26 New Churches!
We just completed Catalyst Community #2 in Kihihi, Uganda. Members of my team did Catalyst Community #1 there a year ago, and since then, we have seen 26 new churches started by the teams we are working with! That’s 26 new churches with the DNA of 1) reproducing leaders to reproduce churches, and 2) developing missional cultures in which the church body leverages their relational connections and becomes an evangelistic army for the church! Praise God!
Why do we focus on planting new churches? This quotes from Timothy Keller explains it well: “The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the body of Christ in a city and 2) the continued corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city.”
Apprenticing the sub-Suharan African team
Everything we do is about reproducing leaders and accelerating church growth. To that end we work to develop regional teams that can continue the work we have begun in various parts of the world. After last year’s Catalyst Community #1 the sub-Saharan Africa team has reproduced CC#1 in a number of different locations in the region. This time we modeled Catalyst Community #2 so they could work to reproduce it as well. The team forming up there is headquartered in Nairobi. They are a pretty remarkable group of pastors and they were a lot of fun to partner with!
New friends on the move!
Nasan: Pastor Nasan (yellow shirt) was our host for the three day conference. He is a fiery preacher who can sing and dance with the best of them.
Elijah: I first met Pastor Elijah (navy shirt) at Exponential earlier this year. He’s a gentle and quiet guy, until you give him an audience and a microphone, then he transforms! Pastor Elijah has planted dozens of churches! His encouragement had our crowd ready to go and plant more churches, with or without any financial resources to help them get started!
Emanuel: Pastor Emanuel (green shirt) almost didn’t make it to the conference. He was in an accident in route and the car rolled, but he didn’t let it stop him! Emanuel is planning to move into nearby Congo with plans to plant 9 churches!
Onesimus: Pastor Onesimus (light blue shirt) attended Catalyst Community #1 last year. Since then he’s been applying the principles of leadership development that we teach. Over the past year he planted an additional 3 churches with 1 to 2 more in the works!
Eileen: If you follow me on social media you might have seen my version of an African worship dance. Elaine is the woman who got me up to do it!
Catalyst Community #2: Missional Culture
In Catalyst Community #2 we focus primarily on developing a missional culture in your church. This helps leaders to effectively train up and unleash their congregation to be the evangelistic army of the church. We also revisit leadership pipelines and the apprenticeship model of reproducing leaders from Catalyst Community #1. We summarize the impact of these two topics with the following equation.
MISSIONAL PEOPLE (individual believers that are actively engaged in God’s mission)
+
MULTIPLYING CHURCHES (groups of believers together actively engaged in God’s mission)
=
MISSIONAL MOVEMENT (the rapid advancement of God’s Kingdom)
It’s a simple, yet stunningly effective model for rapid church multiplication.
I Need Your Help Now
Our mission is to take new ground for the kingdom of God by catalyzing movements of reproducing churches in hard to reach parts of the world, and we’re doing it! It’s a worthy mission, because it fulfills the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), but we can’t do it without you.
If you believe in what we are doing, now is the time to join us! The first two years are critical for the long term financial success of new nonprofits. We need your financial partnership now.
Join us! Support Taking New Ground. In doing so you will become a part of the work that God is doing to grow his church in hard to reach parts of the world!
