By Ben Sternke pastor of Christ Church in Ft. Wayne, IN.
Christ Church’s mission is to join God in the renewal of all things by planting a network of missional communities in the neighborhoods and networks of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Doing church this way requires a foundation a discipling culture and a lot of leaders, so our first step in the process has been to simply spend time discipling people who will be leading missional communities and discipling others.
We have spent the first half of 2011 discipling leaders in Huddles and modeling missional community life as a church. This summer four new Huddles were started by people in our initial Huddle, and we are working toward launching 2-3 Missional Communities on September 25. We’ll be spending the rest of the summer strengthening the relational bonds of our core group of leaders (creating the “extended family” atmosphere MCs need), training our core leaders in relational mission so they can disciple others into this, and helping MC leaders clarify and hone their vision and start well.
It has been great to see the growth that has happened in people as they step out in mission and leadership. Those who have embraced the call to make disciples and join with Jesus in his mission are the ones who are bearing the most kingdom fruit, and it’s exciting to be able to part of equipping people to make disciples who can make disciples. We’re excited to see where God takes us this fall after we launch our MCs.