Wake Me Up Early, Be Good to My Dogs, and Teach My Children to Play
It seems like I always want to say “there is too much to tell” when it comes to church planting in the GMC Mid-South region.
The coolest thing about church planting in the GMC is that I have people calling me asking for a church! 3 more in the past week! It is such a powerful work of the Spirit to see people take the challenge of organizing, and them trusting me when I say we’ll find you a pastor, and seeing that there are people there ready and able to preach until we find someone for them! Our church planting agency, The River Network, is having a webinar, “Planting a Church Without a Pastor.” Here’s the situation: some churches did not take a vote to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church. Others did not pass their vote with the 67% majority. But some people clearly see that the UMC will not be able to stay biblically faithful. The sense of that is powerful enough for many to say they must leave. And they want to remain Methodist, just not United Methodist. If you are in that boat, reach out to me. Even in you are not in my region, I can help you get something off the ground. If you know people who are looking to start a new, biblically faithful Methodist church, get them in touch with me!
As our new annual conferences are in various stages of forming, the region I serve is Kentucky; parts of Western Virginia and East Tennessee (the former Holston Conference); middle Tennessee; and West Virginia. I suppose there will come a day when as we grow, we will separate back into the geographic regions we have become accustomed to, but I hope not. I am really digging the ferment that is happening as so many people committed to the Gospel are getting to know one another, trading ideas, sharing experiences. This is the most connectional ministry I have ever been a part of!
Part of the challenge is forming a decentralized network for church planting. Hard to do when you don’t know people across such a large region… but we are working on that…more on that later.
I just want to get this out there, to keep the prayer fires stoked and burning hot! I can feel it! I really appreciate y’all praying for us to find planters, for God to open doors to multiplying disciplemakers and multiplying churches. As I said, more on that in a day or two.
For now, let me again say how blessed I am by our lay people who are taking the ball and running. Getting to work with lay people starting churches before they have a pastor has been an awesome experience! A few weeks ago, it was one of those days where I spent most of it on the road, and to great profit! A pivotal church planting network meeting in Cincinnati, come home, visit the sick, and then an evening in Frankfort with Trinity GMC. They are another church that formed from a church that did not take a vote to disaffiliate but a number of people wanted out of the United Methodist Church, and within a few weeks had some worship and were busy organizing! They have their first weekly services starting TOMORROW! Debbie Ison is preaching, a lay speaker. She really loves the Lord and opens the Scriptures in such a direct way. It has been a real blessing to work with their lay leadership to get this off the ground.
To go back to what I said to getting to work with people across a larger region… I think what I am loving is that I am working with people who are flowing out of passion and calling. I am in my own little corner in trying to get some church multiplication going… what I can say from my perspective: I have been getting to do more church planting and disciple-making than I ever have before. Like the past 6 months has been more of that than the previous 23 years.
And the thing is, this fruit spills over into the local church. Here’s the thing. I am not getting paid to do what I do for the GMC. And with no budget, we are getting more planting done than I could have imagined when we had full-time directors and million dollar budgets. Where it spills over into the local congregation is more about the freedom we have. We have way more money left in the local church. We have way more permission to dream and to put our money into things that galvanize the local church. I think the energy is infectious… on Sept 24, we are going to baptize Jared Hatter.
The next two months are going to be pretty busy… getting ready for our first meeting of our Annual Conference, a Holiness Preaching Conference at Trinity Hill; church plant training in Pittsburgh; and a chance to share with the Presiding elders of the Mid-South—I think that is a crucial meeting for a church planting network. So keep praying for workers in the harvest!