JR Rushik and the 1000 Church Initiative has created a simple and reproducible strategy for deploying church planters and starting new churches in creative spaces and places. The core environment is an encounter weekend followed by seven months of mentorship. The innovation of this work is a simple system of training followed by personal mentorship.
Listen to Episode 8 of the podcast and access the show notes below.
Future Church Insights:
1. JR explains that they just plant churches.
1000 Church Initiative’s goal is to plant churches no matter what style, size or designation. They really try to encourage churches to move away from having “size” be a goal – he mentions a church of 4 women meeting in Florida and points out that they are a church.
2. JR talks about the idea of the church being “conceived in Heaven”
He speaks of all heaven rejoicing over a church happening here on earth – they make a big deal about that milestone. And then they help move the planter to give ‘birth’ to the church here on earth, ‘the gathered church.’
3.The 1000 Church Initiative walks church planters through four steps for planting churches.
First, they have Jumpstart – a vision casting for their church. Second is Encounter – a weekend focused on God’s call and prayer for their church. Third is Launchpad – a time for gathering other planters together to be in relationship and encourage/pray for one another. Lastly is Sense Summit – a time to celebrate big wins across the network.
Goals and Desired Outcomes of 1000 Church Initiative
- Increase our trainers from 2 to 8. We have potential trainers in mind and are working on equipping and deploying them.
- Mentor 40 to 100 new church planters. This goal is dependent on #1 above.
- Build the support team to expand storytelling from the front line church planters. Specifically, stories of salvation, baptism, and new church starts.
- Clarify a support raising model for new trainers and team members.
- Celebrate God’s goodness at every step!
Links:
https://churchdevelopment.network/
More of a reader? Download the transcription here.
Key Quotes from the episode from JR Rushik:
“There is something about gathering together that is just holy and divine and right. So size of gathering doesn’t matter so much, but the gathering of God’s people does matter.” (33:22)
“So there will always be, I think, a need for and a rightful place for a larger, gathered, established church building. I think it’s a beautiful thing. I think our communities need those, and they reach a different segment, but I think there is an increase, an exponential increase in people that are saying, “I need something closer, simpler, more authentic,” all those things. And we’re seeing that happen. There is a hunger for it.” (31:36)
“So if there’s someone that wants to start, something starts in a living room and grows to a community center and then to a rented space in a big building, we’ll celebrate that just as much as the person who has four people meeting, both are churches, and that’s what we’re about.” (5:34)
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