Our Plan

We build leaders for generations to come.

The Next 50 Years

For a theological tradition that believes in the sovereignty of God and the triumph of his Son, we have become a cynical group.

We have our reasons, of course. Whatever the glorious expansion of the Church across the world may look like today, the Church is clearly waning in the West. It is worth noting, however, that the Church has done this before. The advance of the Barbarians across the decaying Roman Empire virtually extinguished the Gospel from Europe in the early middle ages. And let’s not forget that American spirituality was tepid and church attendance weak at the time of the Revolution, despite the Great Awakening. All this is to suggest that the mission is still on, the King is still reigning, and we should do our jobs.

A need, or rather an opportunity, of this scale calls for a massive undertaking far bigger than any single denomination. It falls to us to do our part and to engage cross-denominational efforts rooted in prayer, and fortified with human and financial resources.

What’s more, we should apply ourselves with urgency. The Church currently faces the greatest evangelistic opportunity in the history of North America. According to “The Great Opportunity,” an independent report commissioned by the Pinetops Foundation, if the present trends continue:

Nearly 1.1 million young people will leave the church every year for the next 30 years.
The current nominal Christian population will decline from 73% to 59%.
The number of unaffiliated or secular people will double from 17% to 30%.

Currently, nearly 4,000 churches are planted a year. At the same time, nearly 3,700 churches close their doors every year. That delta does not account for the expansive population growth predicted by census data. The current church in America needs to return to the church-planting rates that were present in our country until the 1930s. We need, by God’s grace, to see the church-planting rate double to 8,000 churches planted every year.

The study acknowledges that their findings are an aggregation of other sources’ labors, but the sources used are respectable ones. Whatever the precise numbers may be, very few front-line church leaders in North America would dispute the general profile this study presents.

A need, or rather an opportunity, of this scale calls for a massive undertaking far bigger than any single denomination. It falls to us to do our part and to engage cross-denominational efforts rooted in prayer, and fortified with human and financial resources.

What could that kind of collaboration look like within our own tradition and across the evangelical Church?

The Ten-Year-Old Planter

Sometimes, it is more helpful to point out the obvious than the obscure, because we squint to see past the former hoping to spy out the latter. So, let’s remember that every thirty-year-old planter was a ten-year-old kid twenty years earlier. What does that mean for our mission?

In earlier ages, the Church expected its young people to consider the call to the pulpit or mission field. Naturally, that put pressure on impressionable hearts, and some who entered ministry should probably have answered a different bell. That is not the Church’s problem today. Maybe parents are sheepish about suggesting their child work for an institution they think is in decline. Maybe the office seems too lofty or too challenging. Whatever the cause, the Church is in the habit of waiting for the next leader to knock at the pastor’s door. But that won’t do. The need is urgent and calling is a high honor. If we pray for laborers, we should expect God to continue providing them. We should not, however, expect them to show up fully formed, gifted, and ready to work. It belongs to their shepherds to train them.

In order to do that, we need to reorient the focus of our ministry to create a culture of calling, the tools to discern vocation, the systems to cultivate leaders, and the resources to fund the efforts. Some ten-year-old sitting in our pews on Sunday will likely be preaching to another ten-year-old at a new church in 2040. Are we going to just let that happen, or are we going to help?

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When Jesus saw the harvest, he told his disciples to pray for fieldhands — but prayer does not end with “amen.” Prayer continues in faithful preparation for God’s provision. What does that mean for a church-planting network?

It means that, if we want to plant churches, we need to be in the church-planter development ministry. In fact, without recognizing it, we have been leaders in the development ministry all along. When we began exploring the idea of a network twenty years ago, no one imagined that half of the Presbytery churches that joined the network would be under twelve years old, each of which would be sponsored or supported by the network.

We prayed for workers and God sent them. We also, almost as a second thought, created a place for those young churches to grow into their calling. Currently, over twenty-five of our

Presbytery’s teaching elders either pastor at a network-supported plant or were part of our intern and residents’ ministry. We have seen another fifteen or more elders go on to serve in other fileds. Our planters have trained over fifty ruling elders and deacons. With what amounts to only partial intentionality, we lived out the theology of the mission. When you find and form harvesters, they will harvest. Imagine what God might do if we learned from his faithfulness and purposefully cultivated the next generation of leaders.

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Three Pillars

We believe the Bible, Love the Church and Learn from History.

Truth

Story is culturally accessible to post-Christian secularist and Christian alike. It is also at the heart of the Scripture. In fact, the Bible’s use of story is unique among the world’s sacred texts.

The story of the Gospel and its Book, the Bible, also makes truth claims about its history and asserts propositions that form the bedrock of our message and theology. Our ministers and churches are self-consciously biblical and theological, and unapologetically confess the truth of the historic creeds of the Church including the formulas of the Reformed tradition, especially the Westminster Confession. Far from an obstacle to missions in the 21st Century, the theology of the Scriptures is essential to it.

Church

The Trinity is the ultimate reality of the universe and relationship is at the foundation of all things. But the Trinity is more than relationship or even love simply considered.

In “the Land of the Trinity”, as C.S. Lewis called that majestic and infinite union, there is also power, role, even covenant. Consequently, it takes more than simple community to reflect the truth of redemption and manifest the reality of the Godhead. The Church fully considered as community is also a Kingdom, a Temple, a Family and much more. With that in view, our mission is unapologetically ecclesiastical. We plant Churches, not simple communities, and churches must have shape and office and ritual if they are to fully reflect the New Testament profile. We believe that if you love Jesus, you will love his Bride in all her mystical, relational and organizational wonder and confusion.

History

The newer the idea the further back in history its first expression can be found. Innovation and experimentation are essential components of faithful mission churches, but the arrogance of the modern frequently blinds us to the wisdom of our fathers and mothers in the Faith and not everything must be re-invented.

Just as Redemption is embedded in history so are the redeemed people of God. We believe that the heritage of the Church should inform and often guide its present.

Relationship in Mission

Coaching, Cohorts, Shepherding — we care for the whole leader and their family.

Learn more about Planter & Family care

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Our Plan

The Next 50 Years

The Ten-Year-Old Planter

PacRIM

Three Pillars

Truth

Church

History

Relationship in Mission

Support Church PlantingDonate Prayer & Money

Have a Question?

Send Us a Message.