For more than ten years, more and more Protestant churches and Catholic dioceses have been promoting church start-ups with the aim of testing new social forms and strategies of religious communication. In Germany, this explorations on the Protestant side characteristically began in East Germany, against the backdrop of a dominant secular context and an increasing overstretching of previous parochial structures. In the meantime, such promotion lines for church start-ups have also become widespread in West Germany. This paper is about an intermediate conclusion: What strategies and social forms are emerging and what is the situation regarding the diffusion of innovation in the pluralising parochial regulatory system? The results of evaluation processes in several Protestant regional churches provide initial answers. They show that exploration is moving in several directions (socio-spatial, biography-oriented, new forms of community) and is characterised by a targeted context orientation. This increases the pressure on the church's regulatory and leadership system (discussion about church images, managing diversity), while at the same time increasing the number of options for church action.