I recently spent three days in Orlando, Florida at a groundbreaking partnership meeting with other missionary minded church leaders from the CRC and RCA (Reformed Church in America, our sister church). By the way, don’t hate on me. It was colder and windier in Central Florida than in Seattle that week.
The gathering was called MC2 (m-c-squared) which stands for MISSION CATALYST COALITION. The purpose of this new group is to join forces in planting new churches and ministries across North America, through local churches just like Sanctuary has done in Seattle and beyond. While denominational planting systems stutter and fall prey to continual re-thinking (paralysis by analysis), the several dozen churches attending this event were inspired by a chap named Ron Tobias. Ron is the executive pastor of a large, declining in size church called Spanish River Presbyterian.
Each year, Spanish River dedicates $1.4 million of its $3.6 million overall budget to plant churches. These churches are often not Presbyterian and they are all over the world. Spanish River gives and plants, asking very little in return. The vision for this kind of planting has been central to Spanish River for 36 years. Ron and a small team raise the money in South Florida and meet together to approve grant requests. One recipient is our own Peter Armstrong who is blessed to be supported by Ron and his church.
Collectively our group of CRC and RCA churches want to do the same thing…and together we are covenanting to head in a direction of churches planting churches as opposed to denominations planting churches. If a lot of us team up to do a little work and pitch in a little money as we are able, God can and will do great things for us.
Mission Catalyst Coalition (MC2) is convinced we can build a system much like the one Spanish River champions. If you are interested in helping Sanctuary think about how to be a part of this movement, let me know and we will loop you into the discussion.