Happy New Year from the Exponential Team!
Closing out one year and looking ahead to the next year is always an important time of reflection, evaluation and envisioning for our team. In this unique and yes unprecedented year, we are hopeful for the future of the church. We know the Holy Spirit will guide His church and its leaders to adapt and transform to see church multiplication increase.
The challenges of 2020 have accelerated the pace of adoption for many trends in our society and the church. This is also true for church multiplication. We are honored to steward the national conversation on church multiplication during this time of acceleration. The frameworks and resources we are aggregating and distributing from leading thinkers and practitioners have never been more timely for the future of the U.S. church.
2020 Highlights:
- Over 5500 leaders gathered to be encouraged and equipped in Orlando for our 2020 Global event themed Together: Pursuing the Great Collaboration. We saw hundreds of leaders move forward in our final session to commit to plant or support new churches. View the Together Resource Library here.
- 2234 leaders gathered at one of 58 local Roundtables this fall throughout the country to collaborate on how together we can increase church multiplication and unity as the Body of Christ
- 7400 members in our Online Community Digital Platform called the “HUB” with weekly shows including:
- Frontlines: Tackling Current Issues Facing Pastors and Planters with Daniel Yang & Peyton Jones
- Practical Multiplication: A Pastor’s Guide to Accelerating Multiplication with Myron Pierce & Ralph Moore
- Candid Conversations on Race, Unity and the Church with Efrem Smith, Grant Skeldon, and Todd Wilson
- We jointly launched, with Discipleship.org, a national Disciple Making Study providing critical information on the state of discipleship and disciple making in the U.S. church
- We birthed Exponential Español, a new Latino-led non-profit for church multiplication with its own board and strategy focused on the resourcing the next generation of Latino and Hispanic church leaders
- Distributed 2 Podcasts, the Exponential Podcast to highlight our frameworks and best multiplication content along with the Reproducing Churches Podcast to share the stories and practical learnings of leading reproducing churches across America.
- Introduced two new frameworks as a part of our Together: Pursuing the Great Collaboration including a series for four new books
- Launched the Divided No More Resource Kit with over 100+ resources and videos by 72 diverse speakers and authors contributing to enable local church leaders to equip their church in healthy conversations on race and unity
- Partnered with multiplication leaders in Australia to launch a new ministry, Exponential Australia, with the vision of seeing multiplication increase of 1,000 new churches per year by 2030
- In August of 2020, Leadership Network became a supporting organization to continue the legacy and vision of Bob Buford and to continue to the fruit of Leadership Network to increase the impact of innovative churches in the U.S. and beyond
- Over 400 leaders participated in the Multipliers Learning Community during 2020 with 225 leaders in this season’s nine cohorts. These leaders engage in a peer-to-peer learning environment for shaping their paradigm and operating system for church multiplication.
- We had the privilege of partnering with Outreach Magazine to curate and publish the second list of 100 Reproducing Churches as part of Outreach Magazine’s annual Top 100 List. This important addition of a list of Reproducing Churches continues to be an important signpost of a shift from a church growth movement to a church multiplication movement in the U.S.
- Hosted a monthly National Church Leader Prayer call with over 45 diverse leaders throughout the year praying for hundreds of leaders, churches, and networks
- Partnered with the Billy Graham Center to release 3 national surveys and published reports on the impact of COVID-19 on the church
- 1,000,000 page views on our Exponential websites with 220,000 unique users
- Hosted our first entirely online Exponential Conference in June with our partners, The City Network, in Boise, ID.
- 25,616 FREE eBook downloads. Top downloads included:
Looking Next to 2021:
- Host more Exponential Roundtables in the coming year from a menu of 9 topics of Church Multiplication
- Will offer an online conference in May on Together for convening and equipping our growing multiplication community
- More New Shows in the HUB each week for our Online Multiplication Community. New series include:
- Made for More: Mobilization of the Church 2021 and Beyond with Rob Wegner & Brian Phipps
- On Leadership with Shawn Lovejoy & Todd Wilson
- Future Characteristics of the Church with Jeff Christopherson & Jessie Cruickshank
- Healthy Rhythms for Thriving Leaders with Winfield Bevins & Keri Ladouceur
- Provide FREE Online Summits with thought leaders and practitioners on the Future of the Church, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, and more
- Exponential Ventures, a peer community of forward thinking and innovative churches, will continue to support leading-edge Kingdom venture projects to further multiplication in the U.S. and around the globe
- New features for our digital platform, the “HUB”, including a stand alone mobile app for our Online Community with exclusive content
- With the launch of the Church Multiplication Challenge and a growing list of Reproducing Churches, we will host One-day Forums for Reproducing Church leaders to develop, learn, and implement greater multiplication thinking and behaviors.
- Launch our next theme to steward the church multiplication conversation, Empowered: Moving with the Spirit
- Release new titles to our Exponential Book Library and in our Signature Series including:
- Healthy Rhythms for Thriving Leaders with Winfield Bevins
- Shift: The Road to Level Five Church Planting Multiplication with Dietrich Schindler
- Financial Models for Planting Jay Moon
- The Starfish and the Spirit: Unleashing the Leadership Potential of Churches and Organizations with Rob Wegner & Lance Ford
- Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches by Peyton Jones
- Empowered: Moving with the Spirit by a compilation of authors
As we look to 2021 and what’s next, we believe we will see greater collaboration that will fuel more disciple makers, an increase in healthy multiplication, and exciting movement for a great number of innovative churches to start.
Thank you for doing what you do, and for being supportive of, and an encouragement to our team and to so many other leaders.
As we we close out 2020 and move into 2021 you can read the our entire 2020 Year End Report here.
