HGC Vision: Launch New Life!

The Pinetops Foundation recently commissioned a group to study what U.S. culture and the Church might look like in 2050. If you have not read The Great Opportunity, I highly recommend you download it and do so. The study provides a powerful snapshot of the need the Church will have to meet as it relates to the Great Commission.

Church plants vs. church closures are not keeping up with population growth.

There are dozens of key takeaways I could highlight here, but I only want to mention one. Currently, we are planting about 4,000 churches annually in the U.S. On the flip-side, we are seeing about 3,700 close. The current net gain is not keeping up with population growth. If that snapshot is not bleak enough, it is projected to get even worse. As the population is projected to continue to grow and the number of young people leaving the church does as well, the number of people we will need to reach in ten, twenty, and thirty years is completely overwhelming.

So now that you’ve been presented with this huge problem, what does the Pinetops Foundation suggest we do as a solution for church planting in the future? Here is their projection:

“The sobering reality is that we will need to double the annual rate of church planting from 4,000 new congregations to nearly 8,000 per year over the next 30 years.”

Wow, we have work to do!

Healthy Growing Churches’ core passion is to engage church leaders to multiply churches. We long to see God raise up an army of local churches that are for their city. We desire to see these churches healthy and helping people find their way back to God. We are passionate about churches that have an intentional framework for making disciples to a third and fourth generation of reproduction. We are hopeful this growing pipeline of multiplying disciples of Jesus will lead to churches that plant churches.

How does Healthy Growing Churches help? How do we engage church leaders to launch new life?

There are three core ways that we are currently engaging leaders to ensure that churches are healthy, reaching people, and multiplying disciples and churches.

Three Core Methods

Cohorts

HGC provides a variety of cohort options based on the need for a select group of pastors. These intentional conversations are designed to develop results-oriented relationships between a cohort leader and pastors in the trenches of day to day ministry. What we have learned over the past couple of years is that if we can get church leaders having the right conversation, we get movement – a movement that brings healthy disciple-making, church multiplication, and new life! Read more here.

Consultation

An HGC church consultation is a deliberate process that leads a pastor, their staff, and a local church in discerning current ministry realities. We have learned that if a local church is going to launch new life, a “line in the sand” moment is required – one that is led by an outside set of eyes. After current realities are discovered, one of our consultation teams prepares to make recommendations about the best path forward for a local church that desires to increase their level of ministry effectiveness.

Coaching

Coaching is a life-giving relationship that helps a church leader lift leadership lids and reach new levels of kingdom impact. This old axiom is so true of coaching, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Our heart is to see pastors lead well and far. Getting there often demands other people in our lives, specifically, a coach.

In the following three blogs, we’ll do a deep dive into cohorts, consultations, and coaching. We hope you will follow these blogs. 

These links will go live as we get the content posted.

Do you have a passion to launch new life? Maybe HGC can partner with you to help you and your church do just that.