Celebrating 2017
As we reflect on 2017 we’re thankful for ministry opportunities Passion for Planting has been a part of in our region, our nation, and globally. This year alone we helped plant five new churches, trained hundreds of church planters, and offered free church planting resources to thousands of church planting leaders around the world.
While 2017 offered us plenty to celebrate, we’re even more excited about the impact our ministry will have next year through the churches and leaders we’ve trained and equipped.
We look forward to see how God continues to use Collective Church to impact Frederick, MD with the gospel. Michael Bartlett, a former Passion for Planting resident, launched Collective Church in September 2017. They launched with 270 people their first Sunday and have seen five people surrender their lives to Christ in baptism this fall alone.
One reason Collective is growing and connecting more people with Jesus is because they served their city before they invited their city to a service. All throughout 2017 Michael and his team connected with local schools, non-profits, and community leaders asking them how Collective could serve their city. This led to park cleanups, face painting at community festivals, and even packaging 10,000 meals for those in need in Frederick.
Collective’s presence in their community inspired The Frederick News-Post, the local newspaper, to chronicle the church’s Grand Opening highlighting Collective’s “alternative worship style” and love for their community. Without a doubt, God’s on the move in Frederick and seeing the lives being changed there make us exclaim, “Yea God!”
While it’s exciting to see what’s God’s doing in Frederick, MD through Collective we can’t forget to celebrate what he’s doing Washington D.C., Knightdale N.C., Jacksonville N.C., and Owings Mills, MD where we’ve worked to start new churches this year. Learn more about those churches here:
Encounter Church – Washington, DC
United Church – Owings Mills, MD
Movement Christian Church – Knightdale, NC
Restore Church – Jacksonville, NC
Now for those of you who love numbers, here’s a peek at some of the data in Passion for Planting’s Church Multiplication Scorecard for 2017 to get a picture of other ways we’ve served church planting leaders:
- Church Plant Project Management for 12 church plants
- Six planters in our Distance Church Planter Residency
- 426 new users of our PlanterPlan church plant project management tool
- 10 attendees in our Church Planter Bootcamp
- 4 couples through our Church Planter Assessment
- 526 FREE Demographic Reports provided to church planters
- 19,096 downloads of our FREE downloadable church planting resources
- Nearly 3,000 enrollments in our FREE online church planting courses since they were deployed
Now it’s time for us to look ahead to 2018. We’re currently working with 10 new churches slated to launch in 2018. None of this would be possible without the generous support and Kingdom vision of our church, New Life Christian Church – the base of Passion for Planting’s operations. May the Holy Spirit continue to guide our multiplication efforts to help more and more people discover God!