“There has to be more to life then this…Simply going to work, coming home,
and doing the same thing all over again!”
That’s the statement a neighbor of mine made as we sat on his back porch having burgers together. There are hundreds of thousands of people asking the same question, right here in Wichita, Kansas.
That’s why at West E. Free Church, our calling is to “multiply churches that multiply more churches to reach our county for Christ!”
Some might wonder if Wichita needs new churches. They ask questions like, “Isn’t Wichita in the Bible belt?” or “Aren’t there enough churches in Wichita already?” While Wichita is officially part of the Bible belt and there are lots of churches, there are still many people like my neighbor who don’t know Jesus. If you lived in Wichita and looked around at coworkers or neighbors you have relationships with, you would find most are far away from God. This is why we want to focus on our city as a place to plant churches.
There are contexts ranging from small towns, urban and suburban in Wichita and we are developing a strategy that addresses the needs for each unique cultural demographic. Our dream would be to plant at least one church a year over the next 20 years that is leading people far from God to a life of faith and spiritual transformation.
We are launching this initiative by offering a 1-year, pre launch residency for Church Planters. During this time, there would be partnership, training, salary, and core team development assistance on starting and multiplying a church that focuses on reaching people far from God.
If you might be interested in our initiative, please email your resume to churchplantingkansas@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and see how we might partner in the future to plant the gospel in Wichita.
You can check out what we are doing in depth at www.westefc.org/cp
One way to build relational bonds with the people who volunteer in your area, or the people that you are intentionally developing spiritually is using technology. I personally feel that the best discipleship environment is a small group or 3-4 running partners. That way, if the right culture is created in the group, the members of the group spur one another on even more than the leader could do alone. I find you really can’t spiritually develop people without face to face contact at least every couple of weeks. But Technology can significantly help bridge the gap relationally. Even as I was typing this, I got a prompting to shoot a text of encouragement to a guy I’m building into–it’s easy. But a lot of daily touches through text, email, skype, facetime can significantly increase your relational impact in people’s lives.