Gospel Saturation
“And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region.” Acts 13:49 CSB
Gospel saturation requires cultural manifestations of the gospel to match the density and diversity of their context.
Houston is the most diverse major metro in the U.S., and it is growing larger and more diverse by the day.
No single church can saturate Houston with the gospel. We need to work together.
The Rhetoric of Multiplication
In the last decade, churches in North America have rightfully shifted to emphasize becoming a sending church and supporting church planting. This shift was a significant step forward for gospel work.
However, the church that calls an agency, a network, or a state convention and asks for a planter is not actually a sending church. It is, at best, a supporting church. We need supporting churches, but we must not confuse those with the church that actually produces their own sent out ones.
Sending church language must mean more than recruiting if we ever want a shot at approaching real multiplication. A “sending” church must mean a church that develops from within, not simply sends someone else’s people.
We must create systems that equip every church member for ministry.
Recruitment vs. Development
For too long now, our sending paradigm has been one of recruitment. And, our churches, our networks, our conventions, and associations have all played a part in doing it this way.
Our organizations tasked with planting simply become recruiters. Churches that want to take part in sending often do the same. In this way, the sending church is involved in identification, but it is identifying ministers from outside. Everyone wants an equipping pipeline, but after it is set up, they begin looking outside of themselves for the people to fill it.
Recruitment Paradigm
Recruitment alone can never be multiplicative. A church that recruits its next planter from outside did not add another planter to the pool. They merely moved one discovered by another church. For every planter recruited and gained from the outside, another equipping system loses a planter. Cooperative equipping strategies with national sending agencies, through state conventions and associations, and even boutique networks are good and needed, but we must address a root problem: a waning supply of people to fill them.
Development Paradigm
We have talked about leadership development in the local church for a long time now. Unfortunately, we often assume these leaders will then scale up the ministry of the local congregation.
Leaders to lead small groups and potentially serve in ministry roles in a congregation are important, but we must also consider how we are identifying and developing those leaders that a church will send out for ministry elsewhere.
The work of ministry is diverse, ranging from church planting and replanting to diaspora and international missions.
Sending out people from within the church to an array of Great Commission tasks is the true heart of a sending church that wants to advance the gospel.
The Sending Process
A sending church rightly understood develops from within and deploys out. In order to truly be a sending church, a congregation must identify, equip, send, and support those from within the congregation. Sending is about more than supporting. Specifically, without the process of identification inside the local congregation, multiplicative sending cannot occur.
Sending Pathways
Sending Pathways is a UBA initiative working with local churches to develop intentional systems that lead to multiplicative sending.
Jump-Start Identification
The first (and most important) phase of Pathways audits the church’s current culture and practice in order to make systemic changes that create a culture of identification. Without a healthy culture that continually calls church members to all kinds of ministry, churches cannot accomplish multiplicative sending.
UBA works with churches to evaluate current practices at macro, meso, and micro levels inside the church to create a sustainable discipleship pathway for those God is calling.
Creating a real sending culture takes time and repeated effort from the pulpit, small groups, and even talk in the hallways. Churches need a unified message at each of these levels and a clear pathway to aid the sending process.
COOPERATIVE EQUIPPING
After identification begins to occur, churches cooperate with other churches to provide equipping cohorts.
In the past, equipping pipelines were most often established inside individual churches. However, cooperative equipping creates a number of significant benefits.
No longer is equipping only for churches large enough to run equipping residencies.
Sent out ones receive training in the strengths and approaches of multiple churches instead of just one.
Finally, cooperative equipping forms the basis of team sending. As potential sent out ones from different churches are equipped together, they can form sending teams that span multiple churches. This approach is key to developing a strategy for coordinated sending.
UBA helps local churches form cooperative equipping cohorts. These cohorts may form around church planting, international missions, replanting, or other sent out tasks, and will include multiple churches working together to train and equip their potential sent out ones.
COORDINATED SENDING
When churches equip together, they can send together in new ways. Imagine a church plant or international missions team developed from multiple churches through cooperative equipping. This team now has two, three, or four sending churches with which to partner and from which they can receive support.
When church plants or missionaries are sent as teams, the chances of success are much higher. Team planting allows new pastors to share the responsibility of planting. This creates more opportunities for ministry and more opportunities for support strategies such as bi-vocational or covocational planting. Coordinated sending means more missions resources.
Coordinated sending also means easy on-ramps to the many sending structures already present in Houston and beyond. Sending Pathways provides potential sent out ones with foundational equipping that allows them to easily begin the assessment process with other partners such as the Houston Church Planting Network, state conventions, the International Mission Board, or other sending agencies. Pathways does not compete with these structures but builds bridges between them and the local church.
CONTINUED SUPPORT
Sending churches continue to support the work of those they send. Support comes in many forms. Sometimes it is financial, helping a new church as it becomes sustainable, or meeting the financial needs of an international missionary. At other times, it is human resources that are needed, as supporting churches come alongside new church plants for community outreach. It should always involve prayer, counsel, and fellowship.
Pathways creates channels for this continued support to occur alongside other churches. As teams are cooperatively equipped and the sending is coordinated between churches and other partners, then multi-church support networks and relationships are formed that allow for better and more secure support for each new work without the total burden resting on one sending church.
We want your church to be a part of Pathways.
Every church can benefit from an intentional process of examination concerning their sending process. Even if your church is already a true sending church, you can accomplish more when you work with other churches to develop pathways to multiplicative sending. We want to see a city full of churches that cooperatively produce their own sent out ones for an array of Great Commission tasks. This is how Houston (and beyond) reaches gospel saturation.
If you’re interested in your church starting down one or more sending pathways, click the button below to request more info. One of our consultants will be in touch to discuss how your church can get started.