Church-Planting Effort Turns To Future
As the pilot phase of the Church Multiplication Initiative between the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America comes to a close soon, discussions have already begun about how to expand the venture to include a wide range of classical, regional and denominational structures.
Also as the pilot phase draws to a close, leaders of the effort are looking ahead and anticipating several more years of continued collaborative work in, they say, bringing a Reformed witness to more people in more areas.
The initial phase of the joint, church-planting initiative focused on selected areas across the United States. Known as Kingdom Enterprise Zones (KEZs), they have been located in parts of Florida, in the Tucson/Phoenix area in Arizona, San Francisco, Calf., and in Wyoming, a suburb of Grand Rapids, Mich.
The goal has been to plant between 10-20 churches in each zone during the start-up phase, which ends at the end of this month. The collaboration was launched by a grant from the Grand Rapids-based Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation.
During the pilot phase, leaders have come to realize several things:
- The importance of communication. Harry Weidenar, Phoenix-Tucson KEZ leader, said, “When we ran into problems working with other pastors, it was because we had not communicated clearly and on a regular basis.”
- The need to strengthen relationships. “Developing relationships and working together are top priorities to achieve success,” says Ben Ingebretson, said Implementation Team member.
- The CRC and RCA have come to know each other better, and to thrive off of each other’s strengths so that can become an overall “effective unit functioning as one to bring glory to God’s Kingdom,” say leaders.
- This multiplication is best viewed as a continuum that is made up of networking, cooperation, collaboration, and integration.
- Leaders say that they “must continue to make wise and careful decisions in this collaboration as we continue with the movement of integration.”
