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CASE STUDIES IN CHURCH MULTIPLICATION 2025 PRAYER PRESENCE PATIENCE: HOW THE CHURCH MULTIPLES AROUND THE WORLD Center for Church Multiplication (Asbury Theological Seminary)

EDITED BY CAROLINA G. MILLER

First Fruits Press Wilmore, KY c2026

ISBN: 9781648174650 Prayer, presence, patience: how the church multiplies around the world Edited by Carolina G. Miller. Published in the U.S.A. by First Fruits Press, 2026. Digital version at http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitsheritagematerial/5/

First Fruits Press is a digital imprint of the Asbury Theological Seminary, B.L. Fisher Library. Asbury Theological Seminary is the legal owner of the material previously published by the Pentecostal Publishing Co. and reserves the right to release new editions of this material as well as new material produced by Asbury Theological Seminary. Its publications are available for noncommercial and educational uses, such as research, teaching and private study. First Fruits Press has licensed the digital version of this work under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0/us/. For all other uses, contact: First Fruits Press B.L. Fisher Library Asbury Theological Seminary 204 N. Lexington Ave. Wilmore, KY 40390 http://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits Prayer, presence, patience : how the church multiplies around the world / edited by Carolina G. Miller. – Wilmore, Kentucky : Center for Church Multiplication, Asbury Theological Seminary ; First Fruits Press, ©2026. 184pages ; 21cm. Case studies in church multiplication; 2025 ISBN: 9781648174650 (uPDF) ISBN: 9781648174667 (Mobi) OCLC: 1609536101 1. Church development, New. 2. Church development, New--Case studies. 3. Church growth. 4. Church growth--Case studies. I. Title. II. Asbury Theological Seminary. Center for Church Multiplication. III. Miller, Carolina G.

BV652.24.C37 2025 Cover design by Amanda Kessinger

254.1092

CASE STUDIES IN CHURCH MULTIPLICATION 2025

PRAYER PRESENCE PATIENCE How the Church Multiples Around the World

Edited by Carolina G. Miller

First Fruits Press The Academic Open Press of Asbury Theological Seminary 204 N. Lexington Ave., Wilmore, KY 40390 859-858-2236 first.fruits@asburyseminary.edu asbury.to/firstfruits

THE CENTER FOR CHURCH MULTIPLICATION AT A S B U R Y T H E O L O G I C A L S E M I N A R Y

Asbury Theological Seminary exists to prepare theologically educated, Spirit-!lled men and women who take the whole gospel to the whole world. Our motto is simple and bold: !e Whole Bible for the Whole World. The Center for Church Multiplication extends that mission through church planting. We exist to see healthy, multiplying, sustainable churches take root in every context on earth — from urban centers to rural communities, across cultures, borders, and languages. We do this by supporting church planting teams, walking alongside them with coaching, funding, and prayer, equipping them through Asbury’s academic programs and hands-on training, and connecting them to a global network of practitioners, research, and resources. We also engage in global conversations on church multiplication with humility, curiosity, and grace. In 2025, the Center for Church Multiplication worked with global partners to convene six gatherings of church planting practitioners across six countries — the Czech Republic, Brazil, Cuba, the United States, Germany, and Ukraine. The case studies in this book emerged from those conversations. These Global Gatherings are a signature part of how CCM works — highly participatory, regionally focused, and designed to celebrate what God is doing, sharpen leaders, and accelerate the growth of healthy churches where they’re needed most.

Learn more at asburyseminary.edu and asburychurchplanting.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS Getting Started with a Question ........................................................8 Czech Republic Case Study 1: Pastor Eszter Vigh ...............................................11 Case Study 2: Pastor Libor Osouch ...........................................16 Case Study 3: Pastor Vasilic# Croitor .........................................20 Case Study 4: Pastor Péter Baji ..................................................26 Case Study 5: Pastor Daniel Rozanski........................................31 Case Study 6: Pastor Michal Bare$ ............................................37 Brazil Case Study 1: Pastor João Paulo Modos .....................................43 Case Study 2: Pastor Je%erson Rodrigues ...................................54 Case Study 3: Pastor João Ricardo Marcon Milani.....................58 Case Study 4: Pastor Brayan Ukyou Nagasawa ..........................64 Cuba Case Study 1: Pastor Eddie Velazquez Diaz................................67 Case Study 2: Pastor Joel Cariñano Sánchez .............................70 Case Study 3: Pastor Luis Michel Ramírez Milián ....................73 Case Study 4: Pastor Osmel González Escalona .........................81 USA CCM Annual Gathering Case Study 1: Pastors Annie Bailey Roberts and Adam Roberts.....................................................................88 Case Study 2: Pastor Jared Votaw ..............................................95 Case Study 3: Pastor Rachael Mason .......................................100

Case Study 4: Pastor Christopher Spolar .................................103 Case Study 5: Pastor Jon Wiest ................................................107 Case Study 6: Pastor Aaron Rooks ...........................................113 Germany Case Study 1: Pastor Jana Kontermann....................................117 Case Study 2: Pastors Jason Lim, Markus Engel, and Luca Eichel .......................................................................123 Case Study 3: Pastor Gerard De Wit and Janneke De Wit .......128 Ukraine Case Study 1: Pastor Denis Malimonov ...................................137 Case Study 2: Pastor Denys Kondyuk......................................145 Case Study 3: Pastor Eduard Denysiuk ....................................152 Case Study 4: Pastor Kostiantyn Kovalenko.............................162 Case Study 5: Pastor Petro Loboiko .........................................175 Your Invitation to Join the Movement ...........................................181

GETTING STARTED WITH A QUESTION What does faithful church planting look like across six countries, four continents, and wildly di%erent contexts? The thirty-one case studies gathered in this volume answer that question not with a formula, but with a chorus of honest, sometimes painful, and ultimately hopeful voices. From Budapest’s cultural quarters and Berlin’s post-communist neighborhoods to the war-torn streets of Kyiv, from Cuba’s rural sugarcane communities to an American maximum-security prison, these pastors invite us into the unglamorous, glorious work of beginning something new. Across the breadth of these stories, several principles recur with striking consistency. The !rst is the primacy of prayer. Whether in a soup kitchen in Céspedes, a rave venue in Kyiv, or a cell house in Indianapolis, each planter testi!es that prayer was not one tool among many — it was the foundation on which everything else rested. When strategies failed, prayer remained. When teams dissolved, prayer sustained. A Cuban pastor summarizes what many discovered: only after prayer became the !rst activity did results appear. A second recurring theme is the irreplaceable role of relationships. Trust and connection determine whether the gospel travels or stalls. Planters in Romania, Germany, and Brazil alike found that programs without relational roots rarely bore lasting fruit. Incarnational presence, living in the neighborhood, frequenting the same cafés, attending community events, and sharing meals, proved far more e%ective than any formal initiative. Third, these stories consistently a&rm the value of patience. Church planting is slow, and every contributor warns against forcing premature growth. God draws people to Himself over years, not weeks, and the most fruitful planters learned to measure faithfulness rather than attendance. Small beginnings are not signs of failure; they are the normal seedbed of something lasting. 8

Fourth, team health and planter wellbeing emerge as critical, often underestimated concerns. Physical burnout, marital strain, loneliness, and the weight of unmet expectations surface in case study after case study. Many planters confess that they had to learn, often the hard way, that a church cannot be healthier than its leaders. Fifth, the importance of contextual sensitivity appears everywhere. Pastors in Cuba contextualized the gospel through social action and food distribution. A planter in Ukraine met young people at raves. Another in Odessa embraced Orthodox cultural symbols to build bridges. In Berlin’s secular northeast and in South Carolina’s diverse Sans Souci neighborhood, the question was always the same: How does the good news become genuinely good news for these speci!c people in this speci!c place? The breadth of ideas represented here is equally striking. Readers will encounter Disciple Making Movements, multisite models, house church networks, chaplaincy approaches to prisons and military families, neighborhood festivals, farmers’ market outreach, soup kitchens, community farms, multilingual congregations, and Ukrainian-language refugee churches born from a Romanian church plant. No single model dominates. That is the point. Read these stories slowly. Let the details do their work. The hope is not that you will replicate what was done in Frankfurt or Gdańsk or Kyiv — it is that you will be stirred to discern what faithfulness looks like in your own context, and emboldened to begin. Dr. Bruce Wilson Director, the Center for Church Multiplication Asbury Theological Seminary

CZECH REPUBLIC CASE STUDIES

CAS E S T UD Y 1

CASE STUDY 1: PASTOR ESZTER VIGH WHO I AM

My name is Eszter Vígh. I’m 30 years old and have been married for 5 years. My husband and I met while studying theology. He works as a freelance content creator. After completing our theology studies, we moved to Budapest to join a newly launched church-planting initiative. In this ministry, I serve as a pastor alongside another pastor. During the !rst semester of my theology studies, I had the opportunity to participate in a study trip to the United States where we explored church-planting initiatives in the Grand Rapids area. I not only developed an interest in church planting, but also met my husband. We always joke that it took traveling 8,000 kilometers for us to !nally start talking to each other. Later, in my fourth year, we heard about an opportunity to join a reading group on church planting in the capital city, 200 kilometers away from our university. Determined to participate, we spent six hours driving for every meeting just to have two hours of discussion with other theologians about this topic. The leader of this group was a well-known and experienced pastor who is now my colleague in the church-planting ministry where I currently serve. After graduating from university, we began searching for a place to serve. For months, we had been thinking and praying about where to go next. Since church planting was already part of our future plans, we decided to reconnect with the pastor we had worked with before. At the end of a long conversation, he mentioned a simple yet profound statement: “They have a dream.” It turned out, they had been praying for months for a new church and a theologian to join their vision. We didn’t need to search any longer. Just a few days later, we wrote them a letter saying that no matter what, we were ready to go.

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OUR CONTEXT

In September 2021, we began our church-planting ministry in one of Budapest’s cultural districts. This area, known as the Bartók Quarter, is famous throughout the city for its cafés, art galleries, and vibrant cultural life. We chose this neighbourhood because we wanted to reach urban individuals who’d enjoy coming here to relax, meet friends, and participate in various events. Our goal then was to connect with people who resonate with the unique atmosphere and lifestyle that the Bartók Quarter embodies– and this is still our goal today. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

During the church planting process, I’m not sure if there’s anything that isn’t a challenge. Whatever you thought was certain or familiar is questioned. However, my experience is that behind these challenges lie a more fundamental one: the question of the planter’s personal well-being. A new church does not only rely on the planter, yet the planter can shape and de!ne it in big ways. I had to learn this through my own experience. No matter how much I read about it, or how many times others warned me, I think I hit a wall in every area. As newlyweds, my husband and I embarked on this great adventure with excitement. However, the transition was far from smooth. Since we hardly knew anyone in the city, and our network was very small, it was particularly di&cult for my husband to !nd work. This uncertainty also a%ected me. Not only did we have to bring a new church to life, but we also had to establish our own existence. And this was not so much about !nances, but rather a shared journey for us to discover who we were in this vast city. To top it all o%, my husband found it extremely challenging to pour energy, attention, and love into planting while dealing with all the other stressors. Unfortunately, I often pushed aside his concerns instead of asking the question: “How can I help you pursue your dreams and plans?” The trials, my irregular work schedule, loneliness, and many other factors over the months eventually led to physical illness. In the spring of 12

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our !rst year, I ended up in the emergency room with a fever due to a kidney infection. Almost exactly one year later, it happened again. Poorly managed stress, an unhealthy lifestyle, and the constant hustle continued to manifest over time. Old back problems resurfaced, hindering my ability to work. Last summer, I !nally had to ask myself the question: “What am I doing with the body I was given as a gift?” Over the past few months, I’ve realized that I need healing even more deeply than I initially acknowledged. For a while, I didn’t recognize how hard it was for me to feel at home after moving. I didn’t admit that leaving the safe environment where I grew up, the place I knew, and moving into a rented apartment in a big city was a heavy and di&cult challenge for me. We live in one of the trendiest and most desirable neighbourhoods in the capital. Many people in Budapest would love to live here, and I do enjoy it. I love the cafés, I love crossing Budapest’s most beautiful bridge, I enjoy walking around the area, and I love the people here. But despite all of this, I began to experience a growing sense of spiritual instability. I tried to settle into the place where we live and begin building friendships, greeting more people on the street as if I were in my hometown. Yet my heart remained restless, and the biggest question in this past season became: “How do I !nd home and security in God when I have to live in earthly uncertainty and homelessness?” LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

My experiences over the past three years can be summed up in two keywords: patience and well-being. Church planting is a slow and longterm process. It simply takes time. An essential part of this process is the physical and spiritual well-being of the church planter. I believe we all begin the process of church planting with great hopes and expectations. Everyone wants to see change and results as quickly as possible. However, change takes time, and I’ve had to realize that I need to be patient not only with those who are not yet Christians, but also with myself, with the church-planting team, and most important-

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ly, with the Holy Spirit of God. In the process, I had to acknowledge that the essence of church planting is not just about creating a project. It’s about how God wants to bring healing in and around me, while, at the same time, giving birth to a new church. Expectations and reality unite to form a strange pair in the life of a new church. God works in ways that are entirely di%erent from what we might envision. This often includes the element of time. In a smaller church, it’s much more noticeable when someone begins to draw closer to God and He starts to open their eyes and hearts. But it’s just as noticeable when spiritual blindness grips someone’s life. From the very beginning, there were people who I thought would !nd their way to God within months at our church. A year or two later though, even our relationship had faded. There are stories and places where God acts in incredible and visible ways, but in our ministry, we have experienced something di%erent. God draws some people to Himself slowly. He is patient with them, even when we have run out of patience. It’s not just in conversions that we’ve had to wait patiently, but also in two key areas of church life. From the very start, we’ve lacked workers in two vital ministries: children’s ministry and music. God is still waiting for something. We’ve come to experience this waiting as a kind of fast. He is preparing us, shaping our hearts. But in this waiting, we’ve also come to know grief. Through what felt like divine guidance, a remarkably talented worship leader and musician began serving with us. Yet God had other plans. Through a tragic accident, he lost his life. Our community not only lost its musician but one of its hearts. And since then, God has continued to make us wait. During the hardest times, nothing helped more than prayer and the strength of my community. You can never force the Spirit to act, but you can call upon Him and wait. Nothing has helped us overcome obstacles, failures, and di&culties like experiencing the power of the Spirit together. When we started church planting, the passage from Acts 4,

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where the community prayed with one heart and mind, meant a lot to us: “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all !lled with the Holy Ghost, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• How can we best serve the neighborhood we are in? • What are the greatest, most pressing, and most real physical, emotional, and spiritual needs? Our primary calling is to be a blessing to the community, in the deepest sense of God’s shalom. CONCLUSION

As a church planter, I’m responsible for myself– not only because I am a child of God, but also because my well-being impacts His church. A church planter needs friends, mentors, professional support, and a healthy work-life balance to stand !rm during turbulent times. However, the entire future of the church rests solely in God’s hands. We cannot achieve church health faster or in any other way. You work for it, but He is the one who begins and completes the work according to His wisdom. I long to see God bring healing from sickness, freedom from addictions, and restoration from brokenness. My other desire is to see the people we serve recognize and live according to the spiritual gifts they have been given. For a long time, I viewed our church as an experiment– something that might succeed or might not. The challenges, and the fact that my plans weren’t coming to fruition, made me feel like we were still far from arriving. But I’ve come to see that God’s purpose for us isn’t about achieving a !nished, polished project. Instead, He wants to shape us and many others here and now by inviting us to seek, call upon, and wait for His presence in our daily lives.

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CASE STUDY 2: PASTOR LIBOR OSOUCH WHO I AM

My name is Libor, and I’ve been on quite an adventure these past few years. I wear two hats in my daily life, and I always say that I’m working somewhere between heaven and the earth: half of my time spent working in ministry, and the other half dedicated to creative advertising and brand building. These two worlds might seem very di%erent, but both require creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, passion, and a clear vision. I grew up in a Christian family and I’ve always been active and creative. These gifts were not appreciated much in my church, so I became distant in my teenage years. I was sure I would never work in the ministry, and after moving to Zlín for university, I went through a crisis of faith and became an atheist. Eventually, God miraculously brought me back and called me to serve the youth of Zlín. When I came back to Christ, I found myself constantly sharing my faith and inviting people to church. However, there wasn’t really a church in Zlín that felt open and welcoming enough for me to bring my friends to. That’s when God put a crazy idea in my heart: “Why not start one?” At !rst, it felt overwhelming, but as my passion grew stronger, I realized I wasn’t alone. Others in Zlín shared this vision. OUR CONTEXT

Zlín is a small city in the Czech Republic and rich in culture. While there are evangelical churches here, many lean toward a more traditional church style. In the Czech Republic, people have big biases against Christianity, so inviting them to church is tricky. To break through, a church needs to be open, relatable, and free of unnecessary barriers. That’s what we’re trying to create here in Zlín– a church that speaks to people who might otherwise never set foot in one.

CAS E S T UD Y 2

LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

Planting this church has been a humbling and eye-opening experience. Two big lessons have stood out to me: • It’s hard work and requires a lot of sacri!ce, prayer, and humility. • Flexibility is key. Things change quickly, and being adaptable is essential. Here are three stories that highlight my journey so far: • !e First Attempt - The idea of starting a church had been in my heart for a long time, even before I fully understood what it would take. Back then, I was part of a team working on a project (MAXI Zlín) that connected di%erent denominations and youth. As we worked together, we realized we shared a vision for Zlín, so we began dreaming about planting a church. We prayed, found mentors, and started planning. However, the di%erences in our backgrounds and approaches made it hard to move forward. Eventually, the team disbanded, and we let go of the idea for a while. It was disappointing and hard for me, but I knew that if this was truly God’s plan, He’d make it happen in His timing. Fast forward, and that’s exactly what happened. Later, with a new team and a stronger sense of calling, we started small meetings again. We met a lot, prayed a lot, and as the team grew stronger, we started doing Sunday public services as well. The Lord blessed us, and slowly but surely, we grew. Some of the people from the original team even came back. It’s amazing how God sometimes brings things full circle when we’re ready. We learned that patience is crucial and God’s timing is perfect, even if it doesn’t match ours. Prayer and support from mentors and friends helped immensely.

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Lingering Questions: Could we have avoided some delays by handling things di%erently? Did we lose precious time? • Tough Choices - For a long time, we operated in trial mode, building community and learning as we went. We were still heavily involved in another church. When we !nally decided to focus solely on our new church, it caused a lot of uncertainty. At the same time, the other church held elections for new elders, and there was pressure for some of our team members to stay. Since many of them had grown up in that church, it was a tough decision. I even started to have doubts, yet I knew our new church was meant to serve a completely di%erent group of people. So, despite the pressure, we chose to move forward with our vision. We learned that following God’s vision often requires tough decisions, and not everyone will support you. Staying focused on the calling God gave me and clearly communicating our motivations as a church really helped. • Communication is Key - When we started trial services, more and more people began to join us, including some who had left other churches. In my excitement, I failed to communicate with the leaders of those churches, and rumors started spreading about me. It was a tough situation, but I realized it was my fault. The Holy Spirit convicted me, and I knew I had to make things right. I met with pastors, organized a joint meeting with church leaders, and shared our vision openly. Slowly, attitudes began to change. Now, as we plan to o&cially plant the church within a year, we’re doing so with the blessing and support of other local churches. We learned that communication is essential. Humility and investing time in building relationships with neighboring pastors and churches helped a lot. Lingering Questions: Are there still people we need to reach out to?

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CONCLUSION

Planting a church in Zlín is a journey full of challenges, growth, and surprises. From learning to wait on God’s timing, to making hard decisions and prioritizing communication, each step has taught me valuable lessons– and we are not done yet. Looking ahead, I’m excited about o&cially launching our church and continuing to build relationships in the community. I hope this church will be a place where people feel welcome, loved, and free to explore their faith. Please pray for us as we move forward, that we’ll stay faithful to God’s vision, remain united as a team, and keep reaching people in Zlín who need to hear the Good News. Thank you for being part of this journey by reading our story!

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CASE STUDY 3: PASTOR VASILICĂ CROITOR WHO I AM

I was born in the northern part of Romania, one of the most evangelized areas of our country. I had the privilege of growing up in a family that was very devoted to the Lord, although my parents were simple believers. We grew up surrounded by communism when faith was restricted by the government and there were many limitations to the Christian life. Nevertheless, the church became very strong and managed to use the persecution to its advantage. I had eight siblings who are now all serving the Lord and doing ministry in di%erent capacities. I felt the Lord calling me to ministry very early in my life, after a short season of disobedience in my teenage years. When communism fell, I was just 14, and in that time of profound transformation in our society, I felt that I must dedicate my life to serving God. At the same time, many people my age were already leaving the country to seek new opportunities. In my heart, I was torn between serving the Lord and moving abroad. I made some attempts to leave the country, and each time I did so, the Lord closed the door for me in a very dramatic way. Finally, I surrendered my plans to God and decided to pursue His calling and go to seminary. During that time, I had the privilege to attend an intensive course in Islamic studies in the UK. This was the !rst time that I understood what the challenge of Islam was, so I decided to do more research to see where Muslims lived in my country. That research led me to the city where I have been living now for 28 years. I discovered the city of Medgidia, the headquarters of Islam in Romania, one of the least evangelized areas in the whole country. I fought against God’s direction for me to move there, but in the end, I had to say yes to the Lord, and now I’m really glad I did.

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OUR CONTEXT

We started with six people back in 1997. The Lord blessed our church planting work, and the church grew into a church planting headquarters. Today, there is a church or a group of believers in about 20 towns and villages in our area. After 28 years, we can say that Constan(a county is a place where church planting is done intentionally and is well organized, uniting with all the Pentecostal churches. Medgidia city and Bethlehem church became a training facility for an amazing team of evangelists. The fellowship that we had together was amazing until God said it was time to move on. Three years ago, the Holy Spirit started to tell me that it was time for me to leave everything behind, hand the ministry over to younger folks, and start a new church in the city of Constan(a. I wasn’t very happy about this idea because I had just come to a place where things were settled down, relationships were strong, !nances were stable, and we had a strong ministry team. But I couldn’t resist the fact that Constan(a city had such a large population (300,000 people), about half of the entire region, and there were very few believers and very few churches. All the churches were in the south of the city or in the central part, but the north area had no church although there were at least 100,000 people there! Now I am in the middle of this new transition in life, gradually leaving the old ministry behind and focusing on a new, small church plant. I couldn’t just leave everything behind and move to Constan(a right away, but each day I am doing something to pass on the leadership of the Medgidia area and to advance the work in Constan(a. Although I live 40 km away, the population of Constan(a is so much di%erent than the people of Medgidia. The more we try to interact with the local people, the more we realize that they are caught up in their materialistic lives and not willing to give up even a minute of their time to focus on spiritual things. In my small city, people like to chat and visit with each other. They stop for casual conversations and the parks are full of people in the summer evenings. In Constan(a, making a living 21

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takes most of their time and energy. On the street, you see mostly old people. Those who have lived under communism are not so keen to talk about God. Since I started working in Constan(a, I’ve been even more puzzled about how people can be so di%erent in two cities that are just 40 minutes apart. We’ve o%ered di%erent programs that were not directly connected to church or spirituality, like business courses, but there was no interest. We tried street evangelism, and after a large, one-week campaign that involved over 100 volunteers, there was not a single new participant in our services. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

Starting a new ministry in a town that is very di%erent from my hometown proved to be very challenging. But the most important challenge that I want to share is what I call the oikos challenge. Originally, the Greek word oikos meant a household. In ancient times, a household included servants, relatives, business partners, and people who were almost like family. Today, oikos is a missiological term that de!nes the totality of relationships and friendships that a person has. Jesus was frequently entering the oikos of the people he encountered. The early church was meeting in houses. Their impact was substantial because once somebody became a believer, there was immediate exposure to his entire radius of friends and colleagues. For various practical and !nancial reasons, my family cannot move to Constan(a in the near future, so we will continue to serve there from a distance. To make things more complicated, the other two families that make up the core planting team do not live in the target area either! Our church planting model in the past was to move a family into the target village and empower them to be a light for Jesus. It was easy to create an oikos around that new family. But since we cannot move into that neighbourhood, and must travel regularly to that area, we found that building an oikos is a lot harder. It’s challenging because building trust takes much more than just occasional meetings. People are more

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reluctant today to open up their homes or invite a stranger into their inner circle. Oikos is a bridge that facilitates the implementation of any kind of program. You can have great evangelistic ideas, but without the context of good oikos, in many societies, people will not respond. A good example of the power of oikos are the great revivals that take place in Romania in the Gypsy communities. Because the Gypsy people connect very easily, there are no social barriers to the Gospel in their oikos. Relationships are so strong, that even in the midst of great opposition, the )ame of the Gospel spreads throughout the whole village. In one service, I baptized 300 people in one town where a revival broke. Without the familiarity of an oikos, as a church planter, I’ve had to start ministering from the position of an outsider, being constantly evaluated with suspicion by the people I’m trying to reach. In the Romanian context, that suspicion is increased by the propaganda that the Orthodox Church has sown into the hearts of its members. All evangelicals are perceived as foreign agents, people who betrayed their nationality by adopting a new faith. In obedience to God’s calling, we decided that we would continue to shine for Jesus even though our small community was not well anchored in the local oikos. We prayed for a good location as a church, where the community would notice us. We were disappointed at !rst to !nd out that each facility we visited was either not suitable, or extremely expensive and practically impossible for the core group to sustain. When we found a good location that was very expensive, we felt that the Lord was challenging us to trust in Him and make an o%er to buy the place instead of renting it. It was a huge leap of faith, but the owner gave us one year to raise the funds and we experienced miracle after miracle in this process. Today we own a nice place on a pretty crowded street and are better positioned to make the church visible in the community. It’s a miracle and a huge win when it comes to stability– one we never imagined would come so early in this process.

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In New Testament times, people were reached through their oikos or at a crossroads. Since we didn’t have much access to oikos, we had to see what was going on in the marketplace. Unexpectedly, the Lord directed us to start a ministry for Ukrainian refugees. The war started right when we purchased the building. We had no idea at that time that our church would be the closest church to the place where thousands of refugees came to !nd shelter in our country. Constan(a is just one and a half hours from the border that goes to the Odessa region. Even today, three years later, there are thousands of refugees that live in our city. The center that we started is still going at full speed, with a Ukrainian church meeting every Sunday morning and many other activities planned during the week. Before the Romanian church was fully established, the Lord led us to baptize people from another country and to see them transformed by the Gospel. So instead of planting one church, by God’s sovereign plan, we found that there are now two new churches developing from this vision, one in the Romanian language and one in Ukrainian. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Another important facet of our ministry was the help of the mother church, Bethlehem Church from my city, Medgidia. Each Sunday, I take with me a team of people who support us with music, sound, and practical help. I believe that they are being discipled and motivated to appreciate all the blessings they have in our mother church. Our mother church is well established with more people and resources. Then, on Sunday evening, they experience an evening service in the new church plant where everyone must give and serve in some capacity. I love to see people using their gifts, not just on a stage where they get a lot of attention, but in places where they serve in humility and sacri!ce.

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CONCLUSION

The Lord had to deal a lot with me during the church planting process. He showed me that I cannot trust my experience in church planting and mobilizing. There were some very dry seasons when nothing worked. We planned and strategized, only to discover that our ideas were getting stuck on a dead-end route. What kept us going was the clear call we had from the Lord, and a visual representation of the target area: a huge neighbourhood where approximately 100,000 people had no evangelical church nearby. We knew that we had to serve there. And yet, the enemy was trying to discourage us constantly. In this environment, we came to the conclusion that should have been our starting point: where nothing works, prayer does. Only after we started to make prayer our !rst activity did we see results. We saw that God was working miraculously and directing people to us. We had no in)uence on that– it was just His work. Now, we try to center our ministry around dependence on the Holy Spirit. We continue to work strategically, but we do this under the leadership of His Spirit. There is still a long way to go. We need more people in the core team who are gatekeepers in this neighbourhood. We need to !nd more ways to connect with people from the area. But we know that God wants His name to be glori!ed in Constan(a, and we are privileged to be a part of this work.

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CASE STUDY 4: PASTOR PÉTER BAJI WHO I AM

My name is Péter Baji. I’ve lived in the Budapest metropolitan area since I was 14, and I gave my life to Jesus at the age of 17. After accepting Jesus, I joined a full-gospel charismatic church where I learned a great deal about the Bible, and also met my wife. I studied geography at Eötvös Loránd University and began studying theology at the Hungarian Institute of Logos University. In 2010, when Anna and I got married, we decided to join a local Calvary Chapel Church near our home. Being a small community, it o%ered many opportunities for service. Besides worship and preaching, we also led two youth groups. Later in 2016, I took over the university student group of Calvary Chapel Budapest, and a year later, the entire youth ministry of the church. I worked partially in academia, but also part-time as a youth pastor in the church. The vision I received from God was to build up the youth ministry, train leaders, and eventually hand it all over to them. OUR CONTEXT

Around 2021, I felt that it was time to gradually hand over the leadership of the youth ministry as I sought the Lord about my future in ministry. During this period, two ideas greatly in)uenced me. I read Tim Keller’s Center Church several times (and even taught it at the Pentecostal Theology in Budapest), and I was impressed by his commitment and expertise in urban mission and church planting. I also read about the Baptist cell church models popular in South America, which led me to realize that transforming the everyday dynamics of the church greatly helps in deepening mission and discipleship. This idea laid in my heart for months until a dream was born. I dreamt of a special, new church that could overcome the temptation of “consumer Christianity” and raise mature, responsible believers who would !ght together for the gospel in the city. They would be )exible so that the life-transforming power of the gospel could be worked out in the best possible way. 26

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After much prayer and conversations with other church planters, God showed me that the center of our mission !eld should be the Váci Street O&ce Zone in the 13th district of Budapest. This district is the “little Manhattan” of the city, the largest business center, with the largest o&ce building zone in the capital city (and the country). Here, God showed us we needed to commit our hearts to the unchurched young adults, both Millennials and Gen-Z. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

In 2022, we started with a team of enthusiastic amateurs, seven of us in total. Although the team members knew each other from afar, they had never served together before. We met every two weeks, and it was a great challenge to build trust within the team and prepare them for the future simultaneously. Some challenges we faced were: • Our team members repeatedly indicated that we should spend more time on team building because they didn’t know each other deeply enough, and it was di&cult for them to truly open up and become vulnerable. I didn’t give enough time for this because I constantly talked to them about the vision and our goals. Many of our meetings looked more like corporate board meetings rather than a community focused on discipleship/ brotherhood. While I was frustrated by this, God showed me that we needed to slow down and allow the community to mature. If I didn’t learn to love them now, and not just use them to achieve my own success, the church would be built on a bad foundation. • Another challenge that we faced and grew from was the realization that even after many years of church attendance, knowing how to share one’s faith is not a given. My team and I noticed that though our methods were good, our hearts weren’t prepared enough to fully embrace Christ’s mission. Until we all go through a genuine gospel renewal, we cannot treat the gospel as the greatest gift of our lives. Until God ignites us for

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the lost, we must not rush forward with our projects. After beginning a series on the idols of the human heart and the transforming power of the gospel, we were !nally on the right track to deepen our faith. However, this deepening in Christ is a much slower process than I imagined. As a pastor, I’m now learning to support the believing team members on their paths of personal deepening and to patiently await the fruit. • The third challenge in preparing the team was addressing the lack of gospel )uency. I had to realize that after nearly two decades of Christian life and service, I was still unsure how to apply the grand narrative of the Bible to the “little stories” of my personal life. I live by routine in many areas and don’t often ask God how the reality of the gospel could be best lived out in my day to day life. So, I started going to courses and reading and listening to materials that would help with this. We are in the process of developing this )uency in the entire team so that we can e%ectively make new disciples of Christ from nonbelieving people. The only way to do this is to start focusing on it. • Another big issue we faced in the planting process was simply entering the world of non-believers. We all came from a large church community where there was a program almost every day of the week– not to mention the retreats and the summer camps. When we started talking about who the non-believing people were in our environment that we wanted to start praying for, we realized that most of the team did not have an extensive network of relationships among non-believers. Building and expanding this is quite the challenge, so we started a prayer meeting on a monthly basis over this topic. And to our great surprise, after a year of struggling as we talked about our nonbeliever network and prayed for them, some of them started attending our Bible discovery group.

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• As progress was made with non-believing friends, we began to realize how di&cult it was to connect with non-believers who were far from us, but live in our mission area. For example, we started a board game club and advertised it on every online and offline forum. Although a few people came at !rst, no one came back again. Finally, after six months of trying, we had to accept that we really hadn’t gotten a feel for what the local young adults needed. We decided to close this event and pray for wisdom on what else to try. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• One of the things I have learned during my 2.5 years of planting is that much more time and energy needs to be invested into building the core team’s gospel )uency and fellowship. • I also learned that reaching out to people beyond our own Christian network, and entering the world of genuinely unchurched people, requires great care and strong methodology. • An in)uencer-pastor friend told me that according to his opinion, every church planting pastor needs a mentor in the !eld of marketing. The next day, I was talking to a newly joined church member who said that he was an expert in marketing and was very willing to help me. We started to develop a socalled “marketing funnel” for the Millennials and Gen-Z in Budapest to attract the attention of people who were far from the church, and somehow guide them toward connections within the church or participation in one of our training courses. It is both exciting and di&cult to reach out to those who are far from the church, but I believe that if God has called us to do it, we must honestly and zealously stand up and use every tool we have to help us.

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CONCLUSION

Overall, I’ve learned that a newly planted church is like a complex biological system. For example, a tree needs deep roots, similar to the gospel )uency we need as believers, and the maturity of our relationship with Christ. These roots will sustain us in the long run. On the other hand, as the community grows, many kinds of branches develop, and we must adapt and acclimate to an ever-changing environment. If we cannot develop the ability to adapt personally, in our visions and in our community forms, we will be unable to reach those to whom Christ has sent us. This is why we need God’s wisdom and care through much prayer, and a committed heart for growth and continuous learning. I believe that our community will !nd its place in the city and will experience the guidance of the Holy Spirit in a special way. We will see people far from the church come to know Jesus and receive new life.

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CASE STUDY 5: PASTOR DANIEL ROZANSKI WHO I AM

My name is Daniel Ró+ański and I’m 41 years old. I’m the blessed husband of Mirela and the father of two sons, Szymon and Ruben. When I was 10, my parents began the ministry of planting a local Pentecostal Church in Mor,g (Poland), of which I became an integral part. My parents are pastors there to this day. During my studies, I was involved in missionary and evangelical ministry, and shortly after graduating, I started working in one of the Pentecostal Churches in Gdańsk. I was responsible for youth ministry and mission and evangelization, and I joined the Council of Elders. Ever since I can remember, I have had a desire in my heart to change the false image of God, Jesus, and the Church in my country. Poland is a very religious, Catholic country. People living here often have a false image of God. They imagine him as harsh, punishing people for their mistakes, and a distant God. The Church is a cold place where you go for absolution, not a place where you create a community full of life-giving relationships. The refusal to accept this state of a%airs led me to the place where I discovered my calling: to create churches full of grace and truth in which no one would be ashamed to bring their friends. This motivation guided me in 2018 when we founded the !rst location of the Echo Church in Gdańsk. OUR CONTEXT

Gdańsk is a symbolic city. World War II began in this city, and thanks to the Solidarity movement, communism fell. For many years Gdańsk was a Free City, which to this day makes it famous, and symbolically associated with the !ght for freedom and solidarity. About half a million people live here and about 80,000 students study here. ECHO church is located in one of Gdańsk’s shopping malls, making it a controversial, yet easily accessible place for the local community.

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LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

While establishing the church, I learned many things, but I would like to highlight a few: • Every pastor should have his own pastor. • Being a leader means being better for others, not better than others. • When the WHY is high, the cost is low. The Vision must be clear, simple and engaging. In my case study, I will focus on personal and family health, non-abusive, yet decisive leadership, and a healthy, passionate and mission-!lled culture of community. Too many people confuse singleness with loneliness. If I could give my son one piece of advice as he decides to start a church, I would encourage him to learn the di%erence between independence and loneliness. Unfortunately, too many young pastors choose loneliness thinking it’s a sign of independence and maturity. Loneliness is a choice. There is no greater credential for a pastor’s position than the community’s awareness of who their pastor’s pastor is. My story is !lled with tears, but not tears of loneliness. It is !lled with tears of honesty. Tears of admitting how, in the name of God, I was neglecting my family. Tears of admitting how, in the name of my own rest, I was neglecting my wife. In my journey, I have learned that you can bleed both ways– down or up. Bleeding “up” requires awareness and courage. It requires someone who is a step ahead of you, someone you can trust with your challenges, mistakes, and personal stumbles. I would never have gotten to where I am today without my personal pastors. They are like fuses in an electrical installation. Before there is an electrical short circuit, the fuse !rst blows. My pastors are my fuses. Before they ask about the health of the church, they ask about the health of the family. Before they ask about the leaders, they ask about my children.

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I was blessed to learn what healthy leadership looked like. Before I could begin to understand it, I had to believe in Jesus’ words again. If you want to be !rst, you have to become last. If you want to be most important, you have to become least important. There is no other leadership than servant leadership, which in practice, means that leaders eat last. The church is the best place to develop healthy leadership, independent of connections, politics, and !nances, based on love and respect. Being better for others, instead of being better than others, contrasts greatly with the secular approach to leadership. Emotional intelligence, awareness of your personality and acceptance of how God created you develops a culture of conscious, healthy leadership in which you respect your diversity and recognize leadership as a gift from the Holy Spirit, not competition for the position of pastor or other leadership roles. Thanks to this approach, we are able to create diverse teams, in which the strengths of others cover the weaknesses of others. A culture of healthy leadership always puts unity !rst, not the good of the individual. Always the good of the community, not the good of individual interests. It is free from in)uential people who sometimes try to gain a position not based on serving others. Honoring such people creates a toxic culture that translates into a disease that a%ects the entire community. Choosing the wrong people for the councils of elders or the !nancial councils results in misunderstandings and a toxic culture that ultimately leads to division and hurt. Over the past 7 years, guided by such principles, we started with 17 people and have managed to create a safe, 300-person community in which we have baptized over 134 people and have not experienced any division. The advantage of healthy leadership is also faith in the good intentions of all leaders and recognizing the gifts of leadership. The consequence of such an approach is always multiplication. We are guided by this principle: we multiply by dividing, without divisions. We believe that everything that is healthy produces fruit so that it will eventually multiply. Some people are simply looking for fruit in apples, others will !nd more orchards in them. Healthy leadership will always create an

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atmosphere in which the gifts of other people can develop in peace and are not hindered or controlled for the bene!t of the main leader. A good leader will always wish better for those who follow him. Just like a good father, he will wish for a better life for his children. Thanks to this approach, in 2024 we sent a team of 20 people, selected and equipped leaders, into Warsaw to establish a new location of ECHO Church there. This location, after 6 months of operation, gathers about 150 people every Sunday, making the name of Jesus known in Warsaw. We are dedicated to training young leaders, preparing couples for pastoral service and planting new churches. This would not have happened without healthy, loving, respectful, and decisive leadership. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

We are focused on a healthy culture and a clear vision of the community. By using the word culture, I mean the behavior of the community members that shapes an atmosphere. This is di&cult to capture, but crucial. Kingdom culture is the only culture. We are not a Polish church, we are a Kingdom church. We have Kingdom values. Over the last few years, I have learned that our culture is a combination of what you intentionally create and what you allow. Compromise doesn’t pay o%. What I most often encourage young pastors to do is to constantly teach others that if the WHY is high, the cost is low. It all starts with a clear, easy to explain and engaging vision. What we want to see is a healthy, grace-!lled and truth-!lled Church in every university city in our country. We are currently preparing 3 more teams for three more cities. We have learned that a mission based church is a growing church. We discovered that in our context, Sunday is the best mission !eld, so we explain everything. Every Sunday we expect new people. We understand well that a !rst impression can only be made the !rst time. We’ve also learned that you wouldn’t eat your favorite dish from a dirty plate. The form is as important as the message. The way we treat each other, the way we treat guests, and the way we communicate the discipleship processes all explains what the onboard34

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ing process looks like, and at the same time, the easiest way to explain the culture (behavior, giving, serving). All this combined makes our community a friendly, open environment for new people, in which the di%erence between a guest and a host is clear and well explained. Through these processes, we help people understand that we don’t go to the church– we are the church. We are creating a community in which we believe that people grow in circles, not rows. We are creating a community in which we believe that people are generous and transparent. We are creating a community in which kids are as important as adults. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

All of these ideas create a church with a clear vision and a speci!c, measurable mission. Of course, this is not done without challenges: • One of our biggest challenges is the lack of a broadly understood culture of planting new churches in our country. The challenges we face include the reluctance, and sometimes even disagreement, of pastors of local churches in cities where we plan to plant new churches. It is possible that this is a general problem, but in our context it seems incomprehensible considering the fact that in a country of almost 40 million, we have only 297 Pentecostal churches. Sometimes there are cities where 300-400 thousand people live and there are only one or two churches. Unfortunately, each newly established church becomes a threat in such conditions, and its future pastor, a catalyst for gossip. However, we do not give up. We meet with pastors, cooperate with the Supreme Council of the Church, and try to have peace with everyone. • Our second challenge is local resources. Missionary spirit and changing the image of the Church are inscribed in our DNA. That is why we are looking for easily accessible venues as close to people as possible. However, this makes our development unstable and dependent on the owners of commercial facilities.

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In reality, we are too large a community to easily !nd a similar place, and too small to independently save up for our own plot or purchase real estate. In addition, the legal status of churches in Poland excludes the possibility of applying for a loan to buy our own real estate. All that is left for us is faith, )exibility and creativity. CONCLUSION

To sum up my case study, I believe that in these times we need to create momentum and make planting churches a trend in Poland. I believe that being a pastor begins with treating your home as your !rst church in which you will never sacri!ce children or marriage on the altar of service. I believe we need healthy leadership examples based on emotional intelligence and sensitivity to the diversity of people around us– and a clear vision of the church, focused on Jesus and His mission. I believe that by respecting the culture of God’s Kingdom, we understand that people remember much more about how they felt in our community than what they saw or heard. The percentage of pastors under 40 in all evangelical churches in Poland is only 5%. My desire is to contribute to how this percentage is growing. I know that with healthy leadership, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it’s possible. Currently, every Sunday we gather about 450 people in one church in two locations, and we are preparing to establish another 3 locations. We want to encourage everyone from our community to join God’s move and our “Acts.” Let our story be an inspiration to more people who feel frustrated or dissatis!ed and want to change the world for the better.

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CASE STUDY 6: PASTOR MICHAL BAREŠ WHO I AM

My wife and I came to Jesus as adults, allowing us to have a greater understanding of people who live without God. Shortly after we accepted Christ, God put a desire into our hearts to plant missionary churches and save people who do not know Christ. We have two children, a 12 year old boy and a 9 year old girl, who now serve with us on mission. We served for 5 years in a university ministry focused on evangelism and discipleship. 13 years ago, I felt the calling to plant missionary churches, and this began our journey of following this calling and moving from Prague to Vsetín. In 2017 God called our family to Pardubice to plant a church. We had felt for a while that this was the city where we should live and help many people !nd hope in God. We moved to Pardubice in faith to begin the pioneering work of planting a church on a green !eld. We began to meet and talk to people about God. There are one hundred thousand people living in Pardubice. People are friendly and love visiting pubs and restaurants, engaging in cultural events, and doing sports. I like to meet new people, and I love food and cooking, hiking, running and other active sports. I also like to invest money wisely and teach other people how to have a healthy relationship with money. In the last 5 years, I have had about 6 di%erent jobs. I try to think about every job as a mission !eld. I meet new people there and share my life and faith with them. Many times in prayer, God called me to a new mission !eld through starting a church in Pardubice. I needed to wait two years to make sure that my wife was ready to move. We had a very good church, friends, and a newly rebuilt )at in Vsetín. Our children were satis!ed there. After two years of consideration and prayer, we !nally moved the whole family to a new place. God prepared a house for us to rent two hundred meters from the school my son would attend and a preschool for my daughter. 37

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OUR CONTEXT

Pardubice is a university city in the center of the Czech Republic, an hour long drive east of Prague. I studied at the University of Pardubice and fell in love with the city. I’m a people person and I like to try new things. This means the last 5 years have been full of experiments. We do di%erent activities where we meet new people, such as frisbee, cooking, or playing board games. We started a lot of activities and groups. Some of our regular activities are a Men’s group, an English club for teenagers, and a Family English camp. We also tried MyLife Workshop, Discovery Bible study group, weekends and trips for families, and a vision weekend for men. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

Sometimes I ask myself: how many activities are healthy? Should I focus on building the team or the mission more? For a year, we were doing informal Sunday services. During that year, only a few friends showed up. Therefore, we decided it was not the time for Sunday services yet. We returned to team building Sunday services, personal evangelism, and community evangelism through English camps and weekends. We have a team meeting on Saturday or Sunday once a month. We teach each other, share our struggles and needs, and pray for each other. For example, at our last team meeting, we were talking about a healthy balance between service and rest and keeping the sabbath. We also plan upcoming activities and pray for our needs and the people around us. Our main focuses are: • A desire to save the lost • Faith and reliance on God’s guidance • Endurance • Personal time with God, feeding myself with God’s truth, reading the Bible and good spiritual books, and conversations with other Christians and church planters

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OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

How did our core team grow to 9 mature Christians? It wasn’t always easy. We had to say goodbye to a married couple because they did not !t into our discipleship and missionary DNA and were disrupting the basic team. It was sad, but now I see it was a good decision. The people in our core team must be people of integrity and faith. They are building the DNA of the new church, and therefore, it’s important to choose wisely. Another sad story happened during COVID-19. A gifted man joined our team and seemed like a perfect !t. He had skills we were missing and helped us a lot. After half a year of cooperation, he burned out mentally and completely stopped communicating. I found out from his friends that this is not the !rst time this had happened, and I didn’t know him as well as I thought. There were also happy stories where we experienced God’s guidance within our team. There was a family who I’d known since the time that I came to Christ. They were faithful Christians who were looking for the place that God had for them. We invited them to participate in our Family English camp. They were a great help. They live in a di%erent town, so they couldn’t participate in all the activities in Pardubice. I challenged them to move to Pardubice. They weren’t sure at !rst. It would be a big change not just for them but for their three teenage kids too. After about three years of prayer and thinking about it, they were ready to move to Pardubice and arrived this year! Another encouraging story is about a family who moved to Pardubice last year. They were missionaries from the USA. We met them a couple of years ago when they were preparing to move to a di%erent town in the Czech Republic. We thought they could be a great help to our team. They are very sweet people who are gifted in building new relationships. Their decision to move to a di%erent town seemed !rm, but I kept praying for them. One day, I received a phone call. The plans in the town where they were supposed to move had changed, and they

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were looking for a di%erent place to go. They were literally packed and ready to go. Approximately a month after that phone call, they were in our house! They are still adjusting to the new place, but they are such a big help and encouragement to the team already. It taught me that God hears my prayers and that with Him, anything can happen. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• Discipleship and evangelization are priorities in growing a healthy, mature team. The passion for the mission builds the team. • A healthy and strong team is the foundation for building a healthy church. • Finding a mission rhythm is important when it comes to discovering the needs of non-Christian friends around us. • Persevere and wait faithfully for God to open doors. God does not despise small beginnings. Do things faithfully, and God will multiply them. • Rejoice over every new guest who comes and thinks about the gospel. I need to sow even when I don’t see the fruit. • Develop a network of relationships. We build relationships by sharing food, joy and hope. • Be courageous to challenge other people to follow Christ. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• Fundraising - !nancial stability, growing partnership • People - a stronger community that grows • More disciples and evangelism At one business conference I attended, I had several conversations with my colleagues about faith and life with God. On the way back by train, 40

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a two-hour discussion about Christianity broke out in an open compartment, after which I gave a man a copy of the New Testament. After six months, he said he had become a believer. We met, and he was truly an enthusiastic Christian with a desire to grow. I discipled him mostly online because he lived 2 hours away by train from my home. It did not work for us. He failed to !nd a local community. After another six months, he cooled o%, and his enthusiasm for following Jesus waned. This was not something that surprised me. The lesson learned from this story is that discipleship is a relationship. Sometimes it can be done remotely, but not long-term. You need to be part of a church and have close relationships with Christians. CONCLUSION

In summary, please pray about these things for us: • Time and !nances for ministry • Quality time with God and keeping the Sabbath • More disciples • Wisdom on what to let go of

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CASE STUDIES

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CASE STUDY 1: PASTOR JOÃO PAULO MODOS WHO I AM

My name is João Paulo Modos. I’m 33 years old, a son of revivalist pastors and church planters Devander and Iraci Modos, and husband of Camila Modos, my beautiful, faithful, and courageous wife. I’m passionate about Jesus and the advancement of His Kingdom through church planting and establishing new leadership through discipleship. I’m a pastor of a Methodist church in Criciúma-SC. I had the privilege of working on the guardianship council for four years before fully entering pastoral ministry, studying Electrotechnics at the Federal Institute of Paraná and Physical Education at the University of Northern Paraná (Unopar). All of this helped me become even more passionate about the Kingdom of God, church planting, people, and discipleship. As the son of revivalist pastors, I was converted at the Biblical Revival Church in São João do Ivaí where my parents led. My parents got married and converted around the time of my birth. I am sure that God was already surrounding my family and had incredible plans. I was born with bronchiolitis, and according to my mother, my !rst three years of life were terrible. From hospital to hospital and ICU to ICU. According to my father, I was at great risk. We lived in Mandaguari-PR in a wooden house with large gaps in the walls. The wind, dust, and raindrops always haunted us. However, God did a great miracle in my life. At three years old, my parents took me to a “special service” with Pastor Silas Kalfmann, where they would pray for the sick. I was healed through prayers of faith, and I never had respiratory problems again. This healing warmed my family’s faith, and from then on, my father began preparing to do pastoral ministry. When I was six years old, there arose a need for a pastor in São João do Ivaí-PR, so we were all appointed there! My !rst sending was indirect. I su%ered a lot. I loved many of my cousins and I loved living close to my grandmother. However, God gave 43

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grace, and we stayed there for 20 years. I had the privilege of seeing my father plant and pastor 11 churches in the Ivaí valley. Seeing all of this established and intensi!ed my love for the Kingdom, for the church, and for people– even though I was somewhat resistant to my calling to pastor and plant churches. Throughout my life, I have always enjoyed working with people, whether that be through work, through the church, or through volunteering services. Through these experiences, I noticed the need for people to be adjusted, discipled, and pastored. I realized that I could seize opportunities in these places to direct people to Jesus. At 26 years old, through my cousin Danilo Modos, who is currently a pastor in Africa (Quessua) and a son of Methodist pastors, I met Pastor André Sonni and his wife Grazi from the Methodist church in Imbaú. He was a man of God who believed in me and knew how to do focused polishing work and discipleship in my life, along with an opportunity for church planting. During this time of discipleship and walking together, I learned to love church planting and discipleship even more. Now as I mature, I can see what God had built in my life through my parents’ work. From there came challenges and opportunities to prepare myself further. To study more, get married, and plant a church in Criciúma as a partnership between Imbaú’s church and Passo de Torres’s church represented at that time by Pastor Danilo (who is now pastoring the Methodist church in Arapongas with his family). OUR CONTEXT

The church that my wife and I pastor is in southern Santa Catarina, Criciúma (when I started writing this document it was Series “A” in the Brazilian Soccer Championship. Now relegated– let us pray). It is approximately 70 km from the coastal border with Rio Grande do Sul and 20 km from the famous tourist spot Serra do Rio do Rastro. Criciúma has a population of 214,493 inhabitants. Around Criciúma, within a radius of 99 to 100 km, are 42 cities. However, there is only a Methodist presence in three cities, totaling a population of 1 mil-

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lion inhabitants, which is approximately 13% of the state’s population. Within these 42 municipalities is a micro-region composed of 13 cities with approximately 400 thousand inhabitants. Criciúma stands out as the largest Brazilian producer of )ooring and tiles. It’s also the third largest national hub for jean production and the largest state hub in the clothing sector. Additionally, it’s recognized as the largest national producer of disposable plastics. The nearest beach to the city is 27 km away. The church and my house are currently located in a neighborhood called Santa Augusta, which is both residential and university-oriented, with a large )ow of students and residents. I live in a simple residential area that I intentionally chose because I have 392 families as neighbors and a small soccer !eld, which allows easy access to people, including through the entrances and elevators. This facilitates the expansion of my network of relationships in the neighborhood. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

1. It requires a lot of patience, trust, and prayer to form the !rst ministerial team. I realized this because I came from a church that had a very strong and cohesive ministerial team. When I arrived in the city as a missionary and church planter, I thought that I would quickly be able to gather and prepare a ministerial team for the advancement of the Kingdom. However, in the !rst year, I noticed that this work is somewhat slower, more artisanal, and individual, as we work with each little sheep. At one speci!c moment, I tried to speed up the process with one family and ended up losing their hearts. Unfortunately, it cost me their departure to another church. 2. I also observed that each family context has its peculiarities, and through fellowship and small groups, I had the privilege and help of the Holy Spirit to notice growth needs and inject biblical directions into each context for the consolidation of families. My concept regarding ministerial team formation,

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before this experience as a church planter, had been shaped by what I saw online. We see the best photos and videos that give the impression that everything within the body of Christ is functioning perfectly, but now that I’m hands-on, I see the true reality of this living, enjoyable, and intense work. 3. During my !rst month in the city, before o&cially starting services in a garage, I posted a video online discussing the Methodist presence in the city. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted via WhatsApp by a family who had come from Pará and was already familiar with the Methodist church. This family came with a strong desire to congregate, and when they learned that our church was just starting its !rst service, they expressed that it was God’s will for them to help advance God’s Kingdom in the city through our church. In the excitement of the moment, I said all help was welcome. I visited the family and did all that initial pastoral work. The !rst six months were a blessing. However, at that time I was engaged and preparing for marriage. I found it challenging to deal with the woman of the house regarding discipleship and counseling for couples. There was some resistance since I was still engaged. The family didn’t see me as quali!ed for that pastoral role yet. So, I asked them to be patient; once my wife arrived, we would be able to serve them better. When my wife arrived in town, she began helping me in this regard by establishing some boundaries and working on discipleship with this family. During one counseling session, the woman started sharing personal matters. We guided her according to Scripture on how intervention should take place; however, she didn’t appreciate it. Within less than a month of starting discipleship, she left the church, along with her family, and informed me via WhatsApp. This situation was di&cult for me because theoretically they were the !rst family to join our church– but also became the !rst to leave. They were very helpful in many ways, including !nancially supporting us.

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4. Before I came to Criciúma, Pastor Danilo, who is now in Arapongas and was previously in Passo de Torres, was attending to a lady who was around 76 years old and a couple here in the city. At the !rst service, besides the family mentioned above, the elderly lady and the couple attended and o%ered their garage for the start of the services. The family that owned the garage had some kittens that would wander among the people during the meetings. In the fourth month of the church’s existence, while services were still in the garage, there was a heavy rain that compromised the structure of the garage, causing part of the roof to collapse. We no longer had a place to meet as the garage became a risky location and the renovation lasted more than six months. The apartment where I lived had only 48 square meters, and the condominium rules regarding noise made it inappropriate for meetings. It was only suitable for cell groups. I was worried because I still didn’t have resources to rent a space. During the weeks when the garage was compromised, I met some Methodist brothers who had been converted for 30 years but hadn’t adapted to any church in town. They promptly o%ered their kitchen for our services. The !rst month was a blessing. Even the brothers praised God. However, after the !rst month, with 20 people present at the services, the homeowner began interrupting me during my sermons. He would get up in the middle of my preaching and say he disagreed with what was being preached and wanted to express his opinion because he had studied “theology” and I was preaching incorrectly. At one point, he said he was against fasting and opposed my message, citing his wife’s health problems and therefore did not accept fasting as practice (a just cause, but inappropriate for that moment). However, we were in his house. After meetings I would talk with him, yet it was the same thing every Sunday. I tried to handle the situation so as not to expose or compromise the people that the Holy Spirit was bringing to church. We managed to overlook the situation for another month, totaling two months of services in the kitchen and 6 months of church 47

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in town. However, we were forced to leave the kitchen during this time, and I began looking for a temple and missionary partners to pay rent. Eventually I found an appropriate, but raw location to become our Church. God prepared partners, and I managed to close a rental deal for R$1,300. 5. When I left Paraná for my !rst trip to Criciúma, I had already resigned from my job at Imbaú’s city hall. I left on January 3rd, 2022. How awful it was to travel on that date! The trip took 20 hours due to tra&c, and I had all my belongings in my car. I confess that after so many hours on the road, I started thinking “What am I doing here?” I remember pulling over on the side of the road and thinking about that. But God had given me a word, and at that moment I thought about it: John 15:16 says, “You did not choose me; but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit— fruit that will last— so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” Finding a place to live in town was very di&cult. It took almost a month because practically all properties were available through real estate agencies. However, I always remembered that word. During my !rst month in town, I explored some places since our church did not yet exist physically. I went to a nearby city for a social project involving skateboarding for underprivileged children that I’d heard about from someone I met. When I arrived at the project, there was a pastor from a church called “The Way of God.” He wasn’t part of the project, but happened to be there that day! Someone told him that I was a pastor, so he called me over to talk. During our conversation, I shared what I was doing in town. He started making some mocking comments like, “Wow, Methodist? What day is mass at your parish? When will your archbishop come here?” I overlooked his comments and continued talking with him. At the end of our conversation, he hugged me and asked, “What do you need for your church?” And I promptly replied, “Everything!” I had nothing except for a pulpit that came from Imbaú. Then

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he said, “Go tomorrow to this address at this time to pick up 15 chairs, a sound box, and a microphone.” Then he asked if there was anything else needed. I said, “Yes, I need a stand for the microphone, cables, and an o%ering box.” The next day, I was there at the scheduled time and we brought everything we needed to the church for the !rst service. That pastor is still my friend today and always asks me how things are going. 6. At the end of 2024, through a family from the church, we met some people in a town called Lauro Muller, 30 km from Criciúma. This family consisted of a couple of grandparents who had custody of six grandchildren. We started a cell group at this family’s house. There is already interest from some other people wanting to join this cell group. We have a schedule for 2025 with the family where every last Saturday of the !rst six months, we will be there for an in-person meeting, and every second Saturday of the month, an online meeting. The children want to get baptized. My wife Camila brought each girl a New Testament and a notebook with the intention of teaching them how to do their !rst devotional. We are praying for this special time. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• Distance – I am 907 km away from my hometown. • Lifestyle – In the !rst year, I invested all my savings for my stay in the city. This scared me a lot because I was far from my family and without close friends to help in case of di&culties. In the !rst six months, it was very di&cult. Every Sunday I had to set up and take down the space for worship. The engine of my car also broke down. I had no resources for repairs. I even went to a service on my bike (after the repairs, the car wasn’t !xed well and broke down again on my honeymoon trip). However, we followed through with our plan. In the big city, it was hard to go shopping without a car. But we presented

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our situation to God, and after 6 months, I received an o%ering for my car repair. I managed to sell it and received two speci!c o%ers totaling 23 thousand reais for exchanging cars. • Culture – The city has a culture where pastors work secular jobs. When I introduce myself as a pastor, people will still ask what I do for work, and that answer is always di&cult to explain. • Travel – I’ve had challenges getting around the city while I learned the best routes and peak tra&c times. • Team Members – I’ve missed the fellowship I had before at my local church. It was challenging not having a ministry team, including worship music and not knowing how to play an instrument. • Job Stability – My wife couldn’t !nd a job during her !rst year adapting to the city, which hurt us a lot. But we are convinced that God is working on something. As we’ve faced these challenges, this is how we’ve responded: • When struggling with distance and fear, I always pray the text from John 15:16. This text, along with prayer, restored my conviction about what I was doing in the city. • I sought counsel from pastors in the city, and I began to follow, !lter, and notice some people I could befriend, trust, and establish relationships with. • God provided !nancial support. I remember a special event when a brother from one of our churches in Paraná approached me and gifted me with a monthly food voucher, which we still use today. • The maturity of the mission !eld has brought me more clarity on how to behave, especially regarding the city’s culture surrounding singleness and not working in the secular world. 50

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• Discipleship and not walking alone were key elements in regard to exchanging experiences, learning, discussing di&culties, receiving prayer, and words of encouragement to continue in what I was assigned to do. • To overcome the challenge of lacking a worship minister in the church, we received a donation, and I bought a projector. We then projected the worship songs with lyrics which helped a lot. We continue praying and prophesying for a ministerial team and a worship minister. • God began to raise a team of teenagers who initially helped me set up and take down the church for meetings. Through these teenagers, I was able to reach their parents, who also came to church, got baptized, and are helping us advance the Kingdom to this day. I had the privilege of deepening my relationship with these families over lunches and dinners, which also contributed to strengthening my purpose. I’ve been able to expand my network of relationships with other people to whom I could share the Gospel. God has also sent helpers which has allowed us to implement the “Diaconia” volunteer ministry. Now we have brothers who help with cleaning and maintaining the temple, ensuring smooth service operation, preparing the tables, and warmly welcoming people with hugs. This resolved the organizational issues we faced at the beginning. It’s important to highlight that our city is quite Christian. So when I receive people from other churches, I always mention that it’s necessary for them to join the volunteers so they can be trained before being assigned other roles. This ministry helps me get to know these people and work on their character. • We continue praying and prophesying for people’s salvation so that there will be an increase in the number of saved individuals for the advancement of the Kingdom. Christian discipleship in classes helps lead people toward maturity, including !nances for the church’s advancement. We also keep praying for !nances since rental prices in the city are greatly in)ated. 51

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QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• The church in Criciúma is still a baby. We turn three years old in February. What are the main signs I should be aware of to discern whether the church is maturing or not? • In big cities, I have people spending 40 reais every Sunday just to attend service. Has anyone from a big city ever tried using material produced and recorded at a local church for training new leaders to meet people where they are at? CONCLUSION

In November 2022, at the end of the pandemic, I had the privilege of being the last appointment of Bishop João Carlos for planting a church in Criciúma-SC. We had a simple beginning. Three people in a garage, which was often compromised by heavy rain, forcing us to move to a kitchen in the city center. The owner of the kitchen continually tried to suppress me as a young pastor, and after two months, we were moved from that place by God’s hand to a temple with 15 chairs, a sound box, a pedestal, and a few other items gifted by a pastor. Now we function in a space we call home and have small groups that help more people get to know Christ and participate in the mission with us. Our next goals are to hold two services on Sundays, multiply the small groups through training new leaders, plant 46 new churches, and connect many people to Jesus and His mission. I learned that planting a new church in the circumstances I faced is not as romantic as I thought. A life of prayer, fasting, and reading the Word, along with declarations of prophetic prayer, is totally connected and directly in)uences the advancement of the Kingdom through the local church. The Kingdom of God is much broader than the local church. Discipleship for a pastoral family is extremely important for staying in the !eld. Good friends on this journey are always welcome and should be part of our routine. Time for rest must be respected. Having conviction in what God has spoken and continues to speak is very important

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for overcoming anxieties about quick results. Principles should never be negotiated because in the long run, it will cost you dearly. A good reputation is worth more than money. Being esteemed is worth more than silver and gold. I feel my soul and my heart !ll by doing what I am doing. Our hopes for the future are to have a consolidated team with a missionary heart willing to pay the price for advancing the Kingdom in our cities and regions. To awaken, just as my heart and my wife’s heart were awakened long ago. We hope that the Holy Spirit also stirs in every church member’s heart the desire to serve others with intensity and love, leading them to help us plant churches in the 13 cities of the Criciúma microregion, and then plant churches in the remaining 29 cities that are within less than 100 km radius from Criciúma. We continue to sow gospel seeds and do not despise small beginnings. We must not compare what God is doing through us with other co-workers. When we sow and pray, God hears our prayers. We must live our ministry by faith, whether or not we experience abundance or lack much. The worst thing that can happen to Christians is to not believe that God can perform miracles. When church planting, we must expect God to do miracles. Please pray for us. We’re planning to have our !rst child in 2026. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about the provision needed for a child. In the planting of churches in our region, pray that God saves or raises missionary families for this task. Pray for one thousand small groups in the city and region. Pray for my wife, our marriage, and for the church in Criciúma.

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CASE STUDY 2: PASTOR JEFFERSON RODRIGUES WHO I AM

I am Je%erson Rodrigues, originally from Bandeirantes-PR. I was born on March 27, 1996, and I’m 28 years old. I’ve been married to Kamilla Danielye Batista Rodrigues for 6 years, and together we have a beautiful two-year-old son named Isaac Batista Rodrigues. I grew up in a Christian home, but my conversion to Jesus happened in 2012 at the age of 16. Shortly after my conversion, I felt my heart burning with a desire for pastoral ministry. I shared this feeling with my dear pastor, Pr. Armando, and the guidance I received was, “Let’s pray asking for God’s con!rmation about this desire.” We started to pray, and the con!rmation I was asking God for came in April 2013. At 17 years old, I became a leader of a cell group in the local church and assisted in various ministries. In 2016, encouraged by my pastor and supported by the Central Methodist Church in Bandeirantes, I started a preaching point at CMEI Paulo Meneghel. OUR CONTEXT

CMEI had a partnership with the Methodist Association of Social Action (AMAS), which facilitated the opening of a preaching point. In the winter, we served soup to the needy community living around CMEI. We spent two years sowing there, and in 2018, I was sent to the Theological College of the Methodist Church (FATEO). This was my !rst experience planting a church. The idea was that we could establish a mission !eld in the neighborhood, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out. However, it is worth noting that two years is a short time in which to plant a church. In November 2021, I received my !rst appointment. Bishop João Carlos appointed me to the mission !eld in Pinhais-PR. The municipality of Pinhais is relatively new, only 32 years old. Before becoming a

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municipality, Pinhais was a neighborhood of the city of Curitiba-PR. Therefore, technically speaking, the metropolitan area of Pinhais is “inside” Curitiba, the capital of the State of Paraná. Here in Pinhais, the church is located in the Pineville neighborhood, which is not very populous. However, by God’s grace and love, we have managed to work. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• While planting this church, I learned that establishing a children’s ministry is often more important than a worship ministry. Some families did not stay in church at !rst due to the lack of options for children. • No one does anything alone, and each person has their value within church planting work. When I arrived here, there was a group of 11 people waiting for me, eight of them being elderly, but with hearts willing to help within their abilities. • Another lesson I learned was that “everything has its time.” To overcome challenges, I have been dedicating myself a lot to work, to a life of prayer, and seeking help from pastor friends by making video calls to clarify doubts. • In 2024, with the help of social media, we received eight people from other churches, including members of the Central Methodist Church in Londrina, who moved to Pinhais and were looking for a church to attend. It was then that they discovered, through Instagram and Facebook, that there was a Methodist Church in Pinhais. These eight new individuals who arrived remained in the church and talked about how loving and welcoming everyone was. Through these people, we were able to start a Connection Group (GC) with an evangelistic focus. One person opened their home, and once a month, I took the word to a group of !ve people. We also managed to execute a beautiful project called “House of Peace” for the glory of Jesus. We won a family for Christ through this project.

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CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• Since the elderly helpers were the initiators of the work, and I was only 26 years old, there was resistance to anything that was di%erent for them. It took me about three years to implement some things “my way.” Even a simple change in the structure of an activity they were already doing was very di&cult due to resistance. I had to wait for the right time to start changing things, gain their trust, and move forward together. • Most of my helpers were elderly people who no longer had much physical stamina and this brought another challenge. Despite this, each person had value. Although they did not have much physical energy, they possessed great love for people and for the local church. • In practically all evangelistic activities on the street, I needed to seek help from other churches. The Methodist Church in Alto Boqueirão, Curitiba helped us a lot in this aspect. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

In 2025, we will start the !rst class of the leaders’ school, and the questions I still ask myself are: • Will we be able to advance further with these leaders? • How do I overcome some challenges with people who still feel that they are “owners of the church?” How can I get these people to engage as well?

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CONCLUSION

Through the stories mentioned above, I learned to be resilient, to respect God’s timing, and to value each person (even if they don’t help bring new people in, they can help consolidate them in the church). I hope that the missionary !eld in Pinhais experiences blessed and healthy growth, becoming an autonomous church and a blessing for the municipality. May we win many lives for Jesus by making disciples for Him.

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CASE STUDY 3: PASTOR JOÃO RICARDO MARCON MILANI WHO I AM

My name is João Ricardo Marcon Milani, and I was born in Bandeirantes, Paraná. I’m 42 years old, and have been married to Dani Milani for 14 years. We are the parents of two beautiful children, João Miguel Milani, who is 14 years old (a worshiper), and Isabella Milani, who is 10 years old (a “pastor”). Before the Lord revealed my pastoral calling to me, I was (and still am until I !nish my studies) a lawyer, and I’m currently a seminarian at the Methodist Church. I have completed the CFMTP and P.O.V programs, both at Cemetre, and was sent this year to FaTim. I was consecrated as an Evangelist by my local church, which is the Central Methodist Church of Bandeirantes (PR). My calling was an irresistible calling and the result of a “geography” without physical barriers in the Kingdom of God. When the Lord reached us in 2020, we were living almost 5,000 kilometers away from where we are now, in a small town called Mucajaí in the far north of Brazil in Roraima. All of this happened remotely during the pandemic. We had been there for 12 years and had just built our home. My wife and I designed the house with our old age in mind for that location. However, God’s “suddenly” happened, and He showed us that none of what we had planned was meant to be. In our hometown in February 2021, with our house rented out for other families to enjoy, and with the certainty of my pastoral calling in my heart, doors opened for planting the Methodist Church in Barra do Jacaré (PR), which was the only municipality in Northern Pioneer that had not yet been reached by a Methodist Church. Although this municipality was 30 kilometers from where I currently lived in Bandeirantes (PR), I asked the Lord, “what do You want from us here?” I had never set foot there before, and did not know anyone at all, yet the answer was immediate, “I just want you to love them.” 58

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This answer was the fuel and direction for my calling to plant churches. What is being planted is the love of God. I’ve seen that God’s love cannot be limited to a single place. It needs to be “planted” in all cities, among all peoples, in all nations. OUR CONTEXT

The church that the Lord placed us in is in the city of Barra do Jacaré (PR), a small municipality with approximately 3,000 inhabitants. It is situated in the old north or northern pioneer region of Paraná state and is about 450 kilometers from Curitiba, our capital. Our mother church is the Central Methodist Church of Bandeirantes (PR), which is 30 kilometers away from there. It is predominantly a rural area, and the main source of income comes from farms. Structurally, I believe that the Methodist Church in Barra do Jacaré is privileged to have a mother church with a Kingdom vision. The Central Methodist Church of Bandeirantes (PR), wonderfully pastored by Pastors Armando Altino Júnior and Cristiano Bernardino Píres until the end of 2024, spares no e%ort to provide us with all the structure we need. I praise God for the CLAM (Local Coordination for Missionary Action) of the mother church. I praise God for the Administrative Support ministry of this church. This support is so important for church planting. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

1. Using Hosea 6:3 as a reference where the prophet tells us to know the Lord and strive for Him, I see that one very important point is that nothing will be easy when planting a church. However, I also understand that this prevents us from drifting away from the Lord and pushes us to seek Him more earnestly each day because we know we will need Him. Each day brings a surprise. 2. Another point that I consider extremely important for church planters is to have certainty that God will ful!ll His promises.

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To walk without fear and with a heart full of assurance that everything will be accomplished. The Lord’s desire is for everyone to be saved and come to a full knowledge of the truth. A church planter who shares this same purpose has no right to doubt that it will happen. At the end of the day, the church planter stops and says “God was faithful.” I will share four stories of how lives were !lled with hope upon knowing the Lord: 1. The !rst story is about a desperate mother who showed up at a bazaar we were organizing to buy cheap clothes for herself and her seven-year-old son. Her husband was in prison, and she had thought about taking her son’s life and then her own because she could no longer bear to see him su%er. With tears in her eyes, she bought some clothes, but couldn’t resist the presence of the Lord there and opened her heart. We hugged, prayed together, and committed to walking alongside that family. A month later, her husband was released by the Justice System and returned home. I can’t say everything is “a bed of roses,” but this family now walks with the Lord. The husband is part of our cell group and loves being with us, and we have seen him transformed day by day. Even if people can’t see it, we can. He has fallen several times since returning home, but now he knows where to !nd people who will love him. 2. That mother who once thought about taking her son’s life now brings another mother to the Church of Barra do Jacaré. She was a woman struggling with alopecia, bald from despair and pain. She had been forced by life’s circumstances to leave her hometown on the coast of São Paulo and seek refuge in the small Barra do Jacaré, where she had a child. That child was three years old and diagnosed with autism. That mother was thirsty for God, but her son was extremely restless and wouldn’t stay still. In every church she visited, she was rejected, and people made it clear that they didn’t want her there because he 60

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disrupted their worship. Yet the Lord Jesus gave us this family as a gift. We loved them, and they were baptized. The mother who was bald a year ago can now tie her hair into a ponytail. Her son is a prince and is loved by the other children, and we love seeing him running around the church and knocking over the juice cups during Communion. 3. Recently, we met the autistic child’s father. He had experienced wonderful moments with the Lord, but was distanced from God’s presence due to life’s harsh circumstances. After just one invitation, he agreed to come to our cell group. The Lord touched our hearts and prompted me to ask that father, “what is your greatest dream regarding your son?” His answer was, “I want to hear him speak.” We then began to pray for that. He prayed to the Lord asking for his son to start talking. The Lord is faithful. That beautiful child began to say some words, and each week we heard him say new words. Recently, we heard him say “daddy.” The father is a beloved child of God and understands this more each day. He will be the next one baptized. 4. The Lord led us to a place in Barra do Jacaré called “Fundo de Vale,” a beautiful place where people go to connect with nature. There is a playground there where parents take their children to play. There was a woman whose husband had abandoned their family and who needed prayer. My wife and I were praying for her, and at the end of the prayer, when we opened our eyes, there was another family standing there watching us. They had arrived while we were praying. It was a father with his two children. The Lord led us to him. He was someone hurt by the church who had experienced abuse from his authority !gures. But it was the Lord who had scheduled that meeting. Today, this man is a great leader. He has been baptized, and together with his children, they walk !rmly in the presence of the Lord.

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CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• The fact that we are not well-known weighs heavily, as does not having an intimate knowledge of the location since it’s a city where my family and I had no prior experience. But we understand that it is a slow and daily process. • Another important point !lled with challenges is the ignorance of the population regarding a real knowledge of God. The last census indicated that over 90% of the population is Catholic, and there is a natural rejection of the Gospel preached by believers (I was like that too). But I also see this as a great harvest. A huge !eld full of opportunities. • Some of our challenges are extreme. The Lord led us to understand that lives would be rebuilt at the Church of Barra do Jacaré. Reconstruction is the word the Lord gave us, and looking at the testimonies we shared above, this becomes very evident. Destroyed lives are being rebuilt by the Lord. Just looking at civil construction, for example, helps us understand that this will be a more di&cult and costly process. Rebuilding is harder than building. Yet we are driven by this challenge. I understand that our challenges have not yet been overcome and that there is a long way to go. The fact that I am still not an appointed pastor means I have to work during business hours, and I know this limits my presence in Barra do Jacaré. But I also see that the more di&cult the situation, the greater the revelation that the Lord gives of His glory. Acts 2:47 proves this. The Lord adds to our numbers daily those who are being saved. Every day we are surprised by the Lord, who makes it a point to show us that His Word is being spread in Barra and that it is bearing fruit, even though it is still not an opportune time for us to be present there for longer periods.

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QUESTIONS WE HAVE

My question to the Lord is, “Who will we love today?” My prayer request is that people accept the love of the Lord. CONCLUSION

The love of God rebuilds lives. The Lord, in His in!nite goodness, grace, and mercy reaches a person’s heart, rebuilds their life, and chooses them, by His sovereignty and power, to be a church planter. During this process, the church planter has the privilege of seeing up close what the Holy Spirit does. I see a church planter as someone who closely witnesses God’s love being spread. I am so certain of my calling to be a church planter that my hope, using Romans 5:5 as a basis, will never be confused, and can be summed up in seeing God’s faithfulness ful!lled in the salvation and sancti!cation of His beloved children. Planting a church is planting God’s love in that place.

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CASE STUDY 4: PASTOR BRAYAN UKYOU NAGASAWA WHO I AM

My name is Brayan Ukyou Nagasawa, and I’m married to Gabriela Nomura Barbosa Nagasawa. I was called by the Lord to a life dedicated to caring for others, and in 2024, I had the opportunity, given by the Methodist Church, to start a new church in the city of Braganey - PR, located in the western district of Paraná. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• A church that is closely connected to a religious culture means that pastors must constantly be learning in order to meet all the demands of the faith community. I believe that learning to take care of oneself and one’s family is the greatest challenge, and I am constantly trying to care for my wife in a godly way. In all the ministerial actions that went on for the local church, I was able to understand how important it is to share my burdens! My wife assisted me in everything I proposed to do, and many times, she was the one by my side when the church did not embrace my ideas. A very clear example was when the only two participants in our worship ministry decided to leave. Soon, I found myself alone for many services, leading worship by myself. My wife (even without knowing much about worship) o%ered to help me in the worship ministry, and this small act encouraged others to also take courage. Soon we had a worship group again. • One of the biggest challenges I faced was my age. Starting ministry as a 23 year old is a blessing and a privilege for which I will be eternally grateful to God. However, this has led to signi!cant leadership challenges as I’ve received many comments, such as, “You’ll only know after you have kids!” or “Just wait until you’ve been married for 10 years to see

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how things change!” Simple comments like these marked my journey and made me question at times whether my wife and I were meant to be here. However, God revealed to me through my personal prayers, and older pastors advising me, that it was His pleasure for me to be pastoring the church at this moment and that I should not be ashamed of my age, but use it for the Kingdom’s bene!t. After this realization, the church itself began to recognize my leadership more and embrace my directions. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• What is the balance between personal life and ministry? I understand that both are one, but they need to be cared for separately. • How can we lead the faith community to understand the importance of tithing and o%erings without making them think of the church as money-driven? CONCLUSION

Throughout the process of church planting, it has been a privilege to see how God guides the community toward unity that naturally generates maturity for those who fully participate in the church’s movement.

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CASE STUDIES

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CASE STUDY 1: PASTOR EDDIE VELAZQUEZ DIAZ WHO I AM

My name is Eddie Velazquez Díaz. I’m originally from the municipality of San Cristóbal in the province of Artemisa, and I hold a degree in Economics. In 2013, I was appointed as a pastor by the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church in Cuba. My !rst pastoral appointment was at the church “El Mamey,” in the municipality of Jovellanos, in the province of Matanzas. I worked there from July 2013 to August 2016. Immediately afterward, I served at the church in San Cristóbal in the province of Artemisa. While I was at that church (from August 2016 to May 2021), I worked in a community called “El Martí,” located about 6 km south of the city. There, we founded a church. Since May 2021, I have been working at the church in the municipality of Güines in the province of Mayabeque. I recently completed my Bachelor’s degree in Sacred Theology. OUR CONTEXT

The community of El Martí arose like many others around a sugar mill. In this place, there was a mill with the same name as the community. It’s a rural area, with most of its inhabitants working in the agricultural sector. The church in San Cristóbal is a mission center whose primary goal is to plant new churches throughout the municipality. After founding two churches, this community was selected as a potential site for a new church. Its connection to the city via a road built to serve the former sugar mill provided a very strategic access route. While work was being done in this community, preaching was also taking place in other locations, but the seeds planted here germinated faster than in other communities. Therefore, it was decided to focus all e%orts on this area to become the third church founded in the municipality. This was successfully achieved. As in most communities or cities in the country, there is a great deal of idolatry. However, it’s also

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important to mention that a signi!cant portion of the population is atheist. Many do not accept the gospel of salvation because they hold beliefs passed down from their ancestors. One of the church’s main resources is the help of the Holy Spirit. We believe that arguments can be overcome with the Lord’s help. Additionally, the church has evangelism programs, assistance for those in need, and an active church life. Through these, people discover and enjoy the love of God. MY CHURCH PLANTING TEAM AND PROCESSES

The team responsible for planting this church was composed of myself as the team leader, my wife Dailyn Vázquez Gato, a missionary assistant who has remained in charge of the project, and a group of young people who have supported the work through visitation, evangelism, and other activities. As a pastor in the Methodist Church in Cuba, my church planting process follows this sequence of steps: • Evangelize the area to win the !rst converts. • Find a place to hold worship services and other activities. • Disciple the new converts while continuing to reach others. • Develop leadership to serve in the main areas and organizations of the church. • Establish new cells, ministries, and structures that support what has been achieved and allow continued growth. Our community was o&cially recognized as a church at the 2022 Annual Conference. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• Church planting is work that requires a great deal of dedication and patience because we start from scratch.

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• It’s very important to not rush growth, as it can be detrimental. • Alongside growth, structures must be founded and developed to sustain that growth. • Planting the church took us 4 years. Like anything challenging, there were bad times and good times. On one occasion, we lost the place where we met and had to move to the outskirts. It seemed like a setback, but it was actually God who moved us. Many people were converted at this new location. • A person may accept Christ at one point but not become a leader immediately. One of the most e%ective leaders we had was one with the least preparation. We trained her and gave her the necessary time to become e%ective — and she succeeded. • While others were being discipled, a group was receiving leadership training. Ministries were founded, and people were grouped into organizations based on age. Small groups were established, and a comprehensive growth program was developed. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

The biggest challenge for us was not having a house to live in full-time in the community. We had to travel to the location several times a week. Although a great deal of e%ort was made, it wasn’t the same as living there. CONCLUSION

Planting a church is like planting a seed. You have to prepare the soil, plant the seed, water it, !ght o% weeds, and harvest the fruit at the right time. All the work done is important, but we must not forget that growth comes from God. We must plant and water, but only God makes the seed grow. The one who sows and labors must never forget that only by seeking God can we achieve the ultimate goal of establishing a new church. 69

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CASE STUDY 2: PASTOR JOEL CARIÑANO SÁNCHEZ WHO I AM

My name is Joel Cariñano Sánchez. I’m married and have three children. I received the Lord 24 years ago and became a missionary just !ve months after coming to know Him. I have been in pastoral ministry for 18 years, since 2007. I’m currently serving in my second pastoral appointment, the church located in the municipality of Minas de Matahambre in the Province of Pinar del Rio. It’s from here that we began working with the vision of planting new churches. One of the main reasons was the limited capacity of our current meeting place. We believed that if we multiplied by establishing another church, we would gain more space and also have another location from which to work to expand the Kingdom. OUR CONTEXT

We are working with !ve missions around our community. We chose Managuaco to plant a new church because it’s a remote neighborhood with a suitable population to support a sustainable church. Over time, we observed that it was fertile ground for the gospel, a !eld ready for harvest. It’s a place with many needs and shortages that the church could help address. We’re also working in another town called Río del Medio, which shares similar characteristics. God willing, by June, it will be ready to be o&cially recognized as a new church. MY CHURCH PLANTING TEAM AND PROCESSES

To begin working in the place where we intend to plant a church, we generally start with personal evangelism by visiting the community. As people come to the Lord, we center our work in a home– usually the house of one of the converts who o%ers it for holding services. From there, we expand throughout the area, preaching and discipling new believers, meeting in that house and others, until we !nd a good facility and have the budget to purchase it. Once that happens, we will 70

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move and prepare all the conditions for the brother who will serve there as pastor. We have a team of several brothers working as missionaries and cell group leaders in di%erent areas. Each of them begins working in their !eld with others as they’re discipled and given responsibilities to continue the work in small home groups. We continue working by holding evangelistic campaigns and doing personal evangelism, involving and training each new believer in the work of ministry. As it says in 2 Timothy 2:2, “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” As the brothers mature and grow in the Lord, they are given responsibilities, assuming leadership roles. A team is formed to continue expanding and strengthening the brethren. When the number of converts and baptized members reaches 25, the community is close to being o&cially recognized as a new church. I believe church planting is something that every Methodist pastor carries in their DNA. The vision of our Bishop and each superintendent is that our nation be !lled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. In our national seminary, as well as in district extensions, we are taught and trained in how to carry out this vision. My role on this team is to accompany and supervise each team member, training them for the work of the ministry as the apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Ephesians in chapter 4:11-16. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

In this church planting process, we learn many wonderful things. I have learned how the Kingdom grows and expands without us even knowing how. We sow the seed and God gives the growth. Seeing the body of Christ involved in the work of ministry is very rewarding. Knowing that the church is active in society, helping and meeting needs in the community, serves as a powerful testimony that supports the gospel we preach.

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CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• One of the barriers or di&culties we face in our town is false teachings — among them being witchcraft. To address this, we focus on presenting the true gospel which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, leading people to the knowledge of the Son of God. • Another challenge we’ve faced was a direct confrontation with a witch doctor who had many followers– people who were held captive and deceived by the lies and promises of darkness. He allowed us to pray for him, and he ended up surrendering to Christ. Shortly afterward, he moved out of the town, and I believe that was a turning point in breaking the stronghold of darkness in that place. From that moment on, the church began to experience faster growth. CONCLUSION

We give thanks to God for the work He is doing in this place and for having chosen us to be part of such a wonderful ministry. To Him be all the glory forever and ever, amen.

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CASE STUDY 3: PASTOR LUIS MICHEL RAMÍREZ MILIÁN WHO I AM

My name is Luis Michel Ramírez Milián. I’m 37 years old, Cuban, born in Camagüey, and by the grace of God, pastor of the Estrella de Belén Methodist Church in Céspedes. At 16, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, and since then, I have felt the call to preach the good news of salvation as part of the Great Commission. I began serving as a cell leader, then a territory leader, and later as a missionary in my local church, Tabernacle of the Unction, Camagüey. I had a strong desire in my heart to plant churches wherever God called me. On one of my trips to Céspedes, my heart was broken by the paradox of hungry families living in the midst of rice and sugarcane !elds. God called me to plant a Methodist Church here, integrating the Wesleyan holiness message with social action. The training I received at the Evangelical Methodist Seminary in the undergraduate program of Sacred Theology has provided my church with essential knowledge for the development of church planting, as well as other local courses. Our a&liation is directly established with our Methodist Church in Cuba, under the supervision of Our Bishop Ricardo Pereira. We launched our church on December 3, 2021, with an attendance of 45 people. Currently, we have an attendance of 130 people with 200 at special events. The vision of the National Church and our Bishop was to plant churches throughout Cuba, encompassing every territory. I was sent with my family in 2021 to Céspedes where there had never been a Methodist presence before. Now, for the !rst time, the light of Christ shines in this territory. OUR CONTEXT

Céspedes is a rural municipality, located approximately 60 km west of Camagüey province. The church is located in a community within the municipality called Estrella, approximately 3 km from the municipal 73

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seat. This municipality has a population density of 22,000 inhabitants per km2, with less than 5% identifying as Christian. It is a predominantly agricultural area, marked by savannah terrain, with rice farming (60%) and sugarcane (30%) as its main sources of income. This means farm labor is vital. It’s usually divided among different groups such as landowners, investors, and seasonal workers depending on agricultural demand (the latter being the most vulnerable.) Thus, 40% of agricultural workers are seasonal and without stable access to food according to 2022 data from the National Statistics O&ce. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• Materialism stemming from poverty and prioritizing work in the sugar harvest over spirituality. • Hopelessness as the decline in agricultural production has generated apathy and skepticism (“God won’t !ll my plate.”) • Distrust of institutions and discouragement because of decades of neglect from the state. • Lack of agricultural inputs for planting root vegetables, vegetables, and other crops. • Lack of utensils for preparing food. • Lack of the necessary infrastructure to provide Sunday lunches and meals to the needy and the church in general. • Reliable transportation to deliver food to those most in need. Some initiatives we’ve used to combat challenges: • The beginning was di&cult, but God guided us, and little by little this impacted the community. We began to grow, and our goal was to reach the vulnerable people of this place. Faced with this situation, we have taken on the task of being the salt and light that Christ wants us to be (Matthew 5:13-14). 74

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• We’ve been working alongside farmers, helping them with their agricultural tasks in exchange for discussing their needs, and establishing connections to begin their discipleship. • We’ve been using animals to help with food transportation issues. • We’ve created community farms on church lands with shortcycle crops such as corn, tomatoes, cassava, chili peppers, and beans. These farms have become self-su&cient, allowing us to develop a food plan where we can help the most vulnerable in our community and impact people who have been abandoned by society. We have a clear objective in this rural context with its unique characteristics. • We’ve started a project to feed 25 people with our own resources, taking prepared meals to their homes accompanied by the preaching of the Gospel. We are currently planning to reach more people and increase the number of days we receive aid by creating a specialized working group in this area, training them spiritually and academically. • We’ve created soup kitchens within the local church. Many of our congregants have become volunteers, helping where there is a need in the church, providing supplies and helping us convert classrooms into dining halls for both adults and children. We are also building a much larger dining hall with all the utensils and equipment necessary for this work soon. • We’ve focused on reaching souls without losing our role in society by serving those most in need. Our goal is to impact Cuba with a vital and balanced Gospel where faith is also seen through works in the midst of a fallen society. • We’ve shared testimonies of transformation through real stories of people who have been transformed by Christ in similar socioeconomic situations and contexts. 75

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• We aim to reach older people, especially heads of households, in order to gradually reach younger people and children. Since younger age groups are engaged in their daily activities in the !elds, there is a large presence of older adults during the day who can be discipled. • In our area we have di%erent people with very distinct purchasing power levels. Some have everything and many others have nothing. Our Church understands that the Gospel message is universal, which means we work to reach everyone in this land that God has given us. • We’ve worked on the creation of groups or cells in homes, combining the reading of God’s Word with personal discipleship for the empowerment of the most vulnerable. • Currently, every Sunday, we provide food morning and afternoon to more than 100 people who attend our services (in addition to the more than 30 people whom we deliver to their homes.) We also focus on helping children, celebrating their birthdays and assisting them with basic needs such as purchasing essential medicines. As Scripture says in James 2:15-17, “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be kept warm and !lled,’ but you do not give them the things the body needs, what good is it? So faith, apart from works, is dead, by itself.” OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Our planting team is composed of: • Camagüey District Superintendent Orlando Jerez • Local Pastor (myself ), Luis Michel Ramírez Milián Food Distribution Manager, Osmel Peláez • Agricultural Advisor: Alexander Casas

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• A group of four women leaders who organize the soup kitchen and prepare the food. • Cell and mission leaders who train new converts for discipleship. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

• Phase 1: Service Phase for 6 months. Creation of the church’s subsistence plot, food distribution, and community assessment. • Phase 2: Relational Phase for 6 months. Creation of cells in homes with Bible study groups. • Phase 3: Launch Phase after 12 months. Public worship and training of local leaders. • Phase 4: Multiplication Phase (ongoing). Training local leaders to replicate the model in neighboring communities. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

Our vision is to be a Church that nourishes souls and bodies, transforming Céspedes with the practical love of Christ. We have seen this vision being worked out in many ways, including one of our milestones in 2021 with 30 people being baptized. Our growth has been focused through small groups and open events. Deep Growth – Small Groups • Weekly home meetings with Bible studies applied to local challenges, using Jesus and provision in times of scarcity as an example. • Leadership School, monthly training in basic theology and community service. • Services held on neighboring farms, bringing the gospel directly to those who work in the !elds.

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Broad Growth – Open Events • Cinema discussions surrounding Christian !lms with themes that contribute to understanding the development of church planting in rural areas. • Social outreach through visiting the sick and providing medicine to those most in need, partnering with the district’s lay activities ministry. • Literature distribution, including Bibles in large print to the elderly, along with discipleship books and children’s literature. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• For God, nothing is impossible, and for those who believe, all things are possible. • Service opens hearts (food aid broke prejudices against the Church). • Local leadership is vital. Without the help of the local leaders trained in this church plant, we would not have achieved the established goals and visions. • The church must adapt to the context in which it !nds itself without losing its identity. Historic Methodism teaches us that the Wesleyan work ethic and community focus connect with local values. • Escolástica, an elderly woman with physical disabilities who had been abandoned and neglected by her family, was able to regain con!dence and !nd refuge in the Church through spiritual and physical assistance, as well as food. In 2022, she gave public testimony by entering the waters of baptism. • Raúl, an elderly man with a mental disability who was marginalized and struggling, now serves the Church in

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the garden and in the kitchen. His life has been completely transformed. • Maikel, a farmer who opened up his farm through the example of the Church, has created jobs for Church members who now work steadily. This helps these families avoid losing their jobs. At the same time, he uses the farm’s production to provide food for the Church’s soup kitchen, with vegetables and root vegetables. • Yaonky, a social leader who was impacted by the gospel and served in our project at Church, is currently the president of the Municipal Food Industry where he has replicated the methods he learned at Church in the institution’s soup kitchens. • Antonio, a farmer and agricultural engineer, began from the beginning supporting the vision of planting and providing food to those most in need. He now serves in a church plant in the municipality of Esmeralda where he is implementing what he learned from this project. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• How can we increase food aid to other dining halls in nearby communities, missions, and established cells? • How can we increase the weekly food aid period, not just on Sundays, but extend it to three or more times a week? CONCLUSION

Some key points for us as a church have been: • The gospel is embodied in the local context of Céspedes. Christ is the divine farmer who sows lives with tangible actions. • Food aid is not charity - it is justice. Wesley insisted that faith demands transforming structures of poverty.

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• Patience is part of the harvest. Today, the Church has tripled in size in three and a half years. • Trust is built with time and consistency. • The rural context demands creativity and )exibility. Planting this Church in Céspedes has been a journey of faith and humility, rea&rming Methodism, with its heritage of practical faith, and its relevance in rural Cuba. The combination of word and bread has not only fed families, but has revealed Christ as true sustenance. As one elder said, “I now see that the cane I cut is not only for sugar, but also for sweetening lives with Christ.” Service has shown us that it opens doors. The food programs build con!dence to share the gospel and encourage us to not lose sight of the focus on discipleship to transform the community. Planting the Church in this rural area is not just about building a church. It’s about an opportunity to sow hope where hunger and abandonment once reigned. I am in!nitely thankful to the Holy Spirit without whom I would have been unable to do anything, and our beloved Bishop Ricardo Pereira Díaz for his example. I am also thankful for our Camagüey District Superintendent, Rev. Orlando Jerez, and my beloved wife, who along with my son, has been my support at all times. To God be all the Glory.

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CASE STUDY 4: PASTOR OSMEL GONZÁLEZ ESCALONA WHO I AM

May God bless you richly and abundantly. My name is Osmel González Escalona, and I am a pastor of the Methodist Church in Guisa. I work in an urban area where most people are professionals, students, and young people. In rural areas, many are farmers working the land and its fruits. In both locations, we focus on winning souls for Christ. In June 2024, a new church emerged from our congregation, being the third in our ministry, located in the locality of Los Pajales. We can therefore say that the Methodist Church in Guisa has three daughter churches: Pueblo Nuevo, La Nenita, and Los Pajales, each respectively with missions and prayer cells. OUR CONTEXT

Our municipality is located in the southeast of Granma Province and is bordered to the north by the municipalities of Jiguaní and Bayamo, to the west by the municipality of Buey Arriba, to the south by Santiago de Cuba Province (Guamá), and to the east by the Third Front municipality of Santiago de Cuba. This municipality is situated in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountain range, in the southeast of Granma Province. It has an area of 596.15 km., representing 7.1% of the total provincial area. Approximately 95% of the territory is mountainous, with steep slopes, brown and rugged soils. The fundamental economic base is the agricultural sector, primarily dedicated to co%ee cultivation, forestry, various crops, and livestock. The construction materials industry, food and non-food industry, beekeeping, and other productions constitute its productive potential. It is divided into 14 popular councils, of which 2 comprise the urban part of the municipality and 12 the rural zone. The main access is the Bayamo-Guisa highway.

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The Methodist Church in Guisa was initially located at Vantroy Street No. 87 between Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and Víctor Ramos, where a small group of people gathered for Bible study, sharing their faith, and fellowship. These meetings grew stronger and eventually became o&cial worship services. The space was then too small, leading to the need to relocate to a larger facility with more opportunities. We moved to a more strategic location at Antonio Maceo Street #99 between Jose Luz Carrazana and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, and decided to plant the church there. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

The barriers we constantly face include: • Idolatry and spiritism which have been deeply rooted in Cuban culture. These are religions brought from Africa and Haiti, combined with Catholicism brought by the Spanish. • Deteriorating health, low salaries, a depressing economy, and the challenges that the church must face daily in a degraded society. THE WAYS OUR CHURCH BREAKS DOWN THESE BARRIERS INCLUDE:

• Taking into account our locality, its weaknesses and strengths, our objective is to reach more souls for Christ by combining various areas, including evangelism, where missionaries and cell leaders play a fundamental role in covering more ground and reaching more people for the Lord. To ensure the gospel extends to all places, we have established a cell program that allows us to have a house in each neighborhood where we gather for studies. We distribute responsibilities to each of the leaders who support the church’s fraternities, missions, and cells. Each of them would be responsible for directing, helping, and evaluating in their corresponding area, implementing necessary corrections in each area, age group, and fraternity.

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• Above all, prayer, asking our Father to help us and show us how to work with these people. We go to the high places, declaring over our community blessing, deliverance, and freedom to worship our God. • We also conduct hospital visits and visit nursing homes. With the support of missionaries and congregation leaders, we preach the gospel, visit homes, pray for the sick, help those in need, and conduct healing and miracle campaigns. We hold weekly worship services in localities surrounding the local church in brothers’ homes, thus reaching the outskirts of the city. The gospel has extended to all places in our municipality. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

We have 7 missions in mountainous localities, each attended by their respective missionaries, and 16 cells in all localities of our municipality. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND PROCESS

First, the gospel began to spread through various communities in this municipality where leaders and missionaries undertook the task of working for the Kingdom and bringing the word of God to every place we were permitted to reach. Thirsty and needy people came to the feet of the Master, and thus, we began to open meeting and gathering places in di%erent localities which became missions of our church. This looked like 21 house churches in a large majority of the mountainous zone of the municipality of Guisa. All this expansion and growth of the gospel occurred between 2001 and 2005. The church is formed when there are 25 people. Missions that have been working for some time and whose missionaries meet the requirements for entering ministry are instructed, formed, and prepared to be part of it. They can independently work as a church, begin to ful!ll activities, be associated with the work they represent, have legal establishment as an institution, receive care, have a board of directors, receive spiritual attention, care and communion, begin working in each

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of the organizations, and participate in each event. Throughout this entire stage, the church is strengthened during a time of preparation and instruction. One of the e%ective ways used in new churches to win souls for Christ, in addition to evangelizing and bringing the word to every place in our community, is through social impact activities in which our church is embedded. These have helped us expand, and through the testimony of what is done, people come to the feet of Christ. These activities include: • Caring for patients at the nursing home in Guisa, preparing food, providing hygiene items, and more, every month. • Attention and assistance to people with disabilities. • Joining the Abundant Life audiovisual ministry, bringing the word to remote places such as the mountains and the outskirts of the city. • Joining the Agroecological Project in its mission to help community members acquire salads, meats, and vegetables, as well as construct a dry toilet and biodigester, with the vision of bene!ting several families in the community. • Joining Open Heavens Ministries from the local church and reaching more than 20 people each month whether they’re believers or not. • Donating medicines, food, and aid to vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic in isolation centers such as: Guisa Local Urban Hospital, Victorino Rural Hospital, Pioneer Camp, Vector Center, and in some homes with home admissions. (The local government recognized the church’s work and its important contributions.)

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LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• Church planting is an arduous and continuous process that cannot diminish or falter. One must have love for souls and passion to work in the Lord’s vineyard, knowing that He is the one who gives us our reward and that our e%ort and work will never be in vain. • When we harvest what has been sown, we say Ebenezer— thus far the Lord has helped us. Seeing how thirsty people come to the feet of Christ, and how the church grows and multiplies each day, is solely the work of God. • Our beginnings were small, but each day we see how the churches grow, each seed watered in the soil and growing and multiplying. They are no longer simply those who were taught at the beginning. Now many disciples instruct others. Seeing them grow and mature is a beautiful reward for those who love God. • The preaching of the gospel always has a signi!cant impact. The Word of God grows and strengthens powerfully. Many renounce their sinful practices to come after God. As pastors, that should be one of our challenges: to reach souls for Christ, teach them, instruct them, provide them with care, attention, and communion, and provoke a great stir in the community we are called to pastor. While it is true that we face challenges, we also see God’s hand in everything we set out to do in His name.

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CONCLUSION

We have been called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ with power, and wherever we go, to leave a deep mark in the place where God has called us. We impact the lives of the inhabitants of the places where we are so that the church can grow healthy and be strengthened daily in the power of His might, living according to the gospel in unity in Christ. Each place has its history and each church its unique and personal experiences. What should be common in all of them is Christ as our guide in everything we undertake. We are His instruments, showing His love which has been poured into our hearts. “And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” –Romans 10:15

USA CCM ANNUAL GATHERING CASE STUDIES

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CASE STUDY 1: PASTORS ANNIE BAILEY ROBERTS AND ADAM ROBERTS WHO I AM

We are Annie and Adam Roberts and we planted Union Church in Tacoma, Washington. We moved to Tacoma a year and a half before planting our church, which we have just recently launched. As a Free Methodist Church, we are a part of the Paci!c Northwest Conference. We’ve watched previous generations lead churches and succumb to insecurity and competition. We didn’t want to go it alone. Some of what we’ve learned includes: • Many people are not pastors, yet they make signi!cant and creative contributions to the Kingdom on local and global scales. • God gives people gifts and vocations that can bring kingdom culture and blessing to our city. • The thing that often keeps people from living for Jesus is a lack of vision and ownership. • We wanted to give people, as part of their formation in following Jesus, a sense of ownership that God has work for them to do. OUR CONTEXT

Tacoma is a post-Christian city with the third largest percent of dechurched people in the country. 70% of people don’t go to church. We are currently meeting in a ballroom in an area of the city that is the cultural convergence of our city. It’s the intersection of the rich-poor, old-young, and business-art people. It’s also one of the more spiritually resistant areas to the gospel. We are not sure if this will be where we’ll stay, but it’s where we are right now.

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Our church is mostly people in their 20’s-40’s with a few older couples who are wanting community and to make a di%erence in the last third of their life. While we are growing in cultural diversity, the majority of our congregants are white, which is a re)ection of the part of the city where we’re located. People also come from various faith and church backgrounds. We have people who have recently come to faith in Jesus, some who have deconstructed and are reconstructing, some who are trying to follow Jesus more intentionally, and a couple who are former pastors and are involved in church planting in our denomination. So far there has been support as we’ve collaborated with other organizations. From the beginning, part of our vision was that we would be intentional with how we serve our city practically, looking for creative ways to collaborate with other organizations and churches in our city. Our mission is to help people !nd and follow Jesus as we pursue wholeness, community, and impact together. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Between us and our Kids Director, we are the only paid team members at this time. However, we’re looking to add another person with a speci!c gift set. Adam oversees the Creative and Worship team and is part of the teaching team. He also co-leads with me (Annie). We have a Hospitality team leader, as well as several team members who are hosts (announcements and micro-vision moments on Sunday). We are forming a teaching team and an Outreach/Community Partnerships team currently. I will lead the teaching team, but I’m looking for someone to lead the Outreach/Community Partnership team. Our approach is to identify and invest in leaders who are a part of our team and to train and give away responsibility, build teams, and help them grow as they lead in areas that they’re overseeing. At this stage of our church, we’re just settling into new rhythms of connection and development, helping people shift from a “they do it” mindset to a collaboration and empowering others mindset. This will be an ongoing thing as most people, even those who are used to being leaders, are used

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to doing the work themselves instead of thinking about how to engage and develop others. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

There have been three primary ways we’ve fostered collaboration with other churches and organizations: 1. Relational partnerships with pastors – We’ve focused on asking who we should know, and connecting with pastors who will help us build relationships that cross dividing lines. When we moved to Tacoma, we intentionally built relationships with local pastors, meeting individually, joining a pastor’s prayer group, and participating in a unity and racial reconciliation group. These connections have been a huge blessing, as pastors have welcomed us, supported us !nancially, and prayed for us throughout the planting process. We have also invited a friend who is planting nearby to a Sunday gathering and had our church pray for them. 2. Fundraising partnerships – We’ve connected with a number of di%erent churches in our area, or pastors that we knew in other states or countries to partner with us !nancially and in prayer. We didn’t have a sending church, so this was essential to our viability on many levels. 3. Organizational partnerships – While still building our core team, we began meeting with organizational and ministry leaders in the city. People we were already connected with or interested in partnering with. These ranged from a city leader, school principal, non-pro!t workers, other churches, a college Campus ministry, Doxa Dinners, local businesses, and so many more! • Young Life at UPS – developing the YL leaders and discipling college girls. • Common Ground – Worship Nights & Christmas Eve

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• City focused ministries – Care Portal, Youth for Christ, Tacoma Rescue Mission, and Associated Ministries. Care Portal in particular connects individuals, churches, and businesses to child-serving agencies and families in crisis by facilitating real-time, itemized requests and donations. For example, a single-mom needs a car seat and crib for a new baby as she’s trying to get o% the streets and into a home. We give money toward the need or take the donation from another church to the mom. • Principal Stephani & Lisa Woods • Local Businesses – Partnering with local businesses to raise money and engage them to meet local needs. • Doxa Dinners – Hosting community-funded, micro-grant dinners where early-stage entrepreneurs and small business owners get a chance to share what they’re building and walk away with support from their neighbors and a community funded micro-grant. • Art on the Ave – Collaborated with our Ballroom owner to host the Kids Zone • 6th Ave Business District • MomCo Event Partnership Some of our current collaborative outcomes include: 1. Living out our vision to show our love for God as we love people and bring good to our city. 2. Raising money and meeting practical needs that are making a di%erence, including providing resources for people who are trying to get out of homelessness. We’re not trying to solve homelessness on our own (Associated Ministries, Care Portal). 3. Becoming more aware of the needs in our city and growing in both responsibility and con!dence to take action.

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4. Growing support and friendship among other pastors and taking opportunities to collaborate with other churches in ministry or in sharing resources (equipment, money, people). Some examples of this are: • Racial Reconciliation Group – worship nights and citywide strategy meetings on how to meet needs and solve community problems. • Friday Prayer with Pastors – shared resources • Connections – Other churches who have supported us and opportunities to support new church plants in our area. 5. Focusing on multiplication. As I’ve become engaged in the college YL group and Bible study, two other women have joined me, and now I’m able to step back a bit because they’re stepping forward to make disciples. Some of our anticipated outcomes include: 1. Increased creativity and impact through the cultivation of Doxa Dinners which will help us make more direct connections in the community, grow connections between us and surrounding business leaders, and foster/model generosity and partnership in Kingdom impact. 2. More e%ective ministry as we continue to unify and pray with other pastors in our city. We want to see God move and break down dividing lines in our community, as well as help pastors lead out of support and collaboration instead of isolation and competition. 3. A team/church that is growing in Kingdom vision with God at the center. We want to help others really see people in their city, notice the pain and struggle, and feel a sense of ownership and empowerment by the Holy Spirit to do something about it.

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4. Exponential impact as we collaborate with businesses and other non-pro!ts 5. Growth through partnering with another church to invest in working moms. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• We’ve learned that in churches, relationships are the soil for collaboration. Supporting each other for the sake of friendship and unity leads to collaboration. It takes time for people’s vision and sense of God’s Kingdom to expand. Our culture has e%ectively discipled people into self-centered and powerless living. There is often a gap between wanting things to change, getting people to see themselves as the solution, and engaging their hearts to take the step to make it happen. • We’ve also learned that changing collaboration culture with pastors just takes two people. If you want a village, you have to be a village. Most younger pastors desire friendship and connection over competition. What we share is greater than our di%erences, and that’s where God can multiply His work. There are many opportunities to build friendships and collaborate— it just takes a few people willing to take the !rst step and invite God’s Kingdom vision into those relationships and into our city. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

People are busy and money is tight. We’re discerning the right collaborations with other pastors and !nding practical ways to meet needs through money, time, resources, and in)uence. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

There are so many needs out there. We’re still in the discovery phase of how we can uniquely contribute.

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CONCLUSION

Relationships and collaboration with other pastors, businesses, and non-pro!ts has been one of the most fun and necessary things we’ve done. Tacoma is a challenging place to plant a church, and I cannot imagine doing this in isolation. It’s also been beautiful to watch partnerships form and the Spirit work as we move toward Kingdom collaboration instead of just us doing what we can do alone.

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CASE STUDY 2: PASTOR JARED VOTAW WHO I AM

My name is Jared Votaw. I am the lead planter at Enrich Church located in Azusa, California about 30 minutes east of Los Angeles. The church launched on August 18th, 2024 at a local park in our city. Enrich Church is planted in the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) on the east side of Los Angeles County which has 31 cities and a population of about two million people. Azusa is located in the north-central part of the SGV and is mostly Latino, with White and Asian populations of all socio-economic backgrounds located in di%erent parts of the city. Enrich Church re)ects these three dominant ethnic groups, with six languages being spoken within our congregation. The average age is about 25 years old (30-40 people) including children, and all participate on Sunday morning. MY CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Everyone in our church is on the church planting team. This is because our model is a Disciple Making Movement (DMM) approach that trains everyone to be disciple makers and church planters. The Sunday morning gathering is structured as a training center (think spiritual cross-!t center vs. “traditional church” movie theatre). Each aspect of the gathering is intentional in making disciples and training leaders. MY CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

After worship through song, I always include a disciple from Enrich Church to pray over the church so each disciple learns how to lead corporate prayer. There is also a di%erent “connect question” each week that fosters community among everyone so that we are getting to know someone new each week. The “connect question” also trains disciples how to start casual conversations that lead to meaningful conversations, and ultimately to spiritual conversations.

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Next, a disciple from our church shares a “Jesus at Work” story, which is how Jesus has recently been at work in the life of the disciple. This trains disciples in public speaking and seed sowing (evangelism). Prior to the message, the entire church engages in a Discovery Bible Study (DBS). A DBS is a simple, reproducible way to study the Bible that anyone can do. The purpose of the DBS is to train disciples how to read their Bibles and start DBSs with those in their lives that are open to God, but do not know Jesus, for the purpose of making disciples. Then we have a message from the same DBS passage. At this point, four emerging leaders have been trained to give the message in addition to me. The message always includes an activation or a practical activity to immediately apply and develop as a disciple. Afterwards, several prayer team members are available to pray with anyone for any needs or requests. We cultivate a culture of fasting and prayer in our church. We have a monthly gathering when our church is invited to fast for 24 hours and gather to pray together. The goal is to train every disciple to develop a personal and corporate culture of fasting and prayer for intimacy with God and spiritual breakthrough for discipleship multiplication and church planting. Part of our fasting strategy is for disciples to fast personally weekly (24 hours), monthly corporately (24 or 96 hours), and annually corporately (21 or 40 day Daniel fast). We also have a monthly seed sowing training (evangelism) at a local farmers market. Enrich Church has a booth that is very kid friendly and brings in a lot of families. We use this as an opportunity to build connections and relationships with community members, often praying with people, sharing the Gospel, and inviting people to the Sunday gathering. Additionally, the seed sowing training helps our team learn how to share their Jesus story (testimony), the Gospel, and lead people into a relationship with Jesus for the !rst time. The teams are sent into the farmers market and downtown area for seed sowing and then debrief about the experience together for learning and growth.

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The aim for our discipleship model is that each person at Enrich Church is part of life-on-life discipleship, either through a DBS, T4T (Training for Trainers), or Healed and Made Whole Discipleship. This system is a progressive discipleship process which is not always linear, with Three Thirds Discipleship as the framework for each meeting. Enrich Church’s process for catalyzing a movement of multiplying disciples and churches currently !ts into three concentric circles: 1. The !rst circle is that everyone at Enrich Church is in life-onlife discipleship as previously described. 2. The second circle is our church planters in training, where planters join us for 1–2 years to learn how to plant a DMM church. We currently have two planters in training with the goal of three planters in training at a time. 3. The third circle is to create cohorts of established planters and pastors in Southern California who want to be trained in DMM to integrate discipleship and church multiplication into their churches. We currently have two cohorts of three planters/ pastors in each cohort that meet weekly. We train each disciple, planter in training, and planter/pastor in DMM training to fast weekly and train their churches to fast and pray. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

Fasting and intercessory prayer is a primary focus of our DMM process. We spend a signi!cant amount of time fasting and in prayer for the purpose of catalyzing a movement. I fast weekly for 24 hours, monthly for 96 hours, and yearly for 10 days — all water only. Additionally, I complete a 40 day Daniel fast at the beginning of each year. After a year of planting, we have multiple streams of 2nd and 3rd generation life-on-life discipleship, two !rst generation DBS groups as seed churches, a second generation church plant, and another church to be planted next year. The goal is that each DBS seed church be-

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comes an established church that multiplies 4+ generations. Also that each church plant (through our church planters in training) multiplies churches for 4+ generations. Additionally, the goal for our current six planters/pastors in DMM cohorts is that they implement DMM into their churches and start multiple DMM cohorts with other planters/ pastors and plant churches 4+ generations. Our ultimate goal is that Enrich Church starts a DMM in Southern California that spreads throughout the United States and beyond. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• A LOT of fasting and intercessory prayer is required to build momentum and obedience to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. • We want to have a simple, reproducible model for discipleship multiplication that anyone can do, then train and scale. One practical example is through Antonio’s (pseudonym) story. Antonio did not have many qualities of a leader, and may have often been overlooked by others. However, he kept coming when Enrich Church !rst started at the park. I asked Antonio if he wanted to do discipleship and he said yes. After discipling Antonio life-on-life for four months through the DMM discipleship process, he began to share his faith with others in his sphere of in)uence. After about eight months, Antonio started a weekly DBS with his dad, mom, and brother who were not yet believers. After ten months, Antonio started discipling a college student life-on-life through the discipleship process he experienced. What we’ve learned is that Jesus can use anyone who is willing to be obedient to make disciples. This story is now becoming more common, repeating itself among other disciples at Enrich Church. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

A signi!cant barrier to catalyzing a movement of multiplying disciples and churches has been the level of unprecedented spiritual warfare. Our region has a high concentration of witch and satanist covens and

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occult strongholds. For the !rst several months, Enrich Church just tried to get traction in the midst of strong spiritual resistance. Then, the !rst major confrontation surfaced when a witchcraft doll was placed on my street near my house. This started !ve weeks of very intense spiritual warfare that ultimately led to a very powerful breakthrough. That breakthrough led to more church planters in the training process, DMM training cohorts for established planters/pastors, and numerical growth. The solution was to fast, pray, worship, and be obedient to the Holy Spirit and Scripture. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

One current unresolved question we have is how do we create a system that is easily scalable to build the DMM? CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we encourage fasting and prayer (A LOT), and we recommend a simple and reproducible DMM model that anyone can do. This allows the DNA of the church to grow slowly and intentionally as we train anyone who is willing, continue to scale, and get everyone to develop a lifestyle of fasting and prayer to support the DMM mobilization e%orts.

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CASE STUDY 3: PASTOR RACHAEL MASON WHO I AM

My name is Rachael Mason, and I’m the lead pastor of Sans Souci Vineyard Church. We are a missional, multicultural, bilingual (English/Spanish) community pursuing life with God together in Sans Souci. We launched on September 28th of 2025 and are a&liated with the Vineyard movement. OUR CONTEXT

We are planting a church in a diverse neighborhood of Greenville, SC called Sans Souci. Our church is truly diverse in every sense of the word; racially, ethnically, socio-economically, and culturally. We saw representation from all of these demographics on our launch day and at our events in the past few months. Our multiplication mindset is interchangeable with our Kingdom mindset. We believe that although the Kingdom of God is not here yet, it is here now. We believe that as image bearers of God, we share in His rule and reign by partnering with Him to usher in more of His Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. The expansion of the Kingdom is inherently the multiplication of disciples and churches. It’s the expansion of the body of Christ. Many in the South have adhered to a gospel message that heaven is for when you die. This has made receptivity to the multiplication mindset slow, and sometimes we experience resistance. There are others who are easily receiving this message and eager to partner with the Holy Spirit in this Kingdom work. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

We have 12 adults and 8 kids on our core team. Our team represents the diversity of Sans Souci fairly well, although we are still praying for native Spanish speakers. No one has o&cial roles on our team. The Vineyard has a core value of “Everyone Gets to Play.” As stated earlier, we believe the Kingdom of God is here and that anyone can play/participate in the work of King Jesus. 100

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We use this core value to empower our team. One example of this is from a mother of 4 on our team. She shared that this value of “Everyone Gets to Play” freed her in a way that she didn’t know she needed. She realized she had disquali!ed herself in many ways from participating in life with Jesus because she had boxed herself into the category of “tired mother of 4 who doesn’t have much else to o%er.” This woman has now become the galvanizer we had been praying for. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

We have worked hard to set a Biblical foundation for our Kingdom/ multiplication mindset to learn directly from our Rabbi. Our missional mindset and outward facing approach nurtures multiplication by keeping us focused on the “one.” We meet in a variety of places, in a variety of ways in our community to share Christ’s love with ALL of Sans Souci. This happens through worship nights, Sunday gatherings, prayer walks, fun/fellowship events, outreach events, and Bible studies. We are incredibly relational. We have many ICNU conversations with folks on our team to identify and nurture the giftings and callings God has put in them. For example, a young woman on our team named Jenell clearly has leadership gifts and possibly a call to ministry. I have had many conversations with Jenell about what I see in her and am providing opportunities for her to develop and nurture those leadership skills with my support. I am intentional to connect with her, pray for her, and meet her where she is at. I am also teaching her to have ICNU conversations with others. We provide practical training to help folks know how to partner with Jesus in the expansion of His Kingdom. One example is the Vineyard’s 5-step prayer model training that allows anyone to feel equipped to pray for others. Everyone gets to pray! We give stu% away and we pray. We give “stu%” away as quickly as possible, meaning we allow people to do the stu% as they are called and led! We are already praying for the next generation of leadership in SSVC and for our future church plants.

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Both our current and anticipated outcomes are that people see God’s Kingdom in their own hearts and minds and in their neighbors, co-workers, friends, families, etc. We anticipate our small group gatherings in the neighborhood expanding, with more Bible studies/small groups in non-traditional venues like apartment complexes, dance !tness studios, parks, etc. We also anticipate a Spanish speaking church plant out of SSVC. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

I am learning to trust God to make our church grow. All I/we can do is plant seeds and water (1 Corinthians 3:7). This is slow work. God is establishing deep roots. I need Jenell to be the leader I know she will be now, but God is calling me to walk alongside her as he establishes deeper roots in her, and she will then do the same for others and so on. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

The cultural di%erences in our area cause signi!cant barriers, along with the reality of prejudice in our community. We are doing the slow work with Jesus to meet people where they are at, build relationships, listen for the Holy Spirit, and follow the Lord. QUESTIONS

I wonder how we may formalize our processes more in the future? CONCLUSION

In short, we are a Kingdom of priests all called to partner with God in the expansion of His Kingdom in our own lives and in the lives of others. As we learn to listen, obey, and empower others to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, we will see God’s Kingdom coming and the multiplication of His body before our very eyes.

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CASE STUDY 4: PASTOR CHRISTOPHER SPOLAR WHO I AM

My name is Christopher Spolar. Along with my wife, Jenna, and our 3 young children, I planted Expressions Church in October 2024. Our vision is to help people explore faith in Jesus, experience life with Him, and express love like Him. Our mission is to see the love of Jesus uniquely expressed in the diversity of the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) through gospel witness and holistic renewal. We are a part of the Free Methodist Church. OUR CONTEXT

Expressions Church gathers in Pasadena, serving the wider San Gabriel Valley. About 80-90 people call it home, with a weekly average of 65. We are intentionally multi-ethnic, Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic, with people spanning political, economic, and generational lines. This is representative of our focus area in the SGV. We launched with a team of 20 who carried a multiplication mindset. Later, we merged with a more traditional congregation, which required re-casting vision and inviting people into a multiplying culture rather than a maintaining one. Our ministry is structured around a simple rhythm: • Gather on Sundays to celebrate together • Scatter in groups during the week for discipleship and mission • Reach locally and globally as a sent people After merging with the other church, and losing our previous meeting location through the wild!res that swept through our city, we are still working to cultivate this structure. The !rst 3 months after launch we focused on integration with the other church, then the next 6 months we focused on serving the city and those a%ected by the !res. Recently, we have begun re-positioning ourselves into this gather/scatter model.

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OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

At Expressions, Community Groups (CGs) are our primary engine for disciple-making and leadership development. Each group is built around three reproducible rhythms: • Up – orienting toward God through Scripture engagement using a discovery-based method (What does it say? What does it say about God? What does it say about us? What is God saying to me, and can I obey?) • In – cultivating belonging through prayer, encouragement, and carrying one another’s burdens. • Out – living on mission together by serving monthly, blessing neighbors, and adopting a missional focus over time. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Our leadership pathway is intentional and progressive: 1. Discipleship Band – A potential leader begins with 3-4 people in a high-accountability space for confession, repentance, encouragement, and obedience. This forms character and intimacy with Jesus. 2. Co-Lead a Community Group – Next, they apprentice in an established CG, learning the Up/In/Out framework while being coached. 3. Launch !eir Own Community Group – Once ready, they start and lead a new CG, cultivating identity, mission, and multiplication from the ground up. 4. Potential Church Planter – Leaders who show maturity, fruitfulness, and vision are identi!ed as future planters, with their CG becoming the seedbed for a launch team.

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This process forms a natural pathway: intimacy with Jesus > apprenticing in community > multiplying disciples > planting churches. To further embody this culture of multiplication, we also have made it a commitment to support other church planters in our local area, whether relationally, collaboratively, or !nancially. We want our congregation to see other church planters, encourage them in their journey, and pray for their success. This fall, we are launching four CGs (two intergenerational, one for young adults, and one for creatives in Pasadena/LA). Our short-term goal is consistency: weekly rhythms of Scripture, prayer, and mission. By spring, each group will adopt a speci!c missional focus, a neighborhood, people group, or need. Long-term, each group’s goal will be to grow to 30-40 people and multiply within 2-3 years. At every step, CG leaders are coached, discipleship bands deepen accountability, and multiplication remains the focus. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED AND CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• Vision requires ownership. People adopt what they help create, not what they are handed. Multiplication sticks when people shape the vision with you. • Multiplication is slower than expected. Habits and assumptions about “church” run deep. Change requires patience, clarity, and consistent modeling. • Sunday can be both a catalyst and a barrier. Sunday worship draws the crowd but can unintentionally become the de!nition of church. We are reframing Sunday as the gathering point of the church, not the total expression of it. QUESTIONS

How do we right-size Sunday so it fuels discipleship and mission without eclipsing them? We’re learning to keep Sunday strong enough to gather momentum, but simple enough to release people for mission.

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CONCLUSION

At Expressions, we’ve learned that multiplication requires patience, persistence, and shared ownership of vision. Our simple framework helps keep us aligned, and we believe that if we stay clear, incremental, and Spirit-led, multiplication won’t just be our theory— it will become our culture. Sundays draw the crowd, but groups multiply the mission. And from groups, future leaders and church planters are sent out.

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CASE STUDY 5: PASTOR JON WIEST WHO I AM

My name is Jon Wiest, and I currently reside in Indianapolis, IN, with my wife and four daughters. I currently lead a non-pro!t organization called Mobilize the Church, which partners with pastors, networks, and denominational leaders to mobilize people for ministry. I also served as the Director of Next Ventures at Exponential until God began to call my wife and I back to the frontlines of ministry. Prior to starting our non-pro!t, we had the experience of planting two legacy-model churches, but this time it seemed that God was guiding us toward a new approach and a new demographic. OUR CONTEXT

The name of this new ministry is Groundswell, a grassroots movement that’s bringing God’s goodness, justice, and hope into the places that need it most. This is a co-vocational e%ort, and while my long-term dream spans many frontlines, the !rst expression is called the Groundswell Prison Network. In the same way that new life begins at conception, new churches begin the moment God conceives a fresh vision inside a person’s mind and calls them to reach a speci!c group of people. In November of last year, through Scripture, a few key prophetic words, and much prayer, God conceived in me a calling to proclaim freedom for the captives. In January, that vision led to a volunteer training at a maximum-security prison just outside Indianapolis, IN, that houses approximately 2,000 inmates. In March, I walked into the prison for the !rst time. Yes, this is a mission !eld with individuals charged with murder, rape, drug tra&cking, child molesting, and armed robbery. However, Jesus has already gone before us. He is already in the prison ministering and being ministered to. In fact, when his so-called disciples asked him in Matthew 25:39-40, ‘When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King (Jesus) will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you

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did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” That is our context. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

God is already at work in the prison system. He already has men and women ready to be mobilized for ministry. What He’s missing is a catalyst, an apostolic leader to provide the spark. Wesley called these catalysts circuit riders, and their task was to open new mission !elds on the edges of the “frontier.” I’m focused on catalyzing a movement, yet there is a bit of theory still at play. The church has been conceived, but it is still in an embryonic stage, waiting to be born, and then later, reproduce. The process for catalyzing any movement of multiplying disciples and churches begins with a simple question: “Who do you have?” Who has God already given you? We see this question throughout Scripture when God called Moses to deliver the Israelites and asked, “What is in your hand?” When Elijah met the widow who was in crisis and said, “What do you have in your house?” When Jesus saw the hungry crowds and asked his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” Movements often begin when God opens our eyes through prayer, fasting and gratitude for what we already have. We realized we needed to meet as many inmates as possible to discover who God had already been preparing. I recruited a team of volunteers, connected with the program director at the prison. I started leading classes on a variety of topics like “Safe People”, “The Anatomy of Peace”, and “Houses of Healing.” We end each 8–10 week class by inviting people to go deeper and share the basics of the gospel. Starting in March of this year, we have now connected with about 60 inmates over four months. In July, we identi!ed 15 that we would say have been spiritually “awakened.” During the months of July and August, we divided these inmates into groups of three to learn their stories and gauge their commitment, and we believe they will be the seeds of our very !rst church plant. We’ve just recently started training

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the 15 to make disciples and form small d-groups of 3-4 people in a modern-day version of the band meeting. These discipleship groups or “bands of brothers” will meet back at the cell house a few times each week. Finally, there are three that we believe God is calling to greater leadership. Pinkston, Jameson, and Jon-Jon. Peter, James, and John. You can’t make this stu% up. All three have both spiritual in)uence, and as former gang leaders and drug tra&ckers, they are natural leaders that God wants to use to multiply disciples. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

The process for mobilizing people and catalyzing a movement is simple, but not easy. Start with who you have. Disciple them. Train them to be disciple makers. Identify pioneer leaders. Release them to plant churches. Our prayer over the next six months is that two smaller churches of 15-25 would be meeting weekly, and our big picture vision is for a groundswell of disciple-making and church planting to occur across multiple dorms and cell houses. We would then gather these churches together monthly for fellowship, baptisms, training, the Lord’s Supper, and to pour fuel on the movement. Planting churches in prison is very di%erent from !lling a preaching slot at the chapel service. The correctional facility we are serving has approximately 2000 people and only 70 inmates attend the Tuesday and Thursday chapels. Our desire is to plant new churches in each dormitory and cell house to reach younger inmates and to truly foster transformation. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

Two lessons we’ve learned are vital, but are also very di&cult to put into practice: • The !rst is a principle from disciple-making movements: “go slow to go fast.” Prioritizing selection and slow, careful, and intentional growth on the front end is important to ensure sustainable, rapid, and extensive multiplication of disciples

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and churches in the long term. I need to !ght the temptation to quickly gather with anyone and everyone. Quality over quantity on the front end, because in the case of the prison, I may at some time be denied access. I need to have a “sunset clause” in my ministry, knowing that the few I am discipling can run with it long term. • A second lesson I’m learning is a Stephen Covey principle that “change moves at the speed of trust.” This is especially true in prison ministry, and once again, trust takes time. You can’t microwave it and manufacture it. The !rst three or four months at the prison were spent simply building trust, not only with inmates, but also with the sta%. Being faithful to show up every Thursday and Friday morning, faithful to listen, faithful to encourage and pray. These things are vital to what we are trying to accomplish. Trust takes time. One quick story to illustrate these principles was during one of the classes we o%ered at the prison called “The Anatomy of Peace.” This was a 10-week course on con)ict resolution and one of the guys was pretty quiet and cold during it. It felt like he was always sizing me up, skeptical of what I was saying and doing, and he was intimidating. A bigger guy, all tatted up, possibly in his 30’s. But every week I greeted him and tried to encourage him. After about the 6th week, he !nally introduced himself and said, “Just want you to know I appreciate you coming.” He didn’t say much, but that moment was still huge! On the !nal week of the class, I set a high bar and told the guys that I was looking for a handful of men who wanted to grow deeper spiritually and be on the ground )oor of what might be a new church. He signed up. I tried to interview all of the guys that signed up, and a couple weeks later, I was asking him some questions and he said, “Jon, what you’re doing is the very thing a lot of volunteers don’t take the time to do.” He said, “You come in every week with your guys. You take time to build relationships. You take time to build trust and that’s important.” He then went on and shared his story about being a gang leader at an-

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other prison facility, being transferred to this prison, and how God was doing something new in his heart. He said, “I don’t know where this is all going to lead, but I’m with you.” A couple of weeks later he fully surrendered to Jesus and was baptized in November. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

That said, there are also de!nite barriers to our goals: • The !rst barrier is access to the inmates. Being in a max prison, there are frequent lockdowns and altercations, as well as scheduling changes. There is training required to even get into the prison, as well as gate releases for the day you are arriving, call letters for inmates to attend, and strict times that they need to be back in their cell for head counts. Oddly enough, this requires more planning ahead and !guring out details in advance, yet there is a lot of )exibility as you get closer to meeting. This kind of ministry also requires key leadership on both the inside and the outside of the prison. I know that as the sta% rotates, I need to make sure I have multiple advocates. • A second barrier is the dynamic of weakness and strength in a prison. Guys are trained not to expose weakness or be vulnerable because there’s a survival element to deal with. Every year, inmates are murdered or taken advantage of, and nobody wants to be labeled “soft” or a pushover. Islam is seen by the inmates as a religion of strength, whereas Christianity is often viewed as a religion of weakness, so many of the guys don’t want to fully commit. That said, I believe as the church grows and evolves, God will unite the church together and help us support one another in a deeper way.

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, much of our playbook is inspired by the 18th and early 19th century American circuit riders who did whatever it took to reach the lost, make disciples, and transform the culture around them. Initially commissioned by Francis Asbury, the American circuit riders rode on horseback across the frontier with a straightforward and practical approach to planting churches. They emphasized going where the people lived, sharing the gospel in the !elds, and ministering to their spiritual and physical needs while identifying receptive individuals willing to serve as hosts to the new movement. These hosts provided opportunities to form new class meetings, which eventually grew into societies, and then churches. The circuit riders strategically moved between these small groups (classes) and larger gatherings (societies), planting well over 5,000 new churches by Asbury’s death. Our prayer through Groundswell is to build on this concept of a circuit rider, reimagining their role in a 21st century context, and deploying through the Groundswell Prison Network and other neighborhoods and networks of people across Indianapolis and beyond. These individuals will build relationships, identify receptive individuals to train in disciple making, form cell churches or house churches, identify pioneering leaders, and then gather into a modern-day society once a month. These societies will become a “church of cell churches,” and the long-term fruit will be a groundswell of disciples, churches, and circuit riders transforming neighborhoods and networks to look more like the Kingdom of God! This is our prayer.

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CASE STUDY 6: PASTOR AARON ROOKS WHO I AM

My name is Aaron Rooks, and my wife and I planted a church here in Lexington, KY called Every Nation Lexington. We are a part of a global organization called Every Nation Ministries. We launched around this time four years ago and recently celebrated our 4 year anniversary. OUR CONTEXT

Our church meets in a ballroom studio on the southeast side of the city. We are made up of mostly college students, young adults with families, and empty nesters. The majority of our church is open to the way we are planting. Some people have come to our church after social upheaval (such as George Floyd) or because they have adopted children who are black or brown and want to surround themselves with a congregation where they feel like they belong. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Our leaders can be broken up into three groups: • Staff – oversee the daily ministry functions • Leadership Team – focus on doctrine, direction, and decisions • Team Leads – volunteer to oversee di%erent areas within our church, from kids to media Our teams are made up of Indian, Black, White, and Hispanic leaders. We make an e%ort to have open conversations about leadership and di%erent races. We recently went through a book called “Ready to Lead: Empowering Black Leadership in the Multiethnic Church.” We also attempted to do a study called “Race, Justice, and Discipleship.” While we have made these attempts, they have not been perfect, and it can still be awkward at times. We try to normalize conversations and recommendations that help us think about one another in new ways.

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OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

We didn’t begin church planting with our focus being racial barriers in this city. But we did have a heart for the nations and being a lighthouse to lead the lost. Prayer is one of the most important components of a multiethnic church. With this, we intentionally seek to cultivate diversity in several di%erent ways: • Outreach – We put ourselves in places where the nations are, both on campuses and in communities. Some examples are minority fairs, bible studies with fraternities, international dinners, and supporting diversity in the elementary and high schools we are reaching. • Music – we try to blend gospel, CCM, and hymns (which can be a challenge). • Speech – If there is something that happens in the media that I may need to speak into, I don’t say anything until I’ve prayed. It may not always translate. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• Multiethnic/racial ministry keeps you in a tension where we all have to give up some level of comfortability without loss of expression. • I have made references that have gone over half of my congregation’s heads– and we have also had to have conversations around language.

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CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• One barrier we’ve faced is time. Time is everything in our city. • There is also an underlying segregation in the city and on campuses that makes it hard to worship together. One of the things I have watched our church attempt to do is disarm that tension by participating in events. An opportunity I also know will bring growth is overcoming language barrier humps. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What will the future of being a mult-ethnic/racial church mean for the next generation? CONCLUSION

Because of the tensions and challenges of planting/leading a multiethnic/racial church, it’s important that any vision must be the result of a divine call. Multiethnic ministry is beautiful, painful, healing, and risky. We must look toward Jesus if we are to run this race well. Also, diversity in ministry can’t be a trend. It has to happen because the gospel calls us to it. It comes with a cost. In John 10:16 Jesus says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one )ock and one shepherd.”

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CASE STUDY 1: PASTOR JANA KONTERMANN WHO I AM

My team and I represent Kiezkirche1 Weißensee, a young church plant in the northeast of Berlin. Before planting Kiezkirche, I had been working as a youth pastor in Berlin. During that time, my current church and pastor encouraged me to start a new church plant. They saw my potential as a church planter and supported my vision to create new spiritual spaces in the city. When I sensed a calling to start a new church, I knew that church planting was not a solo endeavour. I began praying for a team of people who would share my vision and be willing to move into a new neighbourhood to start something new together. After several months, I found !ve people ready to join. Together, we began the journey of founding Kiezkirche Weißensee in 2022. We chose Weißensee, a district in the northeast of Berlin, as the location for our church plant. Historically part of the former GDR2, Weißensee still carries the cultural impact of East German secularism. We wanted to plant a church where the gospel is rarely heard and where authentic community is deeply needed. OUR CONTEXT

To understand this neighbourhood better, we conducted a context analysis. We gathered socio-structural data on demographics, income, migration, unemployment, and family composition. We also studied the district’s infrastructure, including schools, cultural venues, leisure spaces, and transport links. To gain a deeper, qualitative understanding of the area, we conducted participant observations and interviews with local actors such as a politician, a police o&cer, and an artist. We also visited a local Buddhist centre to experience the spiritual landscape of Weißensee. In addition, we attended neighbourhood networking 1 2

Kiez is an expression in Berlin meaning neighbourhood German Democratic Republic

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meetings, connecting both with local Christian initiatives and with secular organisations such as the community center. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

In Weißensee, we face several barriers to communicating the gospel. Some of these include widespread secularism, limited religious literacy, and at times, skepticism or disinterest toward the church. Many people simply do not see faith as relevant to their everyday lives. They move frequently, travel often, and have little capacity for community involvement. As a result, growth is slow and sometimes invisible. Another challenge is learning how to measure success. We try to resist comparing ourselves with fast-growing churches and instead focus on faithfulness, presence, and transformation, even when progress is hard to quantify.In addition, urban mobility and busy lifestyles make it di&cult to build deep, lasting relationships. We aim to lower these barriers by living out our faith in visible, relational ways. Three simple principles have shaped our approach: 1. Be regulars. We frequent the same cafés, shops, and post o&ces to become familiar faces in the neighbourhood. 2. Be involved. We participate in local activities, like sports groups, choirs, or cultural events, to build genuine connections. 3. Celebrate. We host and join neighbourhood parties and public celebrations where joy and hospitality naturally open space for spiritual conversations. Through these small, consistent practices, we aim to build trust, demonstrate care, and let faith emerge naturally in everyday relationships. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

When we started, our team consisted of six people who intentionally moved to Weißensee, committing to live in the neighbourhood, engage with its culture, and follow Jesus together. All team members share key qualities such as faith in Christ, perseverance, and a willingness to 118

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learn. I serve full-time as the lead pastor, and two other members are employed part-time. The remaining team members contribute as volunteers. While I currently am the only one with a de!ned leadership role, we operate collaboratively on projects, with each person contributing according to their unique gifts and abilities. We are sent out by the Liebenzell Mission, which provides !nancial and organizational support for our church plant. Our local partner is the Berlin City Mission. We are o&cially part of their network of churches. Both organizations are part of the o&cial Protestant church in Germany. To strengthen our skills, we participated in the M4 Europe church planting process which consisted of a two-year training and mentoring program. Through M4, we developed our team culture, de!ned vision and values, and learned practical tools for planning and evaluation. It also connected us with other church planters across eastern Germany, creating a valuable network of mutual support and encouragement. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

Our church model combines small, multiplying communities with larger monthly gatherings. We call our small groups MiniChurches. They meet on Sunday mornings to share meals, read the Bible, pray, and encourage one another. Once a month, all groups gather for a joint service we call Kiezgottesdienst. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

Our vision guides everything we do. “In every street of Weißensee, there is a place where people experience good relationships, encounter God, and celebrate life.” This vision expresses our hope to see local communities emerge all over Weißensee. Simple, joyful places where faith is lived out in everyday life. Our current community consists of around 30 people. Many of these are neighbors, friends, and acquaintances who regularly take part in

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our events, such as our running club, parties, or other local events. Most of them are not yet Christians, but they have become part of our social circle and appreciate the sense of belonging that has developed. Each team member also focuses on several ”Persons of Peace,” or individuals whom we invest in through consistent prayer, invitation, and personal relationship. These connections form the foundation for relational outreach and spiritual growth in our church plant. For those who show a deeper interest in faith, we o%er personal support through one-to-one (or sometimes two-to-one) conversations, Bible reading, and discipleship mentoring. This approach allows faith to grow organically, respecting each person’s pace and openness. We intentionally focus on relationships rather than programs. Our outreach happens primarily through doing life together, celebrating and being present in our neighborhood. We want to embody the gospel long before we explain it. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

Throughout our journey, we have learned several key lessons: 1. Failure is part of the process. Church planting requires experimentation and openness to learning from what doesn’t work. 2. Prayer is essential. We have learned to pray constantly for our neighbourhood, for wisdom, and for people of peace. 3. Relationships take time. Trust and openness do not develop quickly in a secular context; patience is crucial. 4. Focus on people, not programs. Real transformation happens through authentic relationships, not through events. As a young church plant, we experiment a lot, and not every idea works the way we expect. One early initiative was a creative outreach format called EXPLORE. We designed it as an evening of art, spirituality, and conversation to make faith accessible to non-believers. Despite careful 120

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preparation, very few locals attended. We eventually discontinued the project, but it became a valuable lesson in contextual listening and humility. At the same time, we experienced how God works in quiet and personal ways, especially through prayer. A young woman who had shown interest in faith once told one of our team members that she wanted to move to Weißensee, even though !nding an a%ordable apartment in this area is quite di&cult. The team member began praying that she would !nd a place near his own home. A few months later, he met her again, and to his surprise, she had actually moved just a few blocks away. This proximity allowed them to share everyday life more closely, and over time she came to faith in Jesus. Later, when our team member himself had to move, he found an apartment not only in the same building but even on the same )oor as the young woman. This made it much easier to meet regularly, share life, and accompany her in her discipleship journey. Both stories taught us important lessons about mission in our context. Sometimes we need to let go of our plans and listen more deeply to the rhythms of our neighbourhood, and at the same time, pray and trust that God is already at work long before we see results. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

As a young church plant, we are still learning and adapting. Some questions have not yet been answered, but they continue to guide our re)ection and decision-making. These ongoing questions shape the way we think about mission, discipleship, and community in our context: 1. How can we sustain a relational model of church while maintaining long-term stability? 2. How can we share our faith in everyday situations? 3. What expressions of worship and spirituality will best connect with (post-)secular Berliners?

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CONCLUSION

Kiezkirche Weißensee is still in its early stages, but we are learning that church planting in a secular European city is less about rapid growth and more about faithful presence. We have discovered that: 1. Failure can be fruitful when it leads to learning and adaptation. 2. Prayer sustains perseverance in a slow and often uncertain process. 3. Relational presence is the most powerful way to communicate the gospel in our context. We continue to live, pray, and celebrate in Weißensee, trusting that God is already at work, often quietly, but always faithfully, in the lives of the people around us.

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CASE STUDY 2: PASTORS JASON LIM, MARKUS ENGEL, AND LUCA EICHEL WHO WE ARE

We are Jason Lim, Markus Engel, and Luca Eichel. This case study outlines our approach to multiplying church planting in northern Frankfurt and summarizes what we have learned through the development of three church plants: Mosaikkirche Nordwest, Mosaik Riedberg, and the emerging plant in Frankfurter Berg. Our goal is to describe the contexts in which we work, the structures and partnerships that support us, the processes that shape our discipleship and mission, and the key lessons and challenges we have encountered as we seek to plant churches that are capable of planting again. OUR CONTEXT

Our story of church planting in Frankfurt began in 2015 when Jason moved into Frankfurt-Nordweststadt and started building relationships in one of the city’s most diverse and socially complex neighborhoods. Nordweststadt is a densely populated district that was constructed in the 1960s and marked by a remarkably high degree of cultural diversity. The vast majority of residents have a migration background, and local life is shaped by apartment blocks, limited social spaces, and the absence of an active Christian presence after traditional churches closed their buildings. In 2022, we began our second project in Frankfurt-Riedberg, a newer and rapidly growing residential area with many young families, a large Chinese community, and a strong link to the nearby university science campus. While the district is vibrant and international, many residents live at a pace that leaves them with very little available time. The neighborhood’s cultural diversity and high mobility create both opportunities and challenges for long-term relational engagement.

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Our newest plant was started in September 2025 in Frankfurter Berg, a culturally and economically diverse neighborhood with another high percentage of residents with migration backgrounds. Here, as in Nordweststadt and Riedberg, people navigate busy lives, cultural transitions, and signi!cant pressures related to daily survival or social mobility. In all three contexts, the combination of limited time, cultural complexity, and varying degrees of social vulnerability create an environment where intentional, patient, and relational ministry is essential. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Jason initially planted Mosaikkirche Nordwest without a formal position and joined the C1 Gemeindebund. Over time, leadership of the congregation transitioned to Kevin, a long-standing member of the community and pastor within the C1 Bund, while Jason moved into work with Greater Europe Mission. Jason volunteered in church leadership until he !nally transferred all responsibilities to Kevin in 2025. Markus planted Mosaik Riedberg and also joined the C1 Bund, serving as part-time pastor while also working as a primary school religion teacher. Luca works full-time with Liebenzell Mission as he leads the new plant in Frankfurter Berg. The denominational a&liation for this new plant remains open. A previous attempt to plant in Frankfurt-Dornbusch under the leadership of Janik, connected to the Greater Europe Mission and the Bund Freikirchlicher P!ngstgemeinden, was discontinued in 2025 after about one year. Despite di%erent employment and sending structures, we remain relationally connected as friends, co-workers, and church planters committed to a shared vision. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

Our process of multiplying church planting has been shaped by the realities of these neighborhoods and by the relationships we cultivate. Discipleship and leadership development take place primarily through everyday life: one-to-one mentoring, local house-church expressions, and shared rhythms that allow people to see how we live, lead, parent, engage missionally, interact with neighbors, etc. We intentionally in-

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volve people in leadership and ministry early on to prevent a consumer mentality and to cultivate a culture where everyone learns to take responsibility for others. We also engage our neighborhoods through natural and relational pathways. Much of our missional presence emerges through ordinary neighborly interactions such as building friendships, joining or supporting existing social initiatives, and participating in the rhythms of local life. At di%erent stages we have also o%ered settings such as language cafés, but the core of our engagement remains personal and )exible: shared meals, playing sports in parks, attending community events together, and including non-Christian neighbors in simple expressions of community. These patterns allow us to meet people where they are and to build trust slowly over time. Multiplication is rooted in these everyday practices. As people grow through relational discipleship, they learn to invest in others in the same way. This creates natural pathways for new leaders to emerge. Each new church plant is sent with relational support from the mother church, and we continue learning how much shared infrastructure, coaching, and organizational sca%olding is needed to support the fragile early phase of a new community. The process is therefore both relational and adaptive, shaped by the needs of each neighborhood and by the goal of raising leaders who can plant again. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

Over the years, we have learned several key lessons about what multiplying church planting requires: 1. The !rst is the importance of holistic, intentional, and relational investment in people. Jason has noticed again and again that investing deeply into individuals, especially those with potential for leadership or future church planting, is never wasted. Even when people take di%erent paths than expected or end up serving elsewhere in the Kingdom, the investment bears fruit. Luca experienced this with a young man he invited into the 125

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early phase of the Frankfurter Berg team. Although the team composition later changed, the simple act of naming potential and inviting him into a leadership journey sparked signi!cant personal growth, leading him to take on responsibility and invest in others in a di%erent context. 2. A second lesson is that multiplication cannot be reduced to a strategy or a !ve-year goal. It must become a mindset and a culture. Multiplication happens when we consistently open our lives and leadership to others, empower them to take steps of responsibility, and allow discipleship to grow naturally into new leaders and communities. Only when this becomes part of daily life, rather than an abstract objective, will multiplying leadership, discipleship, and church planting truly take root. 3. A third lesson concerns the transition from mother church to daughter church. Markus experienced this particularly in Riedberg. Looking back, he would have relied longer on the infrastructure of Mosaikkirche Nordwest instead of independently designing every structure from the beginning. Regular worship gatherings established leadership materials, and shared organizational processes could have provided stability and freed more time and energy for relational engagement and getting to know the local community. The desire for early independence was not harmful, but the time and strength invested in building structures might have been better spent in deeper relational work both within the team and with neighbors. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

A recurring challenge is the reality of small teams working in culturally complex environments where relational work is slow and emotionally demanding.

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, our experience of multiplying church planting in northern Frankfurt has taught us that relational investment, cultural sensitivity, and patient presence are essential. Multiplication grows from shared life, intentional discipleship, and empowering others. It requires humility, )exibility, and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures. As we continue to plant new communities, our hope is to see more people encounter Jesus through authentic relationships and to witness new leaders and churches emerge that are rooted in their neighborhoods and connected in a movement shaped by the gospel.

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CASE STUDY 3: PASTOR GERARD DE WIT AND JANNEKE DE WIT WHO WE ARE

Our names are Gerard and Janneke De Wit. In 2018, we moved with our family to Schwerin, in the former East Germany. This was the outcome of a discernment process we undertook together with two mission organizations (GZB Netherlands and European Christian Mission) and the German Freie evangelische Gemeinde. After one year in a trainee program in Germany, including language and cultural studies and getting to know existing pioneering ministries, we decided to move to the disadvantaged neighborhood of Lankow to plant a new church there. Our church plant is under the responsibility of the Freie evangelical Church in Northern Germany (FeGN). This association includes 40 churches and several church plants across the four northern federal states. We are also connected with other church-planting networks in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern working under various denominations. OUR CONTEXT

We had several reasons for choosing the neighborhood of Lankow that we did. The Freie evangelische Gemeinde (FeG) in Schwerin consisted of a mother church in the city center and a church plant that had been planted in 2009 in the Dreesch area, a disadvantaged neighborhood in the south of the city. Lankow is a district that the FeG had in mind as a future pioneering location because of parallels to the Dreesch. In both neighborhoods with their characteristic GDR-era apartment blocks, children and the elderly live in widespread poverty. Social challenges create a sense of hopelessness, and the church as a place of hope is not visibly present in this urban landscape. The atheistic policies during the GDR regime after World War II contributed to making this part of Germany one of the most atheistic regions in the world. In Lankow, this is visible through the fact that people have virtually no contact with believing Christians and do not consider God relevant. 128

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Another issue is loneliness and individualization. People miss the sense of togetherness they remember from before and long for meeting places and community. This was con!rmed both by representatives of the Schwerin city council and by residents of the neighborhood. After thorough contextual analysis, conversations, and prayer, it became clear to us that God was opening a door for us into this district. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• Because most people do not ask questions about the existence of God, we need to look for other entry points. This means the church must take plenty of time to learn about the context and discover where the gospel will be good news for people. • A deep-seated societal distrust is also a signi!cant challenge we face. People grew up with the presence of secret police and the possibility of being listened to or arrested anywhere. This history has made people wary. The fact that the church was cast in a negative light, and associated with power and abuse, means that many prejudices must be overcome. For this reason, we choose to be present outdoors as much as possible, in “third places,” so people have the opportunity to get to know us at their own pace. This builds trust and gives people the sense that they are in control at all times. We focus on building relationships by giving people time to get to know us and what we believe. At the same time, we truly want to know them by giving them genuine attention and showing interest in their life stories. • Alcohol is another challenge because it holds a prominent place in East German culture. We see how much damage it causes and constantly try to balance between engaging the culture and appreciating alcohol as part of God’s creation, as well as protecting those who are at risk because of it. We want to provide a safe environment for everyone, so we have chosen to keep our building and all events alcohol-free. A few speci!c

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activities involving alcohol are announced separately and always take place in the evening. These decisions were made by the leadership team and later discussed and explained to the community. • We are also always setting and guarding our boundaries. Work and private life overlap and are di&cult to separate, which can create tension. We choose to live in the middle of the neighborhood, but also intentionally step away regularly, either as a family or alone, and make ourselves unavailable. • Lastly, the invisible barrier in regard to attending something unfamiliar, such as a church activity, is high. People need to feel that they are in control. This is why we intentionally remain active and visible in open public spaces. We also see skeptical or dismissive reactions as positive signs. They mean we are being noticed and that questions may have been planted. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Our team began in 2019 with just our family. We both have extensive teaching experience and completed training with GZB before being sent from the Netherlands to Germany. Since 2022, the team has grown to six people who all live intentionally in the neighborhood. Klaus is a retired neighbor who has been involved in our activities since the start in Lankow. Julian is from western Germany and his wife Rebekka from Switzerland. They attended Bible school together and are now studying in Schwerin. Julian is responsible for technical equipment and music, and Rebekka co-leads several weekly activities together with Janneke. Lydia is originally from the state of Sachsen and previously served as a full-time missionary in another apartment-block neighborhood on the island of Rügen. She works part-time in Lankow and is responsible for !nances, among other things, while also holding another job. Gerard, as team leader, is the only full-time missionary and the !rst point of contact. Because we are currently renovating a building, our team has temporarily expanded to include a couple from 130

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the Netherlands who are living and working in Lankow for one year. Arie is a professional carpenter and oversees construction of the community center, while his wife Jacomijn supports weekly activities. We work closely with the two FeG churches in Schwerin and are also part of the ECM mission !eld, which includes pioneering ministries in other cities in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

Our vision is: “We build places of hope in Schwerin-Lankow where everyone can discover God’s love and acceptance. Out of this we see a new Christian community emerging.” We work according to the principle “!rst belonging, then believing.” People are invited to join and actively contribute to the community. This has led to various meeting places for local residents, some examples including a weekly co%ee round on a playground between the apartment blocks, a kids club, a monthly neighborhood festival with a Bible story performed in theater form and music, men’s nights, women’s breakfasts, communal dinners, and the celebration of birthdays and other events. Since 2023 we have been renovating an abandoned restaurant in the center of the neighborhood. This too is being carried out with local involvement as much as possible so that ownership rests with the community. The building will serve as a community center with a small café, a workshop for small repairs, and a multi-purpose hall. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

Our church plant began in 2019 with the !rst family moving into the neighborhood. Since then, about 30 people have formed the core community. Our neighborhood festival usually attracts between 70 and 100 visitors. The opening of the new community center is planned for the summer of 2026. Even once the building is !nished, we want to remain visibly present throughout the neighborhood. The threshold for entering a church building is high. That is why we believe the church should go to the people, not the other way around. We want to be a

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blessing to the neighborhood by serving it practically and maintaining relationships with other initiatives doing good work. This means everyone is welcome and allowed to participate. We want to re)ect God’s inviting posture, faithfulness, and grace. We live out discipleship by walking with people in daily life and learning from Jesus together. People are free to discover more about Him for themselves. We have a weekly gathering called “Bible Discovery.” We read further each week and explore together what the text says and what lessons it o%ers for our life here and now. A practical insight was sharing food and drink, as we read in the book of Acts. This inspired a communal dinner that now takes place every two weeks in the community center. During Bible Discovery we also practice simple, accessible forms of prayer. We observe that people begin expressing desires and gratitude in unpolished ways, even when they are not yet sure to whom they are directing their prayers. New believers are supported in oneon-one conversations, allowing us to go deeper and address personal questions. We aim to live the gospel as practically as possible and let it shape our decisions. Sometimes this clashes with habits common in the neighborhood, which provides opportunities to explain what we have learned from Jesus. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• The gospel is like a diamond with many facets that people discover at their own pace. We have learned that we do not always need to begin with sin and guilt. These themes meant nothing to one of our neighbors, who felt they dismissed her e%orts to regain control over her life. She saw her mistakes as part of a learning process. For her, the !rst discovery of the gospel was that she was unconditionally loved, wanted, welcomed, and not alone. The “sin and grace” facet came later, step by step. • It all starts with listening and building relationships. Learn the culture without judging it. Quality and trust require time and

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commitment. This also applies to building a stable leadership team that is committed and aware of its strengths, pitfalls, and limitations. A good foundation is crucial for building the church well. Be inviting in your posture and allow yourself to depend on the people around you. Let them help you. This helps create equality. Do not sit in a closed circle. It gives the impression of a private club. • Street parties work in every church plant I have seen in our state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. • Church planting is not something you do alone. We are part of a larger network, and we have needed the support. We are grateful for supporters in Germany and abroad who have provided !nances and resources and furthered our work through prayer. The connection with the local church and other projects was also a great help, especially in the early years. We bene!ted from the experiences of the team in the other neighborhood, and were able to use many of their materials when we had nothing in the beginning. • It was also important that we created a leadership team so that the work would not fall solely on one family. Working with neighborhood volunteers is wonderful, but leaders are needed who develop a vision, guard it during the process, and bring the time and skills required to lead by example. As the church grows, so do tasks and responsibilities. We have learned that a team investing in itself is indispensable for healthy church growth and for the well-being of the church planters. • We do not want to merely evangelize or share an alternate truth. We want to make disciples. We long to see people transformed and living according to God’s intentions. This is often a slow process. Especially in the East German context, faith in God is so far removed from people’s worldviews, and we have answers to questions they are not even asking. We have learned not to

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expect quick conversions, but rather, to see how people discover the gospel step-by-step by becoming a part of the community and contributing to it !rst. A practical example is our street festival, where we intentionally let anyone join who wants to participate in the theater piece. We act out a Bible story, and by taking part, people discover who Jesus is. • Social pressure is a serious factor. For some, it is di&cult to admit that they might believe in God. Several people have been baptized or want to be, but struggle with condemnation from their families who have no understanding of their decisions. • It took a long time before people understood who we were and what we were doing in the neighborhood. Before the community center “Zum Gewächshaus (Greenhouse)” existed, people did not know what to call us or which church we belonged to. Some even thought we were a sect. Our invitations met resistance in the early years. A candle we had distributed was returned with a note attached: “We do not want your candle. God does not live in Lankow.” Once, a paper was hung on a clothesline expressing the explicit wish that we stop organizing kids club on the lawn between the apartment blocks. During kids club, people sometimes shouted things from balconies when we sang with the children. Misunderstanding and resistance must be expected when something new is attempted, especially in spiritual matters. Spiritual warfare becomes visible. However, we are thankful for God’s protection and for the trust that has grown as people see that we genuinely seek the good of the neighborhood. We have always been open and transparent about our intentions and Jesus who gives us strength.

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QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• Right now we are investing in several individuals in particular, taking time to read the Bible with them in pairs and guide them in their spiritual growth. One question is how can we sustain this if more people come to faith in the future? Our leadership capacity is limited, so we will need to explore other models. • What does our exit strategy as church planters look like? Who will be the next generation of leaders and how will we hand over leadership? Can these leaders come from within the neighborhood and community, or must they come from outside to take over responsibilities and continue guiding the church’s development? • Churches tend to become inward-focused over time. How do we ensure that our church maintains a strong connection with the neighborhood and its culture and remains accessible to new people in the future? CONCLUSION

In conclusion, people in our neighborhood have been shaped by a context in which faith in God plays little to no role. They do not want anything imposed on them. They want to stay in control. At the same time, they long for community and to be seen. We have learned that lasting change requires time and genuine attention. We must continually seek forms that !t the people and their culture. It’s important to recognize that we ourselves have been shaped by our backgrounds, and what we consider normal or beautiful should not be taken as the standard. We have experienced people opening up to the gospel of Jesus Christ when they feel welcome, can participate, and are free to discover at their own pace. It is a privilege to witness how God reaches people with the good news. When we, as a church, stepped out of our comfort zone, we repeatedly experienced Jesus providing exactly what we needed. 135

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CASE STUDIES

CAS E S T UD Y 1

CASE STUDY 1: PASTOR DENIS MALIMONOV WHO I AM

My name is Denis Malimonov. I am 34 years old, and I was born in Donetsk. When I was a child, my grandmother used to take me to a Protestant church. I literally grew up in the church and remember that I always wanted to be a pastor, a missionary, and generally serve God full-time. At the age of 16, I began serving in Sunday school. For the next eight years, I was involved in children’s and youth ministry. In the summer of 2014, due to the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, I was forced to move to Kyiv. In Kyiv, I worked as a lawyer and continued to serve teenagers. In early 2016, I felt God’s call to join a mission that preaches the Gospel to young people through creativity. Throughout the summer of 2016, I studied at a missionary school in Germany. After that, I returned to Kyiv and until 2024 was one of the leaders of this mission in Ukraine. Although our informal youth church, “Home,” was only founded in 2024, our story began back in 2017. OUR CONTEXT

From the very beginning, we had no plan at all to start a church. We were simply moving step by step, following God’s calling. At the beginning of a new season in the fall of 2017, our team began to pray intensively, asking God to lead us further. For about a year we had been doing creative evangelistic projects in the center of Kyiv, and now we felt there was a need to preach in more speci!c places or within subcultures. We simply started praying for such an opportunity to appear. A couple of months later, in December, my friend Matt said to me, “Den, we’ve been praying and thinking about evangelizing in nightclubs. This Saturday there’s a party at a popular place. Let’s !nally go and see what’s happening there.” I remember that !rst night very clearly. We came to this popular underground venue, and at the time I had no idea how much that night would in)uence the direction of my ministry. I saw hundreds of young people standing outside in the middle 137

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of the night. Everything was happening on the site of a former textile factory; now there were several clubs and bars there. We went into one club located in a basement. That night I realized that raves are a whole separate youth culture. It’s about freedom, self-expression, electronic music, and drugs. I was just an outside observer who had no idea how to start a conversation there, let alone how to preach the Gospel. In the morning, when I got home, I was deeply impacted by what I had seen. I am a missionary, and only then did I truly see what was happening in my own city. At the same time, I had a very clear conviction in my mind: if Jesus were on earth today, He would be serving at Kyiv parties and would know how to speak the Gospel to those people. At that moment, I did not know how to do this. Moreover, I felt very uncomfortable in that environment, but I clearly understood that after seeing this painful reality, I could no longer close my eyes and pretend it had nothing to do with me. That is how our ministry at Kyiv raves began. I remember how, a couple of months later at a rave, our team spent a long time talking with one guy, and then we prayed for him right there in the club. After that he said, “I could never have imagined that Jesus would !nd me in such a dark place.” In April 2019, my friend Dima and I founded a book club called “Bible Study for the Non-Religious” (it still exists today). We wanted to create a safe space for our new friends from the raves where we could start reading the Bible together with them. These meetings took place in a café owned by our friends in the center of Kyiv. After some time, more than 30 young people began coming. Almost every one of them had a very di&cult life story. We started building a community, meeting with some of them during the week. And in September 2019, the !rst to be baptized, a guy named Sasha, was baptized. From the moment we started “Bible Study for the Non-Religious,” the question arose: “What’s next? Which church should we bring these informal young people to?” They didn’t really “!t” anywhere, and that was natural, so we continued discipling some of them ourselves. Even then, pastors of house churches who knew us would say, “Den, you are already a house

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church.” I always resisted that idea, because I myself grew up in a large church, and for me church felt like something too complex and serious. Besides, I was one of the leaders of a mission that had no vision for planting churches. With each new step, I became more and more aware of my calling to be a pastor. In essence, I had always known this, and people around me had been telling me so for a long time. However, I needed time to accept it myself. In January 2021, we received a vision to rent a large house in the center of Kyiv, live there as a team, and serve people 24/7. We also needed a larger space for Bible study meetings. In March 2021, this is exactly what happened. We called this evangelistic project “Home”. We began organizing parties and many other events for creative young people. On Easter, we held our !rst Sunday service, which we called “Sunday Mass for the Non-Religious.” From that time on, even more young people began to repent and be baptized. In February 2024, I stopped being part of the mission I had been with for eight years, and these events became a green light for us to fully realize who we are. We are a church. A creative, imperfect community of diverse and unconventional people. That same year, we had to look for another house in order to continue our ministry independently and, in terms of resources, start everything from scratch. These crisis events helped us realize that “home,” or the church, is !rst and foremost not about a building or a prayer house– it’s about people. Therefore, community and people are among our core values. OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

Starting in 2017, we had been doing everything possible to be understandable to our target audience. I kept asking myself: “How can I clearly explain to my DJ friends, who already have a biased attitude toward churches, the format and meaning of the church we are starting?” When I used the analogy of third-wave co%ee shops, they said, “Man, that’s cool!” So when Christians ask, “Then who are the !rst or second wave?” I honestly have no idea, because we were not trying to create a

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new denomination or doctrine. We are simply trying to be understandable to our target audience. The target audience of our church is creative and informal young people in Kyiv, aged 16–30, who are not Christians. • Segment 1. Spiritual seekers: agnostics and representatives of other religions. • Segment 2. Atheists and skeptics who are neutral or negative toward God and faith. • Segment 3. Young Christians who are tired of religion and are not part of any local church. The third wave is a return to the essence of church. Third-wave co%ee shops are about transparency of processes, honesty, trust through openness, and !nding value in simplicity. The focus is on the true taste of co%ee, without unnecessary glaze or additives. The third-wave church is about making church accessible to a modern young person, regardless of their lifestyle or worldview. It shifts the focus from rituals and forms to a personal experience of faith and the Gospel. Our vision: to preach the Gospel to young people in a relevant and creative way, helping them grow spiritually and follow Christ in everyday life while overcoming contemporary challenges. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

We engage with young people and preach the gospel through: 1. Collaborations with secular creative communities: In Kyiv, in the Podil district, there is a creative space called “Kuznia” (“Forge” in english). We had the opportunity to enter into a partnership with them. At this location, we organized an exhibition that lasted about !ve days. Essentially, through various installations, we told visitors about our church. In addition, we held “Bible Study for the Non-Religious,” which was attended even by the

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owner of the space. For her, it was her very !rst experience of reading the Bible in such a format. 2. “Bible Study for the Non-Religious” in popular hangout spaces: One example of this in the past two years is that we have been holding Bible studies in Samosad. Samosad is an urban square in Podil that has become very popular among alternative youth. The symbol of the square is a large tree, under which people often consume alcohol and substances. In the spring of this year, the public became concerned about the future of Samosad and the destructive atmosphere of the place. As a community, Samosad launched a residency program and invited Kyiv residents to hold creative and educational events for young people under this tree. No one agreed except us. We became o&cial residents, and throughout the entire warm season, every Thursday, we were able to read the Bible with young people. It was an amazing experience. 3. Parties and creative events at “Home:” Through events like these, we build relationships with people and preach the Gospel. Several times we organized a party called “Confession.” It was a party where DJs played music and young people danced and got to know one another. At the same time, we o%ered those who wished the opportunity to take part in a “Confession” quest. Participants went down into a basement space with di%erent rooms. All the walls were covered with the names of sins, and in each room there were video projections on topics such as domestic violence, addiction, depression, and suicide. After passing through all the locations in the dark basement, the participant entered a white room where, if they wished, they could anonymously go behind a screen and talk about their problems. On the other side were pastors and ministry leaders. From my personal experience, in one evening I could talk with two young men, and each of them prayed a prayer of repentance with me at the end.

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4. “Sunday Mass:” A worship service that takes place every Sunday at 6:00 PM in our church building. Sometimes it follows a more traditional format with worship and preaching, and at other times it takes the form of a shared meal with Bible reading, discussion of a speci!c topic, and more. On average, 20-30 people attend the service. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

1. Loss of the original team and rebuilding the church from scratch with new people: After we parted ways with the mission in February 2024, about ten close co-laborers remained with me. They were people who had been a part of the team for many years and had committed to building the church together. However, by the summer, all of them had either moved away or stepped out of ministry for various reasons, which left me practically alone. As a result, the church had to be built almost from scratch. We did this with young men and women who initially joined us as part of an evangelistic project and who now had to become those who serve others themselves. 2. Church planting without a ready-made model or the support of a mother church: Our church was born organically out of mission, discipleship, and hands-on ministry to young people. This means we constantly have to search for answers to basic questions of church life such as pastoral care, worship services, and team development. Everything has to be built from the ground up. 3. Ministering to an audience that does not trust churches: Our primary target audience consists of creative, informal young people who are often wounded or skeptical toward religion. Building relationships with them while overcoming their negative experiences is a major challenge. For many, it is the !rst time in years that they have picked up a Bible, or even the !rst time they have encountered the concept of faith at all.

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4. Financial instability and lack of resources: When we stopped being a part of the mission in 2024, we had to take full responsibility of our rent, utilities, equipment, and event expenses. In reality, we were starting over again without a launch budget or stable partners. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

1. !e church is a people group, not a building (and not perfect conditions): We have become convinced that a community is formed wherever there are people who are willing to listen, serve, and grow. Community can be anywhere: an apartment, a coworking space, a skate park, or under a well-known tree in a park. The essence of the church is not in walls, but in living relationships, in a community shaped around the Gospel and love for one another. 2. God builds through those who stay, not through an “ideal team:” The most valuable people are not necessarily those who have been with us for many years, but those who are willing to walk with us now. The resilience of a community is born from those who are present, not from expectations about others. 3. Zero resources are not an obstacle to God’s work: We started with almost no budget, no location, no equipment, and no stable team. Yet it was precisely this lack that became a catalyst for creativity, volunteerism, mutual support, and trust. God provided exactly what was needed at each moment, and through this we learned to see resources not as a prerequisite, but as a result of God’s faithfulness. 4. God can be encountered wherever there is sincerity—even if it’s just a tree in a park: We noticed that among atheists and skeptics, under the open sky, there was sometimes a deeper authenticity than within religious walls. When people honestly share their doubts, searches, and questions, living spirituality is born.

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this world needs more churches that go out to people and boldly speak about Christ. Because it is there, outside church buildings, that the Gospel is often heard most clearly.

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CASE STUDY 2: PASTOR DENYS KONDYUK WHO I AM

My name is Denys Kondyuk. My wife Olha Kondyuk and I have been dreaming of starting a new church since 2017. We had been serving in another small church in Kyiv since 2004 where I was the senior pastor. At some point, we felt a lack of missionary and service-oriented attitudes there and realized we needed to plant our own church. We envisioned a church for young adults and middle-class individuals who are socially active and hold pro-Ukrainian political views (thus, we conducted everything in Ukrainian from the start). We aimed at the downtown area, close to public spaces for discussions, universities, and city-center cafes. We often described it as the church for people who have something to give, not just saving them from something. We also wanted to foster a culture of support for those involved in socially impactful ministries and jobs, positioning the church as a kind of chaplaincy. OUR CONTEXT

We sought to plant our church in downtown Kyiv, in the old city area, to be closer to middle-aged, middle-class, and creative people. Many universities are nearby, and our public events in 2022 attracted the young adults we anticipated. We had our public discussion/interaction events called “Sence” in a famous location downtown called“Peremoha”, which may !t up to 90 visitors. The topics included: Ukrainian identity, perspectives on the war and how it shapes us, social media and disinformation, arti!cial intelligence and its impact on society, etc. These events drew some Christians and non-Christians to our church in 2022-2023. There were also weekly training sessions for the hip-hop dancers in our church space organized by some of our members. We have had them since 2023, but these events don’t seem to draw new people to the church itself.

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There were no external invitations. It was our desire to create a community with a downtown identity, a welcoming place for young people, easily accessible for those working or studying downtown. As we began meeting in June 2021, we faced challenges renting space for Sunday services since most venues were committed to long-term o&ce leases. This led us to secure a full-time location and use it for additional events and small meetings. We experienced modest growth in the autumn of 2021. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

It was clear to us that the new church should begin not with activities but with team development and shaping its culture. We started offline meetings in February 2020, shifting online later. The COVID pandemic didn’t deter us. We formed much of our culture halfway online. We invested our !rst year in home-group style gatherings, prayer, and worship. From this, the church’s name and vision for next steps emerged in early 2021. We began by inviting friends who shared our values and vision, but there was no core team beyond my wife and me. Many people observed us and the dynamics before committing. In 2021, we formed a leadership team by inviting speci!c members from outside and recruiting internals for roles. We conducted deep interviews and audience analysis, leading to strategic planning meetings we review nearly annually. In retrospect, many 2021 goals materialized in 2022-2023, but some have shifted. We need to revisit them now as the war impacts every aspect of life and ministry. Olha and I are the founding pastors, and I serve as senior pastor. Starting in 2022, we’ve grown our leadership around ministries, holding monthly meetings with representatives from communications, missional initiatives, worship, and more. We currently have 3 pastors and 1 deacon, aiming to add 3 more deacons soon, each responsible for speci!c ministry areas. During 2020 and 2021, we attended monthly meetings for church planters organized by the Association of Vineyard

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Churches. These focused more on team building and guidance than practical tips, though we received teachings on leadership teamwork and ministry development. In 2024, we joined the Ukrainian Evangelical Church since Vineyard has no o&cial a&liation in Ukraine beyond informal ties. Being part of two associations is both a blessing and a challenge, requiring double participation. Still, it fosters sustainability and broader involvement during wartime. No missional or church-planting departments were involved in our local plant. We began public services in June 2021 and currently have 40-60 people in our church. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

The plant has already occurred, but development continues. We’ve progressed through several levels: 1. Gathering the community and creating our church culture 2. Conducting deep analysis of our potential audience 3. Forming a leadership team 4. Launching public events alongside our online presence 5. Establishing an integration ministry for newcomers and expanding our leadership team Our shared vision is to build a downtown church for middle-aged people with an active social life and impact students and young professionals. We foster growth in relationships with God and others through small groups and personal discipleship. Our integration ministry helps newcomers deepen connections after joining. Our outreach focuses on small and larger public events, but recently we’ve prioritized support groups for military families and psychological support. Ministry to the military and their families will be a long-term priority. We currently participate in Cru (Ukraine Campus Ministry) student ministry and Stieger Ukraine ministry. Our church leaders participate in many events, and those serving also integrate converting students through personal discipleship. 147

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OUR CHURCH PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

We de!ne our values as: • Relevance of the Gospel message and experience of God • Love for one’s city, state, and people • Building bridges between those with resources and those with needs (a transformative culture of care and responsibility) • Culture of acceptance and inspiration for change • Relevant and creative worship We de!ne our audience as: • Adults who seek to change themselves and the world around them • Young professionals who aim to spread Kingdom experiences in all areas of life • Activists who view the city as a space for warm relationships and inspiring change • Families seeking community and mutual assistance • People who love culture and are looking for something new • Those who can learn and want to teach We want to be known for: • A community that unites dreamers and changemakers • A community that solves issues strategically and creatively • A community known, respected, and collaborated with in the area • A community that represents the Kingdom in an interesting and relevant way for Kyiv • A community that sees Kyiv’s center as a place of worship and social change

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LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

It’s hard to distill church planting lessons into a few short blurbs, but here are some key insights: • Building internal communication and a corporate culture that aligns with your vision is crucial, but it doesn’t emerge naturally from your vision alone. Regularly discussing and voicing your vision is important, yet it’s through informal interactions and long-term modeling that new people truly own it. • Cultivating a healthy approach to con)ict is essential, as con)icts are inevitable but manageable without derailing ministry. I emphasize addressing issues immediately, sharing responsibility, owning faults, and setting boundaries around unful!lled expectations. De!ning mutual expectations has proven vital. • Almost all current leaders joined post-planting. We’ve learned to prioritize leader development and a culture that supports team leadership and growth. • We can’t control church growth dynamics, but being public with online presence is key. We’re still improving our social media and visibility. For example, in May 2022 we had 10 people at our Sunday service; by October, 35. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• A current challenge is young men being enlisted in the army, complicating long-term ministry planning and overall people’s burnout (as we’ve all lived with constant challenges for 4 years). It requires additional support for them and their families. This is a widespread issue we’re still balancing, as vacancies in ministry arise and people need help themselves. • Another barrier to joining the church is the general prejudice toward Christians, especially evangelicals. Once one of our 149

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neighbors asked, “Which patriarchate are you?” inquiring to see if we were a&liated with Russia. We had a talk about Protestantism after. We also had some hostile communication via Instagram from our neighbors. They called us “sectarians.” There was no follow up to that communication from their side, but it shows the general attitude. • People are also overwhelmed by work and life challenges, making them more selective about how and where they spend their time. We address this through small groups in our o&ce, which accommodate both newcomers with little Christian experience, and long-time believers, allowing them to connect and explore basic Christian truths. Building longterm relationships is essential for reaching people, though occasional public events help. When we host these, we make them apologetic in nature, presenting the Christian perspective rather than criticizing others. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Some key questions we’re grappling with are: • How do we empower new leaders with balanced freedom and mentorship? • How do we foster a culture of local interactions with area residents? • How do we balance resources between immediate needs and future developments?

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, planting New City Church has helped us learn that true growth stems from intentional team building and cultural formation, rather than rushing into activities. Prioritizing relationships through prayer, shared spiritual experiences, and open communication has been foundational, helping us navigate challenges. But we still struggle with prejudices against evangelicals, space constraints, and the ongoing war’s disruptions. We’ve seen how adapting to context, such as shifting online during COVID, or focusing on support of the serving military amid con)ict, keeps the church relevant and resilient. Emphasizing leadership development ensures sustainability, as most leaders emerged after our initial plant, and regularly reviewing our vision accounts for changes like community size doubling. Ultimately, church planting demands patience in building long-term dynamics, balancing internal culture with outward mission, and trusting that God’s relevance shines through authentic community uniting dreamers to impact their city in transformative ways. While dynamics evolve with growth, a strong foundation in shared values and mutual support equips us to face uncertainties, from recruitment to resource allocation, with hope and strategic creativity.

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CASE STUDY 3: PASTOR EDUARD DENYSIUK WHO I AM

My name is Eduard Denysiuk. I’m married with two children, and I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Theology and a Master’s degree in Sociology in the !eld of the sociology of religion. At the age of eighteen, I entered a theological seminary, and from that period my formation as a minister in the Ukrainian Christian church began. Although I have been part of the church since early childhood, I began to perceive ministry and the church in a full and serious sense during my years of study at the seminary. To a large extent, this was conditioned by the context of the church in which I grew up, which was quite traditional and small. Accordingly, there were no ministries in which I could realize my gifts and abilities. Until the age of eighteen, my only participation in the life of the church consisted of attempts to preach. Due to the lack of formal training, the sermons were quite primitive and simple. However, during this period I deeply formed my faith, which I observed in my parents and acquired through reading the Bible. At seminary, I began to study theological disciplines and, in particular, biblical hermeneutics, which continued and deepened my Christian formation. After completing my studies, at the invitation of friends (Valerii Fedoranych, who is currently the senior presbyter of our new church), I moved to the city of Khust in the Zakarpattia region. I immediately integrated into the ministry of the local church where I assisted in youth ministry and preached. After three years of ministry in the local church, we founded a new community, the Church of the Trans!guration of Christ, in which I currently serve as one of the presbyters. OUR CONTEXT

Our church was founded in the Zakarpattia region, in the city of Khust. The city is a district administrative center and the third largest by population in the region. The foundation of this community was formed

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by an initiative group of ministers from the previous church who had their own vision for the development of the church. Accordingly, the community was built according to the strategies that emerged and were discussed through the interaction of this group. The city of Khust became the place where our church was established, as it is the city of my permanent residence. I came to this city after graduating from the Lviv Theological Seminary at the invitation of friends for joint ministry and the development of a theological educational institution. In general, Zakarpattia is a heterogeneous and saturated region in the religious context and is quite interesting from both local-historical and sociological perspectives. Zakarpattia is a region that is strongly shaped by tradition, especially in its religious dimension. This represents one of the most signi!cant barriers for the people of our city. In fact, one of the ideas behind the new church is to become more accessible to the general public. We want to be a place where people will feel more comfortable compared to a long-established traditional church. For us, as representatives of a new institution in the city, we’ve been able to successfully meet people and invite them to a church where they do not yet hold any prejudices.The Church of the Trans!guration of Christ was launched in December 2023, and at present, worship services are attended by approximately 50-60 people. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

The team that surrounded me, and became co-founders of the church together with me, consisted of people who were also rethinking their own experience of serving God and who saw the development of their ministry within a new community. In our city, there was only one church of our denomination. It was problematic to reorganize the vision and strategy of that church with a greater emphasis on the missional aspect of urban ministry. The team involved in the formation of the church consisted of an initiative group that, several weeks prior to the !nal decision to establish 153

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the church, had grown to 19 people. The members of the team were individuals who have devoted many years of their lives to ministry and who possessed experience in administration and leadership in both religious and business projects. Four individuals became key !gures in this team. The decision to establish the new church rested with Valerii Fedoranych (currently the senior presbyter of the Church of the Trans!guration of Christ), Mariia Fedoranych, Eduard Denysiuk (presbyter of the Church of the Trans!guration of Christ), and Oksana Denysiuk. My own role in the process of establishment involved shaping the vision of the new community, designing the administrative structure, selecting the name of the church, and related responsibilities. At present, we are operating fully autonomously. Dialogue with church associations and other denominations exists, but it remains formal. An important organizational feature of the Church of the Trans!guration of Christ is the presence of the Zakarpattia Christian Institute. It serves as a partner of the church and functions as a theological educational institution a&liated with the church. At the initial stage, this partnership was bene!cial and indispensable in terms of both resources and institutional legitimacy for the newly formed church. For a period of time, our team was also involved in team-based church-planting training provided by the international organization “M4.” In our view, there was a need in the city to form a new ecclesiological platform for the unfolding of the abilities and talents of those people who were unable to realize them in the previous church. We observed a number of talented individuals who, despite having both the ability and the desire to serve, were unable to do so in a large church for various reasons. Some of these reasons were long-standing con)icts that had continued for many years and had lost their sharpness and relevance, yet still resulted in people losing the desire to participate in the ministry of that church. Other reasons were political in nature. In addition, a number of people were unable to realize their gifts because it is di&cult to do so in a large church where there are primary ministry leaders who already cover everything that needs to be done. As a result, people emerge who are unable to realize their own talents and abilities. 154

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At present, the Church of the Trans!guration of Christ is an autonomous religious organization that is not part of any association or fellowship. Members of the community identify themselves as Evangelical Christians of the Pentecostal faith. During strategic meetings, discussions take place regarding the possibility of joining one of the evangelical associations in the future. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS

The decision to establish a new church was the !nal stage of several years of observation of three factors: • a shared vision regarding ministry in the city • a community of like-minded people who shared this same vision • the need to search for new concepts of ministry for the contemporary church within Ukrainian society Our model of church planting followed a process of strategic discussions and consultations where team members engaged in dialogue and selected those directions of development which, in their opinion, would most appropriately correspond to the church’s development strategy (which had been discussed and adopted earlier). The main stages that took place during the formation of our church were the following: 1. Formation of an initiative group: This group was formed long before the church itself was established. It consisted of people of di%erent ages, from 20 to 50 years old. These individuals were well acquainted with one another, which made joint interaction and cooperation signi!cantly easier. In my view, a key factor was that we were all friends, not merely a group of ministers. It was personal friendship that contributed to motivation and helped us take the step of establishing a church. It is also worth noting that not all members of the team were con!dent in their actions. Some had serious doubts about whether we would be capable of accomplishing what had been

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planned. It was precisely at this point that mutual trust played a signi!cant role, a trust that was grounded in friendship and personal relationships. Those who were con!dent supported those who doubted. 2. Discussion and affirmation of key values: For our team, it was important to not only outline a standard set of values commonly found in Christian traditions, but to articulate those values that would be adaptive for our future community. For example, the development of democratic governance that is not limited solely to the role of the pastor was considered essential. The negative and painful experiences of the past, shared by a large portion of the initiative group, led everyone to envision a future church in which executive authority would not be concentrated in the hands of a single individual. This contributed to the formation of a system of councils that function as executive and administrative bodies. A key example of this was the creation of a presbyterial council consisting of 4 individuals as a re)ection of a democratic worldview. Other values also re)ect the worldview emphases of our team. Of particular importance is attentiveness to each individual and their needs. We respect and understand the circumstances and then draw conclusions. 3. Development of a strategic vision of the community and its identity within the context of the civic society of the city of Khust: It was also important for our team to develop a shared strategy that would be functional and relevant for our city. Within the framework of this strategy, special attention was given to the people of the city and to projects that take place not only within the church, but also in public spaces. For example, many events are held openly in the regional drama theater. Military personnel and their families are often present at events organized by the church. War presents new humanitarian and psychological challenges.

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4. Discussion and adoption of the church’s mission in the city and the outlining of its main tasks: The mission of our church is grounded in its strategic vision and is implemented through various initiatives. An important component of the church’s mission is the support and mentoring of speci!c military units. The church regularly cares for certain units by providing humanitarian and psychological assistance and support. Regular trips are made to eastern and southern regions of Ukraine with the purpose of meeting various humanitarian needs of military personnel. In addition, a number of military members who are a part of the church receive ongoing support. In relation to our city, part of the church’s mission includes regular visits to the hospital where wounded soldiers are undergoing rehabilitation. During these visits, communication, psychological support, and the meeting of various needs, ranging from clothing to food, take place. Some military personnel have become friends of the church and have begun attending worship services. 5. Organization of the initial administrative and liturgical structure of the community 6. Examination of the issue of church structural units and the determination of a governance model: As mentioned previously, the approach to administrative culture has been characterized by democratic views and the avoidance of concentrating power in the hands of a few individuals. Accordingly, the following structure has been established: • General Assembly – all members of the church; the highest governing body • Church Council – Seventeen individuals who form the active and initiative core of the church. They are responsible for shaping church strategy and proposing directions for ministry development

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• Presbyterial Council – four presbyters responsible for the spiritual life of the church and for safeguarding sound doctrine • Senior Presbyter – chairs the presbyterial council • Deacons’ Team – four deacons who are responsible for administrative organization and technical support of church life • Ministry Leaders – for example, a worship leader, media ministry leader, social ministry coordinator, and others 7. Election and affirmation of ministers to leadership and responsible positions: The key event in the election and a&rmation of ministers was a church-wide secret ballot. During these elections, by secret vote and in the presence of external witnesses, the presbyterial council and the team of deacons were elected. The elections have a !xed term of validity, which is approved by the general assembly. After the expiration of the term, new elections to the presbyterial council will be conducted. The vision of discipleship in our church includes mentoring ministry leaders and maintaining openness in collective discussions of both successes and failures. The presbyterial council of the church aims to cultivate a favorable microclimate for personal growth and development through various forms of training, practical life and ministry case studies, and personal mentoring relationships. Within the church, teams are formed that assume responsibility for organizing di%erent areas of ministry: administration, media, social networks, charity, social outreach, volunteering, and others. Such leaders are provided with comprehensive support and encouragement. The involvement of people from non-church backgrounds is planned within the framework of the church’s public activities and its presence in the city’s public space. At present, active charitable and social work is being carried out in institutions such as hospitals, the regional prison, a

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home for the elderly, and a military hospital. Through such ministries, there is an opportunity to in)uence and build relationships with people in the city and to invite them to the church. Another missiological strategy is the vision of mission through one’s profession. Everyone who works within a particular professional environment can also invite colleagues to various church events, not just main worship gatherings. For this purpose, the life of the community includes retreats, men’s and women’s meetings, gatherings with art therapy, a youth club, and other similar events. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• One key lesson I learned during the process of establishing this church is the understanding that the church is people, not a structure. The church consists of people who worship God together. Therefore, it is not worth creating a structure or mechanism that is merely called a church, but rather forming a community united around essential gospel truths. • The second lesson is that decisions made collegially are more objective and e%ective than authoritarian ones. Unity is cultivated in the context of discussion and meaningful dialogue where di%erent perspectives can be examined across several stages in order to !nd the best solution. • The third lesson is to learn to accept people unconditionally. A leader of a forming community must understand that people are di%erent. Each has their own past, their own vision, and their own perspective on life. Only over time can people grow closer and learn to accept one another. A pastor or community leader must be able to model such acceptance from the very beginning in order to serve as a practical example. • At the beginning of our church formation, there was a choice of where to start. We could construct a structure !rst and force people to adapt to it, or we could begin with people, their values, 159

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their understanding of Christianity and community, and build the church together. When we chose to listen to people and to develop a space of acceptance and respect, it proved to be the right decision. Respect and acceptance became foundational values embraced by all who are part of our community. CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• One of the key challenges we face is the lack of su&cient human resources. As a result, certain individuals with leadership abilities are involved in organizing several di%erent ministries rather than focusing on one and developing it with quality. At present, we are seeking to address this issue by involving more people in the leadership team and by conducting training and educational programs for those who need speci!c competencies. • Additionally, a project is under development aimed at involving missionaries who could come, integrate into our church, and follow the strategy and mission of the church in our city with us. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• How can we build maximum openness within the team so that people are not afraid to speak about their failures and analyze them together? • How can people be motivated toward growth in ministry? • How can burnout and exhaustion be avoided?

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CONCLUSION

Throughout the church planting process, I learned many things that help me continue moving forward even when resources are limited. I came to understand that the idea of serving God, when it comes from a sincere heart and genuine desire, is capable of transforming certain dreams or initiatives into something great and truly meaningful for God, people, and oneself. One of our aspirations is the collective formation of a platform of openness to new churches and the development of skills for supporting such communities at the initial stages of their existence. It is important to be able to recognize truly initiative-driven and wise individuals, and give them the opportunity to fully realize their potential. The expanding secular religious marketplace within Ukrainian society directs the church toward addressing the real needs of society, and provides an opportunity for the church to become an authentic institution within contemporary social life. Questions concerning the church and society and their dialogue and con)icts will recede into the background if the church recognizes that it itself is society, and ceases attempting to “separate” itself from the sinful world.

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CASE STUDY 4: PASTOR KOSTIANTYN KOVALENKO WHO I AM

My name is Kostiantyn Kovalenko. I am 43 years old, married, and the father of two young sons, ages eight and !ve. I was born in the city of Odesa, Ukraine, into a stable family. However, my parents were unable to withstand the historical challenges of that time, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, job loss, and economic crisis, and they eventually divorced. My mother left the family, and my older brother and I remained with our father, who began abusing alcohol heavily, which later led to his death. During my teenage years, the street became my teacher. The neighborhood where I grew up, Luzanivka, was socially disadvantaged where a criminal culture, drugs, and alcohol were widespread among young people and were often seen as the main direction in life. I too fell into this trap. But God found me in this darkness when I was 24 years old, and completely transformed my life. At that time, there was no evangelical church in our neighborhood, and many young people were being destroyed by a sinful lifestyle. I began to dream and pray that a church would one day be established in Luzanivka. Ten years after God saved me, in 2014, He sent me to plant a church in my own neighborhood. The testimony of my God-transformed life carried weight among local residents, and I felt a distinct calling and responsibility to serve the people of my community. OUR CONTEXT

The Luzanivka district is highly ambiguous in character. On one hand, it is a disadvantaged and dangerous area with a poor reputation in our city. People are reluctant to move here or to buy or rent housing. On the other hand, this district contains one of the largest natural sandy beaches in Odesa, with a hydropark and developed resort infrastructure. During the summer, the tourist season begins, and many people

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come here on vacation by the sea. The waterfront is !lled with bars and nightclubs that operate throughout the night. However, since the beginning of the full-scale war, access to this beach has been restricted by the military due to landmines. At the same time, Luzanivka is a distinct residential microdistrict with its own infrastructure and a population of approximately 9,000 people. It includes private housing, old two-story buildings, and large courtyards of multi-story dormitory-style apartment blocks. In other words, it is a densely populated area within a relatively small space. Most importantly, there was no evangelical church in this district. Although the history of the area dates back to 1819 (when the land was granted to General Luzanov), for most of its existence there was no church here at all. An Orthodox church appeared only about 20 years ago. There were also attempts by evangelical churches of various denominations to plant churches here, but none remained for long. I once even heard that a pastor of a large church in our city refused to plant a church in this district because it was considered not !nancially viable. In other words, the area was seen as too disadvantaged to justify investing time and resources. This deeply broke my heart. I once heard that vision is born out of pain, and my personal pain is that some churches develop a culture of closed communities that exclude needy people from this broken world. More precisely, as I later came to understand, this is a tendency that sooner or later every local church encounters- a shift of focus away from mission and reaching people toward internal community issues. As a result, the church gradually becomes closed to the lost. This is why God gave me a vision to plant Crossroads Church, a church with a culture of openness. By openness, we mean the ability to receive others into our presence and to help create a sense of safety for them.

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CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

Of course, there are many barriers, but I will highlight two key ones: 1. The rejection of evangelical churches by society, which often labels them as sects, American churches, heretical, or fraudulent. 2. The rejection of people ‘from the world’ by evangelical Christians, especially those shaped by Orthodox culture, who are often viewed as idolaters or heretics. These two barriers are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, society views us through the lens of propaganda and prejudice; on the other hand, we often view society through a similar lens. From the very beginning of our church, we have sought to dismantle these barriers. I have studied missiology for many years and participated in numerous short-term mission trips to Central Asia. I noticed that when we go to other countries, we practice contextualization. We study culture, language, customs, and show respect for local traditions (unless directly connected to occult practices). Yet, in most cases, we ignore our own national and cultural context. Evangelical churches in Ukraine often take a critical and confrontational stance toward Orthodox traditions. Fifteen years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine a church celebration without criticism or opposition to how Orthodox believers celebrated the same events. However, careful study of our context showed that most people in our society are nominal Christians, and their connection to Orthodoxy is primarily cultural, rooted in tradition, national identity, and ancestral faith. When we directly !ght against such Orthodoxy, we are in fact attacking people’s culture and traditions. No missionary would treat another culture this way, yet we often do exactly that. It is therefore unsurprising that people respond defensively and with hostility. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that our church subculture often re)ects Western forms and styles of Christianity more than expressions familiar within our own country. As a result, we are perceived as culturally foreign, Western or American. 164

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For this reason, I began studying Orthodoxy more deeply in order to understand its feasts and traditions, and then applied principles of contextualization to Orthodox culture. This approach produced tangible results. For example, at the beginning of the full-scale war, when we began providing humanitarian aid, many culturally Orthodox people started coming to us. I adopted several guiding principles: 1. We do not criticize Orthodoxy or any other confessions, denominations, or churches, nor do we position ourselves against others. 2. We explain everything that happens during the service in real time– why we pray, why we sing, and why these practices are meaningful and valuable. 3. We consistently emphasize that we do not preach religious exclusivity, but Jesus Christ, and call people to a personal relationship with Him. We openly state that we do not consider ourselves the only true church and do not pressure people to attend our congregation. I often say that the most important thing is faith in Christ and reconciliation with God, and that afterward, people are free to choose a church where they feel most at home. One of the most powerful cultural keys that opened doors was my use of the sign of the cross. Before communal prayer, I would explain that I was praying in my own words for God to bless Ukraine and stop the war, and that others could say “Amen” at the end as a sign of agreement. Then I invited those who wished to make the sign of the cross, explaining its deep symbolic meaning and the need to perform it with faith, humility, and reverence. I personally made the sign of the cross together with the people, saying: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Most people did this with genuine awe and respect. We also regularly pray the Lord’s Prayer together. This approach helps people overcome prejudice and false assumptions about evangelical Christians. By using familiar cultural forms, we are 165

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able to proclaim Christ in a language they understand. As a result, the people of our district began to recognize our spiritual authority. I also came to see parish-style church life in a new light, something I previously viewed negatively. Having recognized us as a genuine Christian church rather than a sect, people began attending as parishioners. They started coming to services and events, confessing sins, or simply asking for prayer- even before conversion. God raised our spiritual authority in their eyes, and they began turning to us with spiritual needs. This is only an intermediate stage, as we understand that true spiritual rebirth is essential. Gradually, some of these parishioners repent, come to faith, and are baptized. At present, many people regularly attend Sunday services speci!cally for worship (we do not distribute humanitarian aid on Sundays). We see this as an expansion of our church’s in)uence within society, grounded in openness and contextualization within a nominally Orthodox culture. SOME OTHER CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED ARE:

• Immaturity – I thought I was planting a church, but sometimes it feels more like a kindergarten. Immaturity is di&cult to shepherd. • Culture – Building culture is another ongoing challenge. Culture is shaped not only by what we intentionally teach, but also by what we allow to develop unchecked. Even though we emphasize openness, there is always a danger of drifting toward closedness, and this requires constant attention. • Burnout – Leader burnout remains a persistent threat, especially during the war. • Youth – Another challenge is the lack of young people. Before the full-scale invasion, we were a church of young families. Many have left the country, and God has brought many elderly people instead. We love and accept everyone, but we still feel the absence of youth.

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New Converts – Additionally, believers joining us from other churches present unique di&culties. Issues with new converts often resolve as they mature, but deeply rooted theological or cultural frameworks brought from previous church experiences are much harder to change. OUR CHURCH PLANTING TEAM

Over the 11 years since the founding of Crossroads Church, the team has changed several times. The !rst team consisted of experienced missionaries and pastors. However, this experience also created many di&culties. These were people from di%erent denominations and di%erent countries. In my view, their professional backgrounds often hindered the team, because there was hardly a single meeting without disputes over vision, values, forms, and methods of ministry. Where there are too many leaders, there are sometimes too few people willing to roll up their sleeves and serve. This situation could not last long. Gradually, and without con)ict but for valid reasons, people began leaving the team until only three of us remained. Surprisingly, this brought great relief, as the constant arguments and endless discussions disappeared. It was during this time that I was ordained to pastoral ministry, and the second leadership team gradually formed. This period was very special, as our community, then consisting of about 20 members, was going through a formative stage. Most people in the church were those who had come to Christ through our ministry. We grew together and developed new leaders, who were later ordained to the diaconate. This took place during the COVID period, when our church gained unique experience that shaped some of our core values today. We experimented extensively with online services (livestreams, Zoom, chats), multiple service formats, outdoor services in the park near the sea, and renting worship space in other churches. Through practice, we came to understand clearly what the church is and what it is not. The church is not an organization, not a building, and not even a Sunday service. The church is a living organism, a community, and a family. What matters most is not what happens during services, but what happens between them. People are more important than programs. 167

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The second team was truly good, but it was not the !nal or best one. When the full-scale war began, about 50% of church members left the country, including most of the leadership team. We never judged those who left. From the beginning, I told everyone that those who sensed God’s leading and had the desire and the ability to evacuate were free to do so. We blessed both those who left and those who stayed. At that time, enemy forces were already near Mykolaiv, not far from Odesa, and we did not know how much time we had left. Some people left immediately. Others departed gradually over several months. This period became another unique leadership experience for me. When those in whom I had invested in for many years left, God began to raise up those who remained. These were people I had previously barely noticed, or had not seen as leaders at all. Yet it was precisely from among them that God formed our third team, which continues to serve to this day. Today, I can con!dently say that this is truly a dream team. With this team, we began ministry not only to internally displaced persons, but also to local vulnerable residents who were unable to evacuate. During the !rst months of the war, we prepared hot meals six days a week (we no longer serve meals, but continue providing food packages and bread). Every week for an entire year, we traveled to Mykolaiv delivering food and clean water. We conducted seven baptism services, during which approximately 60 people were baptized. The church grew from 20 to 70 members, and we planted a new daughter church. Work is currently underway to plant yet another church. All of this God accomplished through this leadership team. For the sake of honesty, it should be said that the new leaders I initially invited were not mature and lacked experience. However, they were faithful, sincere, and sacri!cial. God grew them in remarkable ways before my eyes. We now hold two leadership meetings each week, one technical planning meeting and one focused on spiritual formation and leadership growth. One of my key leadership decisions was to invite team members to leave their secular jobs and serve full-time with 168

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modest !nancial support. At the time, we had no money, but we had a dream and a strong vision. Over the course of the war, we ordained a new pastor and two deacons. Today, our team consists of six people, including myself: four brothers and two sisters. (Inviting women into the leadership team was itself a signi!cant challenge, as we belong to the Evangelical Baptist tradition, where this is uncommon.) OUR CHURCH-PLANTING MODEL AND VISION

In our current ministry context, we use the strategic model known as the Multisite Church. In order to understand what a multisite church is and how it functions, it is !rst necessary to answer a more fundamental question: why we choose this model. The answer lies primarily in two key realities: the importance of planting new churches, and the global processes of urbanization and globalization. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are entrusted with a central task given by Christ Himself, the Great Commission. The challenge, however, is that this commission is often misunderstood as a task for individual missionaries rather than for the church as a whole. In reality, the Great Commission is ful!lled through the church, and its measurable fruit is the expansion of the church among all peoples to the ends of the earth. Wherever disciples are made, churches are formed. Therefore, the proclamation of the Gospel leads to the emergence of disciples, and the emergence of disciples leads to the formation of churches. For this reason, church planting remains the most e%ective way of ful!lling God’s primary mission. At the same time, we live in a deeply globalized and urbanized world. Through the internet and mass media, a shared global culture is being formed. Music, cinema, fashion, sports, and lifestyle patterns increasingly transcend national, cultural, and religious boundaries. Young people across Europe, Asia, and the Muslim world often share the same cultural codes and external expressions. Alongside globalization, urbanization has had a tectonic impact on the world. Populations are rapidly moving from villages and small towns into large cities, leading

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to the emergence of massive megacities with populations not in the millions, but in the tens of millions. This reality has direct and strategic relevance to church planting. Urban mission is currently facing a serious crisis worldwide. Many missionary organizations avoid large cities and instead focus their e%orts on rural or provincial contexts, often far removed from the complex rhythms of urban life. This avoidance is understandable. Megacities are dense, broken environments marked by sin, crime, poverty, and moral fragmentation, and many missionaries lack the training and experience required for e%ective urban ministry. However, this makes urban mission critically important. Planting churches in rapidly growing cities must be a top priority. This is where the multisite church model becomes especially relevant. One of the greatest challenges of urban church planting is space. In large cities, it is nearly impossible to build a large church facility, and renting a suitable venue is often prohibitively expensive. This is a global problem in urban mission. The multisite church model o%ers a strategic solution. It is not a passing trend or fashionable innovation, but a practical and scalable response to real urban constraints. This model makes it possible to plant not just one church, but entire networks and movements of churches within a single city, across multiple cities, and even across countries. A multisite church, also referred to as a multi-location or multi-campus church, is a model that stands between the growth of a single megachurch and the classical planting of fully independent local churches. Instead of growing upward in size, the church grows outward in reach. It allows one church to gather in multiple locations while maintaining a uni!ed leadership team, shared vision, common culture, core values, and a single mission. In large cities, while large venues are di&cult to access, smaller spaces are often much easier to rent or purchase. A multisite church is therefore one church that meets in di%erent locations across the city, without fragmenting its identity or mission. Globally, multisite churches function in several ways. Some rely on a single sermon delivered online 170

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to all locations. Others involve the pastor preaching the same sermon in di%erent locations at di%erent times. A third model uses a preaching team that prepares sermon series together, with di%erent speakers delivering messages across locations. At Crossroads Church, we use a combined approach. Each location has its own worship and local preaching, followed by a pastoral sermon delivered online. Importantly, the pastoral sermon is not always preached by the senior pastor, in order to avoid the formation of a personality-centered culture. The senior pastor also regularly visits di%erent locations in person. Each location has its own local leader and team, and throughout the week, various groups and activities take place to cultivate genuine community life so that the church is not perceived merely as a Sunday gathering. Local leaders meet regularly for planning, coordination, and accountability. Additionally, several times a year depending on geography, all locations gather together for a shared large worship service in a rented conference venue. Alongside this structure, we operate within what we call a vision framework. Today, our vision is expressed as follows: “Crossroads Church exists to multiply open churches at the center of which are the Gospel, acceptance, and simplicity.” Our vision was born out of pain, the recognition that some churches become closed communities, unprepared to receive people who are far from church life. We dream of a movement of churches where the Gospel is central and where openness toward people is fundamental. Our vision is that Crossroads Church exists to multiply new churches centered on the Gospel, openness, and simplicity. Our mission is to form a multiplying movement of open churches that plant other open churches by developing disciples, leaders, and teams. Strategically, this means cultivating a healthy culture aligned with our vision and values, intentionally transmitting spiritual DNA, forming mature disciples and leaders, engaging in needs-oriented evangelism that combines Gospel proclamation with social ministry, developing small groups and support structures, and equipping believers for service. Our core values include a Gospel-centered focus, participation in God’s mission, contextualization without compromise, understand-

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ing the church as a family rather than an institution, sacri!cial generosity, and the use of healthy humor as a bridge for connection. Success is not measured by numbers, but by people feeling accepted, new believers coming to faith, disciples growing and serving, leaders and teams forming, and new church locations being planted. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

• One of the most important lessons I’ve learned concerns in)uence. As Anthony the Great once said, “Do not teach or o%er to others what you have not !rst ful!lled yourself.” I used to think that our words, or even our actions, were the primary source of in)uence. Today I understand that the deepest in)uence comes from character, from who we truly are. It is not enough to call oneself a servant or to appear as one, we must actually be a servant in essence. • Another key lesson is what I call “remember the 17 percent.” As Pimen the Great said, “Do not justify yourself, and you will !nd peace.” No matter how faithfully we serve, there will always be criticism. Over time, I realized that within any church community, people tend to fall into four groups: about 17% form the core, faithful people who trust and support you; 33% are active participants who agree with the vision and decisions; another 33% are neutral, following the majority without strong enthusiasm; and 17% are consistently opposed, dissatis!ed, critical, and resistant to vision and leadership. Trying to convince this last group is usually a waste of energy. If we focus on pleasing everyone, we risk losing those who genuinely support the mission. The lesson is to invest in those who share the vision and to accept criticism as an inevitable part of the journey. • I have also learned the necessity of stress management. Rest is not a luxury, it’s essential. Burnout is a real challenge for leaders worldwide, and I have faced it myself. For me, healthy 172

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leadership requires physical activity, proper nutrition, su&cient sleep, regular days o%, and intentional vacations. Without these, long-term ministry is impossible. • The church is not de!ned by what happens during services, but by what happens between them. The church must function like a trauma center, always open to help. When people fall or even leave the church, we remind ourselves that God is not !nished with them. Sometimes failure and distance are part of God’s formative work, what I call “discipleship through reality.” God may allow people to experience the consequences of their choices to reshape their character and values. One principle we often repeat is: “This is our brother. This is our sister.” Our church consists largely of !rst-generation believers, about 90% having come to Christ from outside the church. Growth happens at di%erent speeds, and we see the church as a hospital, not a showroom. As Jesus said, the sick need a physician. We are not perfect, but we understand the Gospel. QUESTIONS WE HAVE

• How do we balance active outreach to non-churched people with the discipleship of spiritual infants? • How do we discern what to delegate and what must remain our personal responsibility? • Am I holding onto tasks because they are truly part of my calling, or because of fear, control, or insecurity?

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CONCLUSION

In closing, I want to encourage a deep love for the Church. Recently, I have re)ected on the challenges of building an exclusively youth-oriented church. One potential danger lies in disconnecting from the biblical principle of honoring parents, the !fth commandment and the only one with a promise. When churches lack older generations, younger people never learn how to care for them. Over time, this breaks the generational cycle, and the promise loses its lived expression. Every youth church will eventually become an older church. If it refuses to embrace older generations, serve them, and live as one family, it moves toward decline. Therefore, my sincere wish is that we love God’s Church and cherish the unity, coexistence, and fellowship of di%erent generations who together form one spiritual family.

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CASE STUDY 5: PASTOR PETRO LOBOIKO WHO I AM

My name is Petro Loboiko. I’m the pastor of the Holy Trinity Church in the city of Kharkiv, and the founder and pastor of the Holy Trinity Church in the city of Izium. However, my story began long before my pastoral ministry. When I was seven years old, my mother came to faith and began regularly taking me and my sister to church services. From that time on, the church became an integral part of my life. Before my eyes, I had a living example of sincere and devoted service through my mother and my pastor. It was this example that ignited in my heart a desire to serve the Lord from an early age. My mother was a Sunday school teacher, and most of her students today are pastors. During my teenage years, I became involved in the planting of a new church near my village in the town of Krasnokutsk in the Kharkiv region. At the age of !fteen, I was baptized and enrolled in a Bible school. One day, while passing through Izium, I was genuinely surprised to learn that there was no church of our denomination in that city. From that moment on, a dream was born in my heart to one day plant a church there. In 2021, this dream turned into a clear vision and a deep inner calling. During that time, many important things happened in my life. I received my education and married a wonderful woman, we were blessed with three beautiful children, and I moved to Kharkiv and served as one of the pastors in a local, deeply blessed church. Then the full-scale war began. It brought not only destruction, loss, and pain, but also doubts about the correctness of my desires and the intentions that I believed the Lord had placed in my heart. Almost immediately, Izium was occupied by Russian forces. Yet after six months, by God’s mercy, Izium was liberated by the Ukrainian army. We began ministry in the city almost immediately after de-occupation. We went as a team to give people what they needed most: humanitarian aid, genuine human connection, and the Word of Hope. Today, when looking back on the 175

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road we have traveled, the terrifying events and the !rst gatherings are remembered less frequently. Yet all the present blessings are the fruit of those !rst small steps, the fruit of understanding the opportunities God provides and the barriers that help shape the right strategy. It is precisely this experience that I want to share with you. OUR CONTEXT

The city of Izium was under Russian occupation for approximately six months. After its liberation in September 2022, the city was left in an extremely di&cult situation. The occupation resulted in destroyed infrastructure, signi!cant civilian casualties, mass burial sites, and evidence of torture. The social and psychological consequences of the occupation were severe and a%ected nearly every family in the city. Following de-occupation, Izium began a gradual process of recovery. Reconstruction e%orts were launched with the support of the Ukrainian government, international humanitarian organizations, and local residents who began returning to their homes. Despite these efforts, the city continues to face major challenges, including damaged housing, disrupted utilities, limited access to resources, and the longterm psychological impact of war. This context shaped the environment in which ministry began. The needs of the population were primarily practical and humanitarian, alongside a deep need for emotional and spiritual support. The post-occupation reality required an approach that combined compassion, presence, and long-term commitment to the restoration of both individuals and the community as a whole. OUR CHURCH PLANTING PROCESS AND TEAM

After the liberation of Izium, for approximately six months we regularly visited the city with humanitarian aid, coming twice a week. We traveled to di%erent districts, bringing practical assistance, embracing people, praying with them, and often crying together. People began to open their hearts and share their stories. Many of them carried deep pain, trauma, and unanswered questions.

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Very often, people asked us how it was possible to forgive Putin when we spoke about God’s forgiveness and the need for a pure heart. They would say, “My heart is not clean. I hate Putin.” One woman told us that a single rocket had killed her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren. She carried unbearable pain and deep resentment. Her brother had been tortured to death before her eyes, which left her with serious psychological trauma. These were realities we had never encountered before in ministry. We also began working with internally displaced people. Many families moved to Izium even though the city remained under constant shelling. They were afraid to go farther because they had nowhere else to go. For many of them, the church became the only place of safety, hope, and human connection, a space where they could simply be themselves and be accepted. After several months, we were able to !nd a building where we could gather indoors rather than meeting on the streets. On February 25, 2023, we held our !rst worship service in that location. We consider this date to be the birthday of our church. Today, three years later, we have a facility that can host around 150 people. O&cially, the church has 34 members, but more than 100 people regularly attend worship services, and many continue to receive humanitarian assistance. In addition to weekly services, the church actively visits elderly people who are unable to leave their homes, providing them with practical help, food, and emotional support. At present, the church leadership includes myself as pastor, two ordained deacons, and one deaconess. We also have a Sunday school teacher, a cleaning team, and a hospitality ministry. We make every e%ort to welcome people warmly and to provide meals for those who come. Many of those who attend the church are mothers who have lost their sons, husbands, or brothers. They carry deep grief and emotional wounds. In the beginning, the pain was overwhelming, but over time we have seen real healing take place. Today, many of these women are beginning to smile again. Their journey has not been easy, but through consistent care, prayer, and community, hope has slowly returned. 177

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CHALLENGES WE’VE FACED

• At the very beginning, ministry was extremely di&cult. People were afraid to receive humanitarian aid. During the occupation, Russian soldiers had gathered people under the pretense of providing help, only to torture and beat them. They also threatened that if anyone accepted help from Ukrainians, they would be punished when the Russians returned. This created deep fear and mistrust. Many people were terri!ed even to approach us. • Another major challenge was existential fear. People asked painful questions: “How can a good God allow such su%ering?” These questions were not theoretical. They were born out of loss, trauma, and grief. • Basic survival needs often pushed spiritual matters into the background. People were focused on food, warmth, safety, and simply staying alive. • Many young and active residents had left the city, which weakened the community. Constant shelling destroyed any sense of stability and routine. Life was unpredictable, and fear was always present. LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED

Yet even in desperate circumstances, there were unexpected opportunities. Many people became more open to the Gospel because of deep spiritual searching. There was a strong need for community, care, and human connection. Because of limited employment, people had more time to talk, re)ect, and seek meaning. Internally displaced persons arrived from even more dangerous regions, and many soldiers also needed spiritual support and pastoral care.

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OUR STRATEGY IN OVERCOMING THESE BARRIERS WAS SIMPLE BUT INTENTIONAL:

1. First, we chose to serve before preaching. Practical help such as food, medicine, hygiene supplies, and basic repairs, came !rst, and only then the Word. 2. Second, we focused on presence, creating a safe space where people could talk, cry, pray, and simply be heard. 3. Third, we chose to be whole and open as a church, welcoming all wounded people regardless of their background or past. 4. And !nally, we responded to spiritual hunger where traditional religious structures had failed to provide care or hope. We did not begin with a building. We began with people. Our vision was not to create an institution, but to build a family growing together in Christ. For a long time, we searched for a place to gather. Eventually, we found one; an apartment building entrance. It did not look impressive, but Jesus also was not born in a palace. At !rst, we sat on boxes left from Russian ammunition until brothers from Romania blessed us with chairs. Throughout this entire journey, I clearly saw the hand of God and His mercy and faithfulness. Later, in the same building, we were able to purchase a neglected but spacious facility. Together, we began renovations, which are still ongoing. Today, we no longer gather in a hallway but in a clean and digni!ed space where people can worship safely. FOUR KEY STEPS HELPED US BECOME A CHURCH:

1. Evangelism through service and meeting people through humanitarian aid. 2. Building relationships through prayer, conversation, and pastoral care. 3. Forming a community through regular worship gatherings.

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4. Organizing and growing through an o&cial church formation process, baptisms, and active ministry. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the experience of the Izium church taught us several important lessons. Ministry always comes before preaching. Trust is built through actions, not words. Flexibility is essential for survival. Plans can change instantly due to shelling or danger, and that must be accepted. Sometimes, simply being present is already a ministry. Often, the most powerful thing we can do is to stand beside someone and pray with them.

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YOUR INVITATION TO JOIN THE MOVEMENT You have now traveled through thirty-one contexts, thirty-one sets of challenges, and thirty-one accounts of God’s faithfulness in ordinary, costly, unglamorous work. The planters who presented these case studies did not set out to produce a methodology. They set out to obey Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations. What emerged from that obedience — a rave ministry in Kyiv, a community farm in Cuba, a cell church in an Indianapolis prison, a neighborhood festival in a post-Communist German apartment block — could not have been predicted or packaged in advance. That is both the challenge and the invitation of this collection. The temptation, having read this far, is to identify the approach that resonates most and transplant it wholesale into your own setting. Resist that temptation. The pastors in these pages were not successful because they borrowed a model — they were faithful because they listened: to God, to their neighbors, and to the particular shape of need and opportunity in their place. The Brazilian pastor who intentionally chose an apartment building so he would have 392 neighboring families was not following a church planting template. He was paying attention. What can travel from these pages to your context is not a program but a posture. That posture includes a willingness to start smaller than you imagined and wait longer than you planned. It includes the courage to ask what your community actually needs rather than what you came prepared to o%er. It includes honesty about your own limitations — physical, relational, spiritual — and the humility to ask for help before a crisis arrives. It includes the conviction, stated quietly but powerfully in case after case, that prayer is not preparation for the work; prayer is the work.

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Some readers are already leading young church plants and will !nd in these stories companions for the journey — people who understand the exhaustion of setting up chairs every Sunday, the grief of losing a key team member, the quiet joy of a !rst baptism. Others are in established congregations wondering whether God might be stirring something new. Still others are denominational leaders or seminary educators, asking how to better support the men and women God is calling to reach their neighbors and see new churches emerge. Wherever you !nd yourself, the invitation is the same: take one or two ideas from these pages and ask, with genuine openness, whether and how they might serve the people God has placed around you. Not the whole model — one idea. Not immediately — prayerfully. Not alone — with others who share the calling. The planters in this book represent Czech cities, Brazilian favelas, Cuban countryside, American universities, German apartment blocks, and Ukrainian cities under !re. God is not limited to any of those contexts, and He is certainly not !nished with yours. These stories are not the whole story. They are an invitation to add your chapter. Begin where you are. Love the people in front of you. Trust God who calls and equips. The rest, as so many of these pages testify, He will provide.

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