It was only back in September that I shared my enthusiasm over my attendance at the Church Multiplication Association (CMA) conference in Kansas. As I indicated, although relatively new on the scene, CMA has been a tremendous bright spot in the Church of God. Apart from the rapid, loosely-organized expansion in our early days the church planting efforts today coordinated through CMA have been the strongest ever. I can speak from personal experience of CMA's effectiveness, as we have several churches in our district that have been and are being planted with their assistance and guidance.
CMA's strengths have been in their visionary leadership and abundant financial resources. Robin Wood and Gary Kendall have done an amazing job of creating a system that develops not just more churches, but the right kind of churches. This has been fueled by an incredible amount of money that was being funded by some very prosperous and generous business people.
But, the economic downturn of the past year or so has changed much of this. The business interests of the well-heeled donors have been hit hard, in fact, so hard that the bulk of CMA's revenues of dried up. This has resulted in dramatic reduction of CMA staff, and elimination of funding support to its many new churches. Of course, this has halted the ongoing startup of new church plants, and the momentum and energy associated with that.
This should be of considerable concern to us, as church planting has demonstrated itself to be the most effective means for Kingdom expansion. Of course, we don't need CMA to plant churches, but the reality is that our track record for church planting outside of CMA has been far from stellar. What is needed is a culture of church multiplication that permeates our congregations. Ideally, all churches should be working strategically toward establishing new congregations within the varied people groups around them. For the most part this is not happening.
CMA's value to Church of God has not only been in the actual planting of new churches, but in reinvigorating this essential aspect of church growth within our movement. Of course, we could argue that Church of God Ministries should be leading the charge on this, and the Church Multiplication division, under John Newton, has tried their best; but limited funds, especially after the recent cutbacks, has hindered this further. Sadly, even their annual church planting bootcamp held at the North American Convention was canceled this year due to insufficient registrations.
Obviously, the matter of church planting and even the current state of CMA deserves our prayer attention. The future of church planting is closely linked with the future of the church itself.
CMA's strengths have been in their visionary leadership and abundant financial resources. Robin Wood and Gary Kendall have done an amazing job of creating a system that develops not just more churches, but the right kind of churches. This has been fueled by an incredible amount of money that was being funded by some very prosperous and generous business people.
But, the economic downturn of the past year or so has changed much of this. The business interests of the well-heeled donors have been hit hard, in fact, so hard that the bulk of CMA's revenues of dried up. This has resulted in dramatic reduction of CMA staff, and elimination of funding support to its many new churches. Of course, this has halted the ongoing startup of new church plants, and the momentum and energy associated with that.
This should be of considerable concern to us, as church planting has demonstrated itself to be the most effective means for Kingdom expansion. Of course, we don't need CMA to plant churches, but the reality is that our track record for church planting outside of CMA has been far from stellar. What is needed is a culture of church multiplication that permeates our congregations. Ideally, all churches should be working strategically toward establishing new congregations within the varied people groups around them. For the most part this is not happening.
CMA's value to Church of God has not only been in the actual planting of new churches, but in reinvigorating this essential aspect of church growth within our movement. Of course, we could argue that Church of God Ministries should be leading the charge on this, and the Church Multiplication division, under John Newton, has tried their best; but limited funds, especially after the recent cutbacks, has hindered this further. Sadly, even their annual church planting bootcamp held at the North American Convention was canceled this year due to insufficient registrations.
Obviously, the matter of church planting and even the current state of CMA deserves our prayer attention. The future of church planting is closely linked with the future of the church itself.
