July 2, 2008
by Bill Malick
As most of you may have heard by now, I will be taking over responsibilities as the South Pacific district superintendent. What does that mean for national church planting? The goal is to turn a difficult situation into opportunity. As Gary Benedict says, “we plant churches or we die!” So the Alliance has asked me to consult and make certain we keep moving forward. Here are some of the strategic highlights.
sXt
On the front burner is the continuation and regional development of the sXt (Strategic Multiplication Training). We just came from a great event hosted by the Southeastern district where we had 40+ planters and wives trained. I will be working directly with Todd Sovine in the Central district as he puts together a local sXt in Ohio. On the schedule is the sXt in Phoenix, January 26–29, 2009 with more to follow.
Church Planter Assessment Centers
We have launched Southwest Church Planting (SWCP) complete with bi-monthly forums for church planters and spouses and a twice annual four-day assessment center for planters and their spouses beginning in October 2008. Northwest Church Planting (NWCP) is run by the Pacific Northwest (now Alliance Northwest District) CPD, Randy Shaw. NWCP already operates two assessment centers each year. The focus will be to launch Midwest Church Planting, Northeast Church Planting and Southeast Church Planting all with forums and assessment centers. The training has already begun. Let us know if you would like to attend one of these assessment events, observe, and be trained to take it back to your region. We are ready to help!
Annual CX Advance for CPDs and CHDs
The third week of April 2009 we will be traveling together to Orlando for the Exponential Conference for church planting. We will add on one day at the beginning of the conference for C&MA fellowship, brainstorming, vision casting and debriefing. Please save April 19 for travel, April 20-21 a.m. for our Advance and April 21 p.m.-23 for the Exponential 2009 conference. Mark your calendars now for this excellent event. If we register together as one group, we can save $20/person. More details to follow. Here’s the link to check out the upcoming conference—www.exponentialconference.org
Church Health for Multiplication
Dale Edwardson will remain onboard organizing and coordinating our work toward developing healthy churches with the goal of seeing them become parent churches. GHC training will continue to happen in concert with sXt.
Initiative and Grants
Dollars are still being allocated for initiatives like the ones above along with new concepts, coaching, and strategic ideas. Grants for new church starts are not going away. Grants for sending your church planters to a mission field are staying in place. Grants for establishing Church Planting Centers will be a priority. It is true that this year and last we have suffered financial cutbacks. However, I am confident that we will turn this corner.
Regional Strategies
We are working on regional strategies with the eventual objective that grants will be reviewed and approved by regional teams across the country. More about this will be coming as we gather in April 2009.
Your Voice, Our Voices
We are the ones to best beat the drum for church multiplication. At next year’s Council I will be working as an MC for all the speakers bringing church planting to the forefront throughout the event. As the consultant for church multiplication, I will keep shouting the need to our president, Gary Benedict, and our vice president, John Soper (veteran of numerous church plants). As a DS, I will unite with many of our superintendents who are also veteran church planters and church planting directors as “squeaky wheels” for multiplication.
I told Gary Benedict after he said, “we plant churches or we die” that I will hold him to it. That is, I will hold him to the planting churches part, not the die part. He said, “I want to be held to it!”