I’ve had a few discussions via comments with others about a dream I had when I was in seminary in New Orleans about how to build an association of churches planted for the purpose of reaching that city. I thought that you might be interested to understand how our church is laying the foundation to grow.

We are choosing to grow through multiplication and replication rather than getting bigger.

First, let me give you our church’s context. We’re in the second fastest growing area of the 8th fastest growing state in the country. There are literally 5000+ homes in a 5 mile radius of the center of time approved for development. One development alone will have 2,500 homes.

The dream for Mission Fellowship here in Middletown, DE is to grow to a large enough size that we can take 50-75 members and plant another church in the area. That church will meet in a storefront or other rented facility and hopefully will continue to associate with our church. As that church grew and we replentished our own numbers, together the mother church and the new church would plant another church by drawing off 25-30 people from each church as well as receiving funds from both churches to begin the plant, again in a rented facility. This process would continue until at some point it becomes unfeasable to continue the process.

What we end up doing is taking the church into the community. It will be difficult for us to purchase land and it may be difficult to find a facility that will allow us to grow into a mega-church. But we can build an association of churches in the area that will work together to reach this community and ultimately the world.

If you found this page useful, consider linking to it. Simply copy and paste the code below into your web site. It will look like this:
Our church’s growth plan

<a href="http://www.wdavidphillips.com/2005/08/03/our-churchs-growth-plan/">Our church’s growth plan</a>