HRC 2006

On January 27 & 28, we had our 3rd annual Healthy Reproducing Churches conference in Champaign, IL. About 70 people came from 7 church plants and 1 traditional church with an emerging type pastor. Lance Ford from Glocalnet came and spoke and did a good job introducing the people to the concepts of glocalnet -- church multiplication, community development, and nation building.


I uploaded some pictures to Flikr.com. You can access them by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/midwestplanting/.

Churches Planting Churches

Bob Roberts talks about how networks are good, but the real power is in churches planting churches.

Friday I spent time with Brian Bloye at West Ridge Church. He has started his church planting school and using what we teach at NorthWood. He now has 14 or 15 guys in the program and projecting potentially 8 new churches next year! Way to go Brian!!!! He just entered his new worship center and now has around 4000 in attendance. But, he’s not obsessed with his new building and size--like many are--but with how he keeps his people praying, holy, reaching the lost, helping the poor in his area, planting churches, and engaging the world. As I walked with him on the campus and in the community, he was so quick to stop and visit with people along the way--and it was genuine--not fake. It’s obvious why God is blessing him.

I’ve longed for years for an emerging guy like him who has a rockin’ church to be just as obsessed with "the" rockin’ church and he is and it shows--not just his own bread box. These are 8 churches HIS CHURCH is planting--not his organization or network, but his church! This is as it should be. Networks are great but church planting movements come from church planting churches--not networks, organizations, or denomination (Though, I do belong to some)! And, he’s not doing just local work in the US or Global, but both--Glocal. If people only understood one feeds the other and you can’t fully do one without the other. There is no such thing as "when we get big enough or healthy enough." The only question is when we want to be the church bad enough. I look forward to the day when a church’s total attendance equals it’s attendance plus the attendance of all the churches it’s started and the number of churches in that count. That’s how church planting will change society because it’s viral and dispersed and decentralized.