“Urban Expression has responsibility for overseeing the work of the teams but not for overseeing the development of the churches these teams plant.” This is a critical point – and one which places a strong burden of responsibility on individual team leaders. This is certainly a high-risk option for church planters to take, if they alone are responsible for the churches they plant. It strikes me that it may be wise for leaders to develop relationships with a denomination from the word go so that as their church grows, they may become gradually more integrated with a denominational set-up, and gradually less dependent on UE. The links I have most strongly formed are with The Scottish Network Churches, but I know that most other teams have connections either with Baptists or Sally Army. If you are a team leader reading this, which denomination are you most connected with outside UE?

There is also a question here as to what point people disengage from UE and affiliate with another support structure. If UE isn’t a mini-denomination, then perhaps there does need to be a certain time limit (negotiable, obviously) by which teams and churches be encouraged to move into a different support network?

This raises the issue of whether or not there is still a certain type of “structural-fundamentalism” (that we are NOT a mini-denomination) within UE, just being different from the type more usually found in denominations where such fundamentalism is more fiscally oriented…