Last year, the folks at Leadership Network asked me a question: "What is the state and status of church planting in the U.S?"
I said, "No one knows for sure."
Then they challenged (and funded) me to put together a group of people to find out as much as we could. A summary of those results were released today.
That is a pretty big question but the folks at Leadership Network like to tackle big issues. They wanted a big picture, not just one group, but all kinds of groups.
Since this was not related to my NAMB job (the Center for Missional Research), I got the appropriate sign offs there and took the project "off work."
I hired over 25 people in the course of six months. I personally visited and interviewed dozens of pastors, denominational workers, network leaders, and experts. My team did many more surveys, interviews, and analyses.
I have bookcases and files filled with materials interviews, analyses, and summaries. Our project included:
• 200+ church planting churches,
• 100+ leaders from 40 denominations,
• 45 church planting networks,
• 84 organic church leaders
• 12 nationally known experts,
• 53 colleges and seminaries
• 54 doctoral dissertations
• 41 journal articles
• 100+ church planting books and manuals
It was challenging and rewarding.
We looked at mainline, evangelical, charismatic/Pentecostal groups. Hundreds of people filled out our surveys and participated in the process.
We partnered with several groups, denominations (particuarly 2 NAMB projects already published here and summarized in the LN report), and researchers (including Stephen Gray and his book I mentioned yesterday).
I have also been sharing small parts of the research here and there.
One part was a recent article in Outreach Magazine on the 25 leading church planting churches in the country.
I also shared some of the data at the Best Practices Forum at the National New Church Conference.
Finally, I shared a small part with the Missouri Synod Lutherans and at the North American Mission Board Summer Meeting.
But, now Leadership Network is releasing some of their concept papers which they drew from the full study. As always, they did a good job bringing out the key points.
You can download theme at www.leadnet.org/churchplanting.
The folks at Leadership Network are first class people. Dave Travis was my main contact. Glenn Smith and Warren Bird made the published summaries much more exciting than my long technical report. Margaret Slusher was a great help along the way. And, Bonnie Randle and Stephanie Plagens did the hard work of getting it all published.
I will reflect more on the reserach in the coming days...
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