Ted Powers - Director of Midwest Alliance
A note from Ted
Midwest Alliance Director
THE MIDWEST MISSION
June 2021
On May 4-5 leaders representing the various states, presbyteries and cities of the Midwest gathered in St Louis for a time of prayer, connection, strategic planning, and discussion of key issues related to seeing the work of the gospel effectively go forward in our region.
Over the last 35 years we have seen the PCA presence in the Midwest grow by about 200 churches – from about 35 to now 232, 29 of which are current mission churches. Our vision is that, by God’s grace, as we pray and work together, we will reach 500 churches in the next 10 years totaling 100,000 people with at least 10% of them being new believers. This would mean that each of presbyteries (14) would average about 2 new plants a year.
We want each of these churches, and our collective efforts, to reflect the following core values:
Kingdom Prayer – All of us being mobilized to pray for the advance of the gospel and the building of Christ’s Church in the Midwest and that God would enable us to reach the goals stated above for His glory.
Intentional Evangelism – While people need a good church home that faithfully teaches the Bible and effectively makes disciples, it is essential that we plant and develop churches that are engaging people with the gospel and seeing people come to Christ.
Community Engagement – We want to see our churches grow as worshiping communities who are loving one another well AND who are outwardly focused, meaningfully involved in and serving their communities and pursuing mercy and justice.
Inclusive Diversity – We want our churches to be reaching and serving as many different people groups in their communities as possible and meaningfully including and benefitting from these different cultures in the life of the body to the glory of God and as a witness to the world of the transforming, unifying power of the gospel.
Leadership Development – Few things are more important to the health of an organization, its sustainability and its effectiveness in its mission, than to continually identify and develop new leaders.
One way this last value takes on significant, strategic expression in church planting is for Presbytery to develop a “Church Planter Pipeline”. This involves identifying men and women who show interest and potential for church planting, whether as lead planters or being part of a team. These can be seminary, college, or even high school students. They can be Assistant Pastors, Youth Pastors, or Campus staff of all stripes.
The idea is to make sure each potential candidate is getting the mentoring, theological training, and ministry experience, especially in evangelism, preaching, and leadership, to hopefully one day be involved in the planting of new churches. Without this kind of strategic investment we will not have the “laborers for the harvest” needed to reach our goals. Collectively, at this point we have 120 in the Midwest Pipeline.
We identified the follow “flow” for this pipeline to help guide us in this work:
Identify and Cultivate – begin to identify potential candidates and come alongside them to provide mentoring, encouragement, and exposure to and basic training in church planting.
Church Planter Readiness Seminar (CPRS) – An early assessment tool typically involving a Friday night and Saturday to address the question, “Is church planting for me? Is this something I should be thinking and praying about?” From this, candidates get helpful feedback and suggestions for what to continue to work on as they walk down this path.
Internships – Whether short-term (e.g. a summer) or long-term (e.g a year), men and women have the opportunity to serve in a church plant to both assist that work and the planter himself as well as to gain a first-hand view of what church planting is like. These can be done before or, ideally, after a CPRS. It’s important that churches and presbyteries begin to allocate funds to help with these internships.
Assessment Center – This 3-day event, which culminates an extensive process, is for those who believe that God may indeed be calling them to church planting and provides new, additional feedback on one’s readiness. This typically leads to an apprenticeship or to planting.
Apprenticeships – This is a full-time, Assistant Pastor type role in a local church that is committed to preparing a candidate to plant or wants to plant a daughter church themselves. It typically lasts 2-3 years. Again, it’s important that churches and presbyteries allocate funds to help facilitate these apprenticeships.
Planting!
Currently, many Midwest presbyteries are forming “Leadership Development Teams” to initiate and oversee this process. It will take this kind of dedicated, focused effort if we are going to have the manpower needed to accomplish our mission.
A key part of this investment is in women who are a huge untapped resource and have so much to offer a church planting enterprise. We also want to do a better job of supporting our church planter wives who are already involved on the front lines in varied and important roles. It was good to have 5 women in this gathering and we hope to see more in the future.
Finally, we were all highly encouraged with reports of what God is doing in the region even as we speak. There are a number of plants that have been started even during this year of Covid and many more are in the preparatory stage.
“Catalyst” is not only an encouraging and invigorating time together that we intend to have annually but it gives expression to our collective desire to “Work Together for the Heart of America!” Please continue to pray for the gospel to go forth with power, for God to raise up laborers for the harvest, for Christ to build His church, for many to come to saving faith in Him, and for us to see Biblically faithful, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled church planted in communities all across the Midwest!
Ted
Director of the Midwest Alliance