2. Metrics should clarify ministry progress.
While the nine essentials shape how we plant, data is vital for measuring the impact of the autonomous local churches that planters establish. In concert with our partners, we seek to evaluate churches in years one through five. After all, networks don’t plant churches; churches plant churches. Numbers play a critical role in tracking church-planting progress for any faith body or network.
Three primary areas we track are missionary health, ministry development, and long-term survivability. We care deeply about the health of church planters and spouses in our network, and we strive to stay informed regarding God’s activity among church plants. Send Network’s quarterly reporting system helps gauge those crucial areas. Then at the four-year mark, we track the survivability of churches. By that point, most church plants have clarity regarding their ministry’s scope, development rate, and contextual challenges. Eighty-nine percent of church plants in the network survive through four years. Although metrics aren’t the whole picture, without them our stewardship of this mission can suffer.
3. Vision should inspire further multiplication.
One crucial question we’ve tackled within Send Network is, “What happens after church planters exceed the five-year mark?” We seek to foster a catalytic partnership with planters as they start and when they begin to send. The conclusion of our Planter Pathway marks the beginning of our Mobilization Pathway. For that, a five-category vision tool offers any church—new or established—a next step in planting. Collaborative learning between planters and pastors throughout that pathway sparks growth as together they dream and strategize for the future.
Send Network’s emphasis on multiplication with church planters doesn’t begin at year five of the plant. Leaders continually emphasize the need for planters to shift from seeing themselves as the mission to being on mission. The churches planted today should be the sending churches of tomorrow. From the start, our process aims to instill the value of multiplication.
The Next 10 Years
As Send Network enters its second decade, we continue to obey the biblical principles of multiplication. Just as NASA’s Pioneer 10 mission exceeded expectations, we lift our sails and pray that the wind of God’s Spirit blows across our network, throughout the nation, and among people worldwide.
Should God so choose, we believe he will move in ways that exceed all we could ask or imagine. I invite you to pray with us for the next decade of church-planting, gospel-sharing ministry.
Travis Ogle, senior vice president of NAMB’s Send Network, also contributed to this article.
