on the mainland. To read more about Flourish, click here.
• Leigh Park Pathfinder project, an intra- parish plant in Park Community School, Leigh Park, delivering a new worshipping community with a thriving children’s and youth ministry.
• “Myriad” training to equip parish teams for intra-parish planting