Articles for tag: Orchard Group

Church Planting Organizations

Compiled by R. Paige Mathews Christian churches and churches of Christ are committed to church planting! Just a quick look at this list will remind you that church leaders from coast to coast are working to reach non-Christians with new congregations. Church planting organizations and associations were asked to share information about their ministry beyond basic contact information. That information is condensed below, for those who answered our survey.   (For your convenience, this list is available as a pdf. Just click here: Church Planting Organizations.) “¢ “¢ “¢   Alabama State Evangelizing Association Philip King 3601 Lorna Ridge Drive Hoover, AL 35216

Power Planting

Brent Storms became president of Orchard Group in 2009 and CEO this past July. Greg Nettle joined the Stadia team as president just a few months ago. These two young leaders recently sat down with us for a candid conversation about the future of church planting and the future of the church.   Brent, what is Orchard Group”s niche and overall mission? STORMS: Our mission is to plant growing and reproducing churches in New York, the Northeast, and beyond, which often means strategic urban settings. We began in the New York metro area and in the last 20 years we”ve

Consider 9/11 Offering for Church Planting

There”s still time to participate in the Orchard Group“s “Love Prevails” offering on Sept. 11. That Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., churches will participate in a special giving campaign to fund new church plants in NYC and around the country. Some churches will take a special offering, others will give 9.11% of their regular offering that day, and others have committed to making a special gift before the end of 2011. “From New York, the greatest city in the world, we want to plant more churches in more cities,” writes Orchard

A Story to Challenge All of Us

By Mark A. Taylor This week we”ve posted several encouraging accounts of new church plants in Greater Salt Lake City. But the bigger story tells how Christian leaders worked together and depended on God to see these happen. It”s a story about cooperation and collaboration. “The churches of the Restoration Movement had never attempted something like this,” says Steve Edwards. The collaboration began more than 15 years ago when the Salt Lake City church planting organization asked the Intermountain Church Planters Association based in Boise, Idaho, if they could work together under one name. Edwards became executive director of ICPA

Immeasurably More

By David Limiero When Bryan and Missy Meyers participated in a Stadia church planting assessment in the fall of 2009, they had a clear goal in mind””plant a church in northern Nevada in the fall of 2011. It seemed like the perfect plan. Bryan was serving as associate pastor at Hope Community Church in Reno, Nevada. Missy was the church”s preschool director. The church”s senior pastor, Bill Sherman, was solidly behind both the strategy and the timing. And Hope had just planted her first daughter church in nearby Fernley. Bryan and Missy”s church plant would be the next step in

God on a Mission in Salt Lake City

By Brent Storms Kyle Costello was born in Provo, Utah, while his parents were attending Brigham Young University. He was raised in a small town on the Utah/Nevada border. Because his family was Mormon, they made frequent trips to Salt Lake City. As a 19-year-old, Kyle prepared for his two-year “mission.” He began to anticipate some of the questions people might ask him when he knocked on doors. His quest for answers began innocently enough. He really wanted to know how to defend his faith. But the more he explored, and the more he raised questions with his father (now

Checking References of Ministerial Candidates

By Brent Storms In my local church ministry, and now in my position as president of a church planting organization, I have considered more than 1,000 candidates for open positions in ministry. I have screened and interviewed hundreds, and have hired more than 30 people for ministry positions. As I look back on the hiring process, I understand there are few elements more important than checking references and previous employers. Let me share three examples. Not long ago I met a candidate for the position of lead planter for a new church to be started in one of our northeastern

LARGE-SIZED CHURCHES: More to Discovery

By Kent E. Fillinger Shining a spotlight on challenges and successes at three churches . . . More to Discovery Did you grow up going to church? I did. Therefore, I don”t know what it feels like to walk into church for the first time as an adult with no church background. Toney Salva, senior minister at Discovery Christian Church, Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, on the other hand has used his personal experience of not growing up in a church to design a church that targets people who do not like church, or who have no church background. Through some internal

Interview with Rod Roberts

Rod Roberts By Brad Dupray Rod Roberts, a gubernatorial candidate in Iowa”s recent Republican primary, has served in his state”s House of Representatives since 2000. All the time he has served as a part-time legislator (four months of every year), he also has been executive director of the Christian Evangelistic Mission (CEM), planting churches in Iowa. CEM organized the church in Carroll, Iowa, in 1985 and hired Rod to be its first full-time minister. This came after Rod and his wife, Trish, had worked for five years establishing a church on Long Island, New York, under the direction of Go

Growing Leaders in a Young Church: Infancy to Eldership

by Dave Smith I walked into the mailroom at TCM International in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was January 31, 1994. In my mailbox was a letter from a church in Princeton, New Jersey. Ever the optimistic fund-raiser, I assumed it contained: (a) a very large check, (b) a commitment to support TCM until Jesus returns, or (c) both of the above. Much to my surprise, it was a letter asking me to consider leading a church planting team to New England. New England! My immediate reaction was that it was too cold, too far away, too expensive, too unfriendly. But 13

Collaboration Makes It Happen

By Ellen Hollcroft The opportunities for ministry in Glen Cove, New York, were undeniable. The question was, could a small church do anything to help with such profound problems? Local newspaper articles told the story. “¢ “He apparently drank himself into a stupor that night, the coldest of the season. Passed out from the alcohol, he fell into the creek. His companions pulled him out, sat him up and wrapped him in their blankets. At dawn, they found him still in that position. The police said he had frozen to death” (New York Times, 26 January 1997). “¢ “The City

Why Is the NACC Important? I Go for My Family

by Brent Storms   Our family attended the North American Christian Convention in Louisville in 1981 when I was 8 years old. My brother was 6, and our sister was a baby. My parents wanted to attend the Ozark Bible College reception to reconnect with some of their classmates and friends. They did not want to keep my brother and me up late. So they locked us in our hotel room. Really, they did. They explained to us that they were not leaving the building. They would be right downstairs in one of the hotel ballrooms. We were instructed to

An Invitation to God”s Drama in New York City

By Jared Witt Editor”s note: ImagineNYC is the latest project of Orchard Group Inc., a church planting organization in New York City. The new church will launch in September 2009 in two separate Manhattan locations, the upper West Side and Greenwich Village. Jared Witt is lead minister. Additional staff for the new church has yet to be selected.       Novelist Tom Wolfe has suggested that New York City is no longer a real city inhabited by real people. It is, rather, a spectacle, a drama staged and orchestrated for the benefit of tourists, a massive public exhibition. New

The National New Church Conference”s “˜Exponential” Development

By Jennifer Taylor From multisite campuses to nationwide networks, interest in church planting is at a new high. Restoration Movement leaders have been planting churches and sharing their experiences for decades, but this renewed focus on reproducing churches””plus a commitment to cross-denominational collaboration””has made the National New Church Conference the premier church planting event in the country.   Historical The National New Church Conference (NNCC) first met in 1969 as the “First National Colloquy on New Church Evangelism.” According to John Wasem”s August 2006 article in Christian Standard, 38 people attended this first event held at Great Lakes Bible College

reasons to celebrate

Let’s Celebrate

Bob Russell highlights reasons the Restoration Movement should celebrate, pointing to renewed evangelistic focus, church growth, and effective church planting across the country—even in places once considered hard soil.

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