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Sacramento, Calif.
Mission USA unveils new program; Phoenix first target city


Twenty new churches in five years is the goal of MetroNet 2005 (pronounced twenty-o-five), a new program unveiled by Mission USA, the church planting and renewal ministry of the US MB Conference.

That’s a lot of churches for a conference of 160 churches and a membership of just over 21,000.

“I’m sure many of you are thinking this is a big bite,” MUSA executive director Ed Boschman told delegates at the joint Central and Southern MB district convention Oct. 29. “But we have a big God.”

Boschman announced the new program at three recent MB district conventions. The joint Central and Southern districts conventions were held in Hillsboro, Kan., Oct. 28-30, and the Pacific District Conference convention in Bakersfield, Calif., Nov. 5-6.

MUSA plans with MetroNet 2005 to plant a network or cluster of churches in “metroplexes”, major metropolitan areas where a series of cities merge together.

“We foresee these networks will become agents of multiplication. Rather than planting a church here and there, we want to multiply by reproducing ourselves,” Boschman says.

Multiplication is essential to the plan. The majority of the first new church plants will need to birth new churches within the five-year period. “Part of the DNA of the new churches is that they begin thinking immediately of birthing a new church within themselves,” says Boschman. He adds that the first years of a congregation’s life are a ripe time for rebirth.

MetroNet 2005 is a more deliberate, focused and cost-effective way to approach church planting for the conference, says Boschman. “The earliest years of our church planting efforts were let’s do whatever emerges. Now we are saying let’s be intentional about creating families of churches where they have the best possibility of building churches.”

Clustering churches also “makes a lot of sense in terms of anabaptist theology – the ideas of connectedness, family and teamwork,” says Boschman. “We value that.”

Mission Phoenix

Mission Phoenix is the first church planting thrust of MetroNet 2005. MUSA will work with the Pacific District Conference to plant five new churches in the metropolitan area in the next five years. According to Boschman, choosing Phoenix was not a new idea.

“Before my appointment as executive director,” Boschman explains, “the Mission USA board had deliberately selected Phoenix as a viable church planting metroplex. The vision back then was that it would become a cluster of churches which could become a prototype for other cities.”

MUSA’s “first-choice scenario” in planting the church clusters is to work with an existing healthy church family to plant a new church while MUSA works to plant additional churches in the same metropolitan area, says Boschman.

“This is not 20 new churches from scratch,” he adds.

For example, Copper Hills Community Church, the current church plant in Phoenix, could plant a new church while MUSA and the Pacific District plant three others that could birth at least two more.

Resources

It will require a lot of work and resources for MetroNet 2005 to succeed. According to Boschman, research of metroplexes is needed to determine areas lacking churches and best able to support a cluster of plants. Church planters and task forces (a type of interim elder board) are needed for each plant. Each church plant will run about $150,000 US for a three-year period, by which time they are typically expected to be self-supporting.

MUSA hopes to double its annual budget of $320,000 US with the addition of a director of development who will be required to raise a minimum of $300,000 a year, says Boschman. The development director will work collaboratively with fundraisers from other MB agencies and a new national executive director, he adds.

MUSA will also work with district church planting boards, seek out local churches to be partners in a church plant, and tap sources outside the US Conference as well as continue to raise money. Boschman and the board now raise about $190,000 of the $320,000, with the US Conference supplying the balance.

With the appointment of a development director, Boschman says he will have more time to gather leadership resources for the plants. “Right now, I have four active files of people who potentially could be church planters for the first handful of churches in the next year or so.” The rest are expected to come from the MB colleges and seminary.

The Canadian MB Conference Board of Evangelism began a similar program in Canada over a year ago. Recently, it appointed an associate director to strengthen discipleship and evangelism in churches (see MBH, Sept. 10). Using the slogan “Healthy growing churches, planting churches”, the Board has been working with the Alberta MB Conference in Calgary since 1998 with a church-planting strategy called “Key Cities Initiative”. Mission Calgary is currently working with five new church plants, with the goal to plant 10 churches by 2003. A second “Key City” is under consideration.

The church plants are daughter churches to existing MB congregations: Mountainview Grace Church, Sunwest Christian Fellowship, Dalhousie MB Community Church and Highland MB Church. Pastors from the supporting churches act as coaches for the church planters.

Funding Mission Calgary comes from three sources: The Alberta Conference is contributing $300,000 over five years; the Canadian Conference, which has 217 churches and 32,699 members, is contributing $200,000 during the first two years; and Evangelism Canada has set a goal to fundraise $500,000 over five years.

The Board of Evangelism has also set a goal to plant eight-to-10 churches in Atlantic Canada by the end of 2000. To date, two churches have been planted with the help of MB churches there. River of Life MB Church in Moncton, N.B., is working with Scott and Deborah Mealey to start The Pool, a postmodern church (see MBH, Sept. 24), and Gateway Community Church in Halifax is working with Paul and Kathy Francis to plant a church in Halifax/Tantallon.

Boschman admits MUSA’s MetroNet seems like an aggressive plan, and MUSA will review and re-evaluate its strategies on a regular basis.

MetroNet 2005 “is all about finding lost people in our neighbourhoods,” says Boschman. “The reality that I feel now is that we have been given a vision. We’ve developed some plans and strategies, and we will be able to accomplish those as God provides strength and God’s people provide resources.”  – PW, with a report from Christian Leader

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Last modified January 8, 2000.

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