In addition to my duties as Executive Pastor at Christ's Church of the Valley, I am a Regional Director leading church planting efforts for the Philadelphia region of the Orchard Group.
I haven't often blogged about church planting and should probably change that.
Let me start with our strategy …
Church Planting Strategy
At Christ's Church of the Valley we feel called to grow a strong community of Christ followers that collectively helps to plant churches all over the Philadelphia region. In order to accomplish this we are currently focused on growing our Royersford congregation to 3,000+ before asking 200-400 to commit to being part of our first plant. We would very much like to plant a "flagship" church somewhere in the Philadelphia region that is fully equipped with volunteers and staff to adequately reach its target, growing to more than 500 in its first 2 years and reaching 1,000 within its first 5 years.
In 20 or 30 years we want to be used by God to help make the Northeast an area of the country much like the Midwest's tri-state area (Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky). Why would anyone want to plant a church in the tri-state? There are plenty of churches there!
We have taken the Philadelphia region (as far north and east as Princeton, New Jersey and south and west as Wilmington, Delaware), more than 5,000,000 people, and divided it into 20 different "mini-regions." Below is a map of what we've defined as the Philadelphia Region.
In each mini-region we want to plant a flagship church. By flagship we mean a church that is strategically planted to exist on its own as an Independent Christian Church with "ownership" for planting more churches in its mini-region. These churches will most likely (due to proximity) be campuses of the flagship, but not necessarily.
Knowing that this is a pretty ambitious strategy, we're anxious to get started. We're already working to network with other churches, creating a network of leaders interested in being involved in implementing this strategy. We hope to hire our first lead planter in late 2009 to begin working on our first plant now planned for sometime in the second half of 2010.
The Orchard Group regional directors have setup a Google Group to facilitate communication and networking to find planters and others interested in being a part of what's happening here in the northeast. If you are interested in getting involved as a planter, part of a planting team, or can offer financial support in any way … send an e-mail to the Orchard Group Regional Directors at this e-mail address: orchard-group-regional-directors@googlegroups.com. Of course you can also e-mail me directly at kevin@moviechurch.com.
