We’ve all heard the proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”

I have always known this to be wise advice, but I have never experienced it to be truer than when I started working with youth. 

In our desire to see the next generation of Christ followers raised up, we began to experience that it always takes more than evangelism and discipleship to see someone truly surrender to Jesus. Yes, building relationships and trust is absolutely necessary, good gospel presentations are important, and discipleship is an essential vessel to growth… but none of these things alone could solve the problems that were haunting our students each day. 

Getting students to a Bible study felt almost irrelevant when they were on the verge of expulsion from school because of low attendance and needed groceries at home because they didn’t have enough for two meals a day. 

A gospel presentation could get them to pray a prayer to Jesus, but it wasn’t keeping them from getting in fights every other week which led to suspensions every month. 

Doing weekly discipleship got our students in the Word, but it wasn’t helping them get hired at jobs to make enough money to meet their basic high school needs because they didn’t have any financial support from family. And all of this also meant that graduating from high school was going to be almost impossible to accomplish with the challenge of getting to school every day, not getting suspended or expelled, and completing everything they needed to in order to be successful. 

We know the gospel is powerful and transformative! But we were experiencing a lack of transformation that could actually help our students graduate and enter into the world as functioning adults. We weren’t seeing the transformation that could break cycles of poverty and joblessness and change the trajectory of an entire family.

Making whole-life disciples

When we are working with students, we are actually working with a web of life complexities that interplay with each other and affect the person as a whole. The way I often talk about it with adults is that we want to develop whole people, our mentorship has to be “whole-life discipleship,” developing students who are physically, mentally, emotionally, socially AND spiritually strong. What that means is, it’s not enough to focus on one of these areas solely. 

But as a minister of the gospel, my natural bent and desire is to pour into the spiritual aspects of their lives; to introduce them to the one who makes broken things beautiful, redeems them, and restores all of creation to the way it was meant to be. I want to make disciples who will follow Jesus for a lifetime. And yet, to be faithful to our calling to these precious ones entrusted to us, we must be committed to the flourishing of all the parts of their lives, not just the spiritual ones. 

So while we’re teaching them to be dependent on Jesus through prayer, we also need to teach them how to have a boundary within an unhealthy parent relationship while still honoring them. While they’re learning how to spend time with Jesus in the secret place, they also need to learn how to interact with people in a professional setting, learning soft skills like eye contact, greeting people, and asking good questions. While they’re reading and studying the life of Jesus in the gospels, we need to also make sure they are creating resumes and learning how to interview so that they can be hirable and able to work hard and follow through with commitments even when it’s hard. And this is where Kingdom eco-systems are birthed and cultivated: we can’t do whole-life discipleship well by ourselves. It’s not possible to be the one who can develop a young disciple physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually on our own!

Humility, partnership and collaboration

In our humanness, we love to be “the sole discipler.” What I mean by that is when our students are asked who has impacted their lives the most, we love to be the one they share about. But these students don’t belong to us alone and interdependent relationships can only happen when we acknowledge that it takes much more than just me and my gifts to make healthy disciples. 

Making disciples is a mandate from scripture. But to make disciples within a Kingdom eco-system, we have to take our independent heroism out of it. We have to begin to see our work and mission within an interconnected network of relationships that all serve the purpose of making whole-life disciples who can change the trajectory of families and communities. 

This is going to require a posture of partnership and good partnership only happens in relationship. It will be the collaboration of several churches, para-churches, and lay ministry leaders partnering together to pursue, equip, and mentor youth that creates a Kingdom eco-system. 

It will be the contribution of local business owners, entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, and artists that expand the eco-system and help train the next generation of the workforce doing excellent work that is a part of the mission of God, pushing back against the fall, and contributing to the flourishing of humanity. 

It takes redistributing resources and connections to open up relationships that will impact our students in all areas of their development. As our students cultivate relationships within our networks, and get trained and poured into by people leading well in every sector, their world is opened up in ways it would not have been if it was just a singular discipler or church. This is the power of a Kingdom eco-system.

What this looks like for us

We lead an organization that works with under-resourced youth called AZ Reach. We are on campus at a few under-resourced high schools as a civic organization running support programs to come alongside students and the administration at these schools.

The student support team calls us their “teammates.” All of our staff and volunteers working with students are a part of local churches because we know the power of healthy adults who love Jesus, mentor students, and create natural pathways to faith communities. 

We had a student transfer into one of our schools and she got connected to every program we lead, as a result she began to follow Jesus and now goes to our church, leads in youth ministry, and started a justice and advocacy group on campus. 

We want AZ Reach to be a platform where churches can wrap their arms around local public schools, students, and teachers! 

We also pastor a church plant and we own and operate a coffee shop that our church meets out of on Sundays. We do an internship where students work at the coffee shop to learn soft skills. As an intern in that program, you have mandatory professional development and work readiness training where they’re doing resume building, character development, professionalism, and soft skills and also assessments to learn more about who they are as they decide what they want to do with their lives in the future. Those workshops are led by volunteers from other churches in our city who partner with us. 

Our volunteer teams are staffed with people from churches in the community, close to the schools they serve at. Many of our students have the grit and drive to make money, but not training or knowledge to make it happen. 

So, we started leading a young entrepreneurs program for students to learn how to start a business, financial literacy, branding, marketing, etc. We pay them for each session so that it’s like a real internship and they get to meet with local business owners each week to ask questions and learn from a real entrepreneur’s journey. In our six-week faith and work internship, we partnered with two other parachurches to do theological training on vocation and also work experience in different sectors of labor. 

We partner with businesses and organizations for our students to get work experience with them. A group of artists and non-profits in the community have helped us raise money to give scholarships to seniors headed off to trade school or college. We got to give a chunk of money for school to eight seniors, investing in this next season of their lives. 

We have Young Life staff who are members at our church, making it possible to introduce many of the students to them. This past spring, we watched a senior student who we have mentored since he was a freshman and not connected to faith at all, teach a Bible lesson to the Young Life group. We started an apprenticeship program in collaboration with another non-profit working with youth to develop youth workers who will raise up the next generation. They’ll go through a year of deep discipleship, formation, and practicum hours serving youth in both our organizations. 

Almost everything we touch is in collaboration and partnership with someone else because we’ve seen the life-changing impact of working in interconnected Kingdom eco-systems. My prayer is that you begin to cultivate the collaborative soil of partnership where the rich environment of transformation begins to take root. It takes a village, friends. 

Exponential NEXT Podcast Episode 122

Series: Urban Missions 101: Why America’s Cities Need Missionaries Too

Description:

What does it take to sustain ministry in today’s cities? In this two-part conversation, Dhati Lewis is joined by James Hobson and Pete Contreras to explore the realities of urban mission beyond traditional ministry models. From entrepreneurship, nonprofits, and creative funding strategies to serving across multiple ministry contexts at once, they discuss why many urban leaders are embracing a both/and approach to ministry. These episodes offer a candid look at the challenges, opportunities, and mindset shifts required to build lasting Gospel impact in the city.

This conversation is part of a collaboration between Exponential NEXT and MyBLVD, working together to equip and encourage leaders serving on mission in cities across the country.

Host:

Dhati Lewis – Urban Missions NEXT, Director

Guests:

James Hobson – Hill City Community Church (Lynchburg), Pastor

Pete Contreras – New Vision Church (San Diego), Pastor

Category: Urban Missions NEXT

Then they take the risk of doing something about it.

They rarely arrive with a perfect plan. Most of them are still refining their model, building their team, raising funding, and learning as they go. But they possess something every movement needs at the beginning: a deep conviction that the future can be different. That is what a pioneer leader looks like.

Exponential NEXT Ventures Shark Tank was created for them.

It would be easy to think of Shark Tank as a ministry competition. Leaders make presentations. Judges ask questions. Projects are evaluated and grant dollars are awarded.

But the pitch is not the point.

Funding matters, but the money is not the finish line. Shark Tank exists to help us discover courageous leaders, strengthen their ideas, connect them with people who can help, and invest in their ministry ventures that have the potential to shape the future of the church.

We evaluate the projects through six primary lenses: innovation, impact, sustainability, scalability, diversity, and transferability. In other words: Is this addressing a real problem in a new or creative way? Is it producing meaningful fruit? Can it continue? Could it grow beyond one leader? Does it help us reach people and communities that are often overlooked?

Can other churches and leaders learn from it?

We are not searching for the leader who delivers the slickest presentation. We are looking for faithful practitioners who are taking action, learning in the trenches, and finding new ways to multiply the mission of Jesus.

Twelve remarkable projects have been invited to participate in this year’s Shark Tank experience. The event will take place on Sept. 29 and 30 at The Church of Elven22 in Jacksonville, Florida. Each project is unique and contributes to the group’s overall appeal. 

Below, you will find a summary and a link for each of these 12 projects. 

Meet the 2026 NEXT Ventures Shark Tank Projects

Break Free Ministries

Project leader: Michael Swalley
Website: Break Free Ministries

Break Free Ministries is stepping into global Hip-Hop communities with a vision to see gospel-centered microchurches planted from within the culture. Michael Swalley and his team equip artists, dancers, and cultural influencers to become everyday missionaries who make disciples and form local “Fire Teams.” At the heart of the ministry is a desire to address father wounds, rebuild men through their identity in Christ, strengthen families, and release indigenous leaders who can multiply the church through their existing relationships and networks. 

Discipology

Project leaders: Peyton Jones and Kris Langham
Website: Discipology

Discipology is building a practical disciple-making system for everyday believers. Through scripture, audio teaching, daily assignments, relational interaction, and a clear invitation to bring another person along, the platform moves discipleship beyond consuming information and into active obedience. Peyton Jones and Kris Langham are working to give individuals and entire churches a simple, reproducible pathway for making disciples the way Jesus did — disciples who are equipped from the beginning to make more disciples. 

Front Porch Church

Project leader: Rick Bolle
Project page: Front Porch Church

Front Porch Church is a church expression intentionally created for people of all abilities and their families. Its mission is to help people of all abilities find their way back to God through a worshiping community where everyone is seen, valued, heard, and loved. Rick Bolle often says that at Front Porch Church there are “no distractions, only interactions.” The larger vision includes creating a permanent environment where worship, meaningful employment, family support, community programs, and genuine belonging can exist together. 

Grace Bomb

Project leader: Patrick Linnell
Website: Grace Bomb

Grace Bomb helps ordinary Christians build the habit of surprising their neighbors with generous acts of love motivated by Jesus. Participants listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit, respond with a gift of their time, money, or expertise, and leave behind a simple card explaining the source of that kindness. Patrick Linnell and the Grace Bomb team are working to mobilize one million believers to make unexpected generosity a normal expression of life on mission. 

Kaleo AI

Project leader: Aidan Britnell
Website: Kaleo AI

Kaleo AI is removing language and hearing barriers from the worship gathering through real-time translation and captioning. The technology is trained to understand theological language, biblical names, and the vocabulary commonly used in churches. Attendees can scan a QR code and listen to or read a service in their preferred language without the church purchasing expensive equipment or building a large translation team. Aidan Britnell and Kaleo AI are working toward a future in which one gospel message can be understood by every person in the room. 

Kamp Love

Project leader: Austin Rockwell
Website: Kamp Love

Kamp Love is a college ministry built around camping, connection, community, and Christ. Through weekend retreats, campus communities, discipleship groups, and local church partnerships, college students are invited to encounter Jesus, discover their gifts, build meaningful relationships, and live missionally on their campuses. Austin Rockwell and the Kamp Love team are pursuing an aggressive multiplication vision: 100 Kamp Loves, 100 universities, 100 local church partnerships, and a presence in five countries. 

MicroChurch Residency

Project leader: Rodrigo Cano
Website: MicroChurch Residency

MicroChurch Residency builds on the growing microchurch movement led by Rodrigo Cano and Community Christian Church in Chicagoland. Their microchurches are smaller but full expressions of the church, generally consisting of 10 to 50 people meeting in homes, public spaces, and online. The initiative identifies, equips, empowers, and sends leaders to reach people within their own circles of influence. The residency project is working to strengthen that leadership pipeline, providing deeper formation, coaching, and practical experience so more leaders can launch microchurches that thrive and reproduce. Their goal is to mobilize a movement of microchurches in each one of the 77 neighborhoods of Chicago, 100 suburbs of Chicagoland, and around the world. 

MyBLVD

Project leader: Dhati Lewis
Website: MyBLVD

MyBLVD is a family of urban missionaries committed to making an impact where they live, work, and worship. Dhati Lewis and his team bring together poets, pastors, practitioners, and polymaths and surround them with contextualized training, coaching, relationships, and resources. Their larger vision includes establishing City HUBs that equip urban leaders to make disciples, start and strengthen churches and ministries, and bring a tangible expression of the gospel to majority-minority communities across North America. 

OneChurch.io

Project leader: James Donley
Website: OneChurch.io

OneChurch.io is building digital infrastructure for a more connected and unified church. The platform allows churches, ministries, nonprofits, and individual believers within a city or region to share events, identify community services, mobilize volunteers, coordinate prayer, and collaborate across organizational and denominational lines. James Donley and his team are working to replace isolated effort and competing calendars with a shared ecosystem in which local faith communities can move together on a common mission. 

Pool Church

Project leader: Michael Hewitt
Website: Pool Church

Pool Church is stepping directly into billiards culture and turning pool tables into platforms for disciple-making. Through artistic trick shots, tournaments, digital content, podcasts, leagues, mission trips, and relational gatherings, Michael Hewitt and his team are building community with people who may never enter a traditional church. Their larger vision is to use technology and local leaders to multiply micro-expressions of the church in pool halls, bars, recovery centers, community spaces, and homes around the world. 

Seeds of Change Network

Project leader: Doug Beutler
Website: Seeds of Change

Seeds of Change Network invests in pastors and leaders of smaller churches, particularly churches that have plateaued or are experiencing decline. Doug Beutler understands that these pastors are often serving with limited resources and little relational support, even though their churches remain deeply connected to their communities. Seeds of Change surrounds them with encouragement, coaching, practical training, and a renewed focus on disciple-making. The goal is not simply to help small churches survive, but to help them become healthy, multiplying churches that make disciples across generations. 

The Zebulun Initiative

Project leader: Dino Rosato
Website: Zebulun

The Zebulun Initiative is a marketplace ministry and church-planting model built around a network of barbershops. Dino Rosato has watched employees, customers, former gang members, people recovering from addiction, and individuals far from God encounter Jesus through relationships formed inside the shops. The model creates a pathway in which people can be discipled, trained as barbers, developed as leaders, and eventually released as franchise owners, bi-vocational pastors, and church planters. The vision is to multiply barbershops that function as places of employment, spiritual formation, community transformation, and new church formation. 

A Picture of the Future Church

What do Hip-Hop communities, college campuses, barbershops, billiard rooms, small churches, multilingual worshipers, urban neighborhoods, and families affected by disability have in common?

They are all mission fields. They are places filled with people God loves. 

They are also reminders that the church cannot depend on one model to reach every person. We still need healthy prevailing model churches. We also need more new church plants. We also need microchurches, marketplace ministries, digital platforms, campus movements, accessible worshiping communities, and expressions of the church we may not have language for yet.

Not because everything old is broken. And not because everything new is automatically better.

We need them because there are people our current expressions of church are not reaching.

These 12 ventures are not finished products. They still have questions to answer, systems to build, leaders to raise up, and lessons to learn.

That does not concern me. That is what pioneering work looks like.

The future church is not being created on a white board or in a conference room somewhere. It is already emerging on college campuses, inside neighborhood barbershops, around pool tables, within Hip-Hop communities, and through ordinary believers willing to surprise their neighbors with the love of Jesus.

Shark Tank gives us a front-row seat to see the new things God is doing.

It allows us to recognize the pioneers, test the ideas, invest in what is working, and surround courageous leaders with friends on mission who want to help win.

The map is not complete, but these mapmakers are already taking new ground!

Networks of churches collaboratively multiply churches together because the leaders who represent the churches in the network, believe everything they have – spiritual leadership, church leaders, attenders and members, financial resources, and church credibility – all come from God.

As Kingdom-over-castle leaders, they lean into the principle they teach their congregants: they are stewards of the “talents” Jesus has given them, and they will not bury them in the sand. Instead they will invest them into the Kingdom of God. To make this discipline memorable for all of us, we’re going to call these talents: Prayer, People, Pennies, and Platform.

Prayer: The Heartbeat of A Network

Every movement begins with prayer because prayer aligns us with God’s heart for our cities, regions, and affinity group to which we’re called. For a network, prayer is not a warm‑up activity or a spiritual accessory – it is the engine of everything we do.

Networks that plant together, pray together.

Each network commits to regular rhythms of prayer – pastors praying for one another, teams praying for their communities, and churches praying for new churches to be planted. When networks gather, prayer is not the opening or closing; it is the work.

Networks pray specifically for multiplication.

Networks pray for new leaders, new churches, new networks, and new opportunities to bless our neighborhoods. We pray for the spiritual soil of communities to soften. We pray for unity across denominations, networks, collectives, cultures, and traditions.

Networks that pray together, depend upon God together.

Prayer creates humility. It creates expectancy. It creates a shared dependence that keeps us from drifting into self‑reliance or competition. Prayer provides the humble, Kingdom-over-castle adhesive that holds the Network together as we depend upon God together.

People: The Multipliers of A Network

As friends on mission, a network embraces the practice of sharing one of its most valuable resources: people. Every church planter or church plant desperately needs healthy leaders, disciples who excavate the soil, for a new, potential church to take root.   

Sending people collaboratively requires trust. 

We don’t like to dictate the specific size of a network. But strategically, a network of 3–6 churches is very helpful. A network of 3-6 churches is small enough to stay relational and large enough to be catalytic. They learn together, experiment together, and plant churches together. The size of the network makes it easier to identify church planters, disciples, and leaders to be launched collaboratively. 

We invest in disciples and leaders, not just churches.

Multiplication doesn’t just happen because a network meets. It happens by intentionally making disciples and developing leaders. So, as a collaborative network, we focus on identifying, developing, and empowering leaders at every level, in every church in the network – planters, pastors, residents, apprentices, and everyday disciples. In order for them to be sent out to start a new church. 

Networks increase diversity.

A Network of multiple churches increases the chance of diverse models and diverse leaders. One church might not have a diverse multiplication strategy, but a group of churches might. One church might not have a diverse group of leaders, but a small group of churches? Likely. Networks diversify the impact, the approach, and the types of churches planted. 

Pennies: The Mustard Seeds of A Network

Pennies were discontinued by the U.S. Treasury, but I bet if a Network had enough of them, a church planter would take them. But this “P” isn’t just about money, it’s about taking a look at a network’s collective assets. 

Maybe one church has a sound board and another has a training platform and another church has a part-time staff member who could work for the new church plant to become full-time between the two churches. There are a variety of ways a network can partner with “Pennies.” 

Each church in the Network contributes.

To be clear, if a church is in a network, they are ready to invest with the resources they have. Again, it may not be monetary every time, but they are asking the hard questions of what they can give. The amount is not the point; participation is. Equal sacrifice, not equal giving. 

We pool resources for greater impact.

We know no single church can fund a multiplication movement in any city or region or to reach a people group. It requires a John 17 movement of unified churches, working together to support church planters, training environments, residencies, and regional initiatives. Pooling our pennies together helps create capacity.

We practice transparency, simplicity, and generosity.

Financial systems are kept clean, simple, and accountable. Churches know where their investment goes and how it fuels multiplication. Generosity is contagious. When pastors model it, churches follow. When churches model it, networks flourish. When networks model it, the collective grows.

Platform: The Influence of A Network

I think we all know how valuable it is to have a church “send” you out as a church planter. What if 3 churches did it? Or 6? What if they collaborated together to tell your story, pray over you, commission you and invite others to join you? Churches leveraging their “platforms” for Kingdom multiplication, that feels like a clear answer to Jesus’ Prayer in John 17. 

We amplify stories.

When a network is generous with their individual church platforms, it allows us to tell the stories of what God is doing across the region – new churches launched, leaders raised up, communities transformed. Stories inspire faith and invite others to join. This simple discipline will help disciple our churches towards multiplication. 

We represent a unified presence in the city.

When multiple churches link arms under a shared identity, the city notices. Civic leaders, nonprofit partners, and other churches see a movement that is bigger than any one congregation. And not to keep beating a drum, Jesus even said “…so that the world may believe…” (John 17:21b NIV). When churches collaborate in a network, it is a literal witness to those who are far from God. 

We clarify the mission.

Platform is not about brand – it’s about shared mission expressed with clarity and strength. We become less, so Jesus can become more. We take the focus off ourselves and our own platforms and we make our platform the mission. We give away our influence to others and Jesus is glorified for the sake of our cities. 

Why the 4P’s Matter

A network is not a program or a hierarchy. A network is a small group of churches that become friends on mission to multiply healthy disciple-making churches together. The 4P’s give us simple, reproducible practices that keep us aligned and moving forward.

• Prayer keeps us dependent.
• People keep us relational.
• Pennies keep us invested.
• Platform keeps us unified and humble.

When these four practices work together, networks multiply churches together. When networks multiply churches together, God gets the credit. This is how we believe God will saturate the U.S. with the gospel – not through one church, but through many churches working together as one family on mission.

Exponential NEXT Podcast Episode 121

Series: Urban Missions 101: Why America’s Cities Need Missionaries Too

Description:

Dhati Lewis and Dale Huntington explore what it means to lead where you live, work, and worship. From neighborhood discipleship to navigating violence, addiction, and broken systems, this episode highlights the depth and complexity of hyperlocal ministry.

This conversation is part of a collaboration between Exponential NEXT and MyBLVD, working together to equip and encourage leaders serving on mission in cities across the country.

Host:

Dhati Lewis – Urban Missions NEXT, Director

Guest:

Dale Huntington – City Life Church (San Diego), Pastor

Category: Urban Missions NEXT

They have helped restore biblical convictions that had been neglected in significant sectors of the church: that every believer can make disciples, that multiplication is God’s pattern for advancing His Kingdom, and that indigenous leaders should lead indigenous movements. 

Along the way, they have reignited the church’s passion for prayer, renewed its sense of urgency for participation in the mission of God, and demonstrated the extraordinary fruit that results when disciples make disciples and churches multiply.

As David Williams observes:

“At the heart of DMM thinking lies a passionate desire to see many people come to faith in Jesus Christ. This urgency is reflected in the language of ‘rapid multiplication’ and ‘quick spread’ used to define these movements.”²

The fruit speaks for itself. Millions have come to Christ. Hundreds of thousands of churches have been planted across the globe.

The question is not whether DMMs and CPMs remain effective. They clearly do. Rather, the global realities of the 21st century make it imperative that we build upon their remarkable success by recovering an equally biblical and indispensable ecclesiological truth that has too often been assumed rather than intentionally pursued.

Beyond Multiplication

DMMs and CPMs answered one of the defining missiological questions of the late 20th century: How do we make disciples and plant churches that multiply? 

The defining ecclesiological question of the 21st century is equally urgent: What kind of churches are we multiplying? 

Think about it:

• Disciple-making multiplies disciples. 
• Church planting multiplies churches. 
• Intentional reconciliation forms healthy multiethnic, intercultural, and economically diverse churches. 

Each is essential. Together, they represent complementary expressions of the church’s mission, not competing priorities. Without all three, our understanding and practice of the church’s mission remains incomplete.

To be clear, the New Testament’s vision for the local church extends beyond multiplied disciples. It anticipates reconciling churches in which people from diverse ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds are united as one body through the cross. Indeed, Paul does not merely celebrate that Jews and Gentiles have individually found salvation. He declares that Christ has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility, creating one new humanity that is joined together as “a holy temple in the Lord… being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:14–15, 21–22).

The miracle is not only that people from different backgrounds are reconciled to God through Christ. The fullness of the miracle is revealed as they are reconciled to one another. Together, they become a visible and compelling witness to the reconciling power of the gospel, providing the world with a foretaste of the Kingdom in which people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation worship Christ as one (Revelation 5:9; 7:9).

For too long, the prevailing assumption has been that as people come to Christ and mature in discipleship, reconciliation across human differences will naturally emerge in the churches they plant. Experience suggests otherwise. Nearly twenty years ago, Dr. Gary McIntosh, President of the Church Growth Network, explained:

“Rather than expecting nonbelievers to change their biases prior to accepting Christ, leaders in the Church Growth Movement felt that after people became believers in Christ and were filled with the Holy Spirit, they would grow in their understanding that churches should become multiethnic wherever possible. This lofty hope, however, has gone largely unfulfilled.”3

Like disciple-making and church planting themselves, reconciling churches that are multiethnic, intercultural, and economically diverse do not emerge by accident. They flourish where they are intentionally cultivated. 

To be sure, many churches already reflect demographic diversity. Yet diversity alone is not the biblical objective. Too often, diverse people are expected to assimilate into the culture, leadership, values, and practices of a dominant group. Far less common are churches intentionally structured to accommodate, empower, and share leadership responsibilities across cultures as one body in Christ.

Intentional Reconciliation

By intentional reconciliation I mean the deliberate formation of churches in which men and women of varying backgrounds walk, work, and worship Christ together as one. The goal is not demographic diversity as an end in itself, but churches that intentionally pursue and embody the reconciling purposes of God, whether from their inception or from the moment this vision is embraced.

In partnership with the Holy Spirit, the local church should intentionally pursue what Christ accomplished on the cross: the reconciliation of those whom the world has long kept apart. This vision does not reject contextualization. It completes it by giving it a larger ecclesiological horizon, recognizing that the goal is not merely contextualized disciples, but healthy multiethnic and intercultural churches that visibly display the power of the gospel to transcend the distinctions of this world that otherwise divide us.

This vision must be sown from the moment of conversion, cultivated through basic discipleship, reinforced in leadership development, and reflected in churches that are planted and multiplied. Healthy churches rarely become what was never planted in their DNA. This is not a departure from disciple-making. It is its ecclesiological fulfillment.

Around the world, many churches remain divided by tribe, ethnicity, language, caste, economics, or history. Some of these realities are understandable. Language matters. Geography matters. Context matters. Homogeneous church planting may be an appropriate starting point where language, geography, persecution, or culture require it. It should not become the assumed destination if the collective church is to advance a credible and compelling witness to the gospel.

Some may argue that if reconciliation is truly God’s will, it will naturally emerge wherever disciples are made. The same could be said of disciple-making and church planting. Yet no movement leader would conclude that God’s sovereignty eliminates the need for intentional disciple-making or church planting. Rather, throughout Scripture God accomplishes His purposes through the faithful obedience of His people. If Christ intentionally created one new humanity through the cross, then we should be equally intentional about forming churches that visibly reflect that reality.

To be clear, this reconciliation is not limited to ethnicity or culture.

Wherever the fall has erected dividing walls, the gospel calls the local church to become a living demonstration that those walls no longer define our identity. In some places those walls are ethnic or linguistic. In others they are tribal, caste-based, economic, political, educational, or generational. Even within an otherwise homogeneous tribe or village there are often those with influence and those without, those who own land and those who work it, those living with disability and those pushed to the margins. The particular walls vary from culture to culture, but the mission remains the same.

Christ broke down the dividing walls. The church is called to make that reconciliation visible.

Ultimately, it’s a question of gospel credibility.

A Compelling Witness

Consider how our ecclesiology might appear to those who do not know Christ. In the ancient world, every nation was understood to have its own gods. The Egyptians had theirs. The Hittites had theirs. The Babylonians had theirs.

When Christians remain unnecessarily separated along ethnic, tribal, or linguistic lines, an outsider might reasonably perceive something similar:

• Every tribe has its church.
• Every ethnicity has its church. 
• Every language has its church. 

To the watching world, then, perhaps each has its own god. Yet we proclaim one God who loves all people and one Savior who died to make us one. When the visible expression of the church fails to reflect that proclamation, the credibility of our gospel witness is diminished.

The New Testament presents a radically different vision.

The Church is not merely a collection of homogeneous local congregations existing peacefully alongside one another. It is the visible demonstration that Christ has already accomplished what the world still believes impossible.

An increasingly diverse and interconnected world struggles to find credible a message of God’s love for all people proclaimed from unnecessarily separated pulpits and pews. Our collective witness is strengthened whenever the church visibly embodies the reconciling power of the gospel it proclaims.

Today, more than at any other time in history, the opportunities for greater reconciliation have expanded dramatically. Migration, urbanization, refugee movements, and globalization have brought people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation into unprecedented proximity. Increasingly, our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and cities reflect the diversity of the nations themselves. Local churches therefore have an unprecedented opportunity not merely to proclaim reconciliation, but to embody it. If our ecclesiology does not keep pace with this reality, we risk offering a fragmented witness to a world searching for hope, belonging, and peace.

The book of Acts reveals a clear trajectory. The church begins in Jerusalem, finds a fuller expression of its reconciling identity in Antioch, and points ultimately toward the gathered Church of Revelation, where people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation worship Christ as one. Wherever contextual realities genuinely prevent that expression, such circumstances should be regarded as exceptions to be navigated rather than the ideal to be embraced. In doing so, our churches visibly proclaim God’s redemptive purpose to create one new humanity in Christ.

To be clear, this is not a Western strategy to be exported. It is a biblical vision to be faithfully embodied within every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

The Next Great Recovery

The 20th century witnessed a remarkable recovery of intentional disciple-making and church multiplication. The 21st century must build upon that recovery by giving equal intentionality to reconciliation. Indeed, the next great advance of global missions may result from planting and multiplying churches that increasingly become living demonstrations of Christ’s prayer in John 17: “that they may all be truly one… so that the world may believe.”

When a world at war sees a people at peace, it will run to the local church, not from it.

NOTES

1 “Disciple Making Movements (DMMs) have gained significant attention in recent years as a missional approach aimed at rapid and widespread gospel growth. These movements, rooted in the tradition of Protestant missiology pioneered by figures like Roland Allen and Donald McGavran, emphasize the multiplication of disciples who make disciples, leading to the rapid planting of indigenous churches.” David Williams: Disciple Making Movements: Applying a Faithful Balance. See https://lausanne.org/global-analysis/disciple-making-movements-applying-a-faithful-balance (September 2024).

2 Ibid.

3 Mark DeYmaz. Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate and Commitments of a Diverse Congregation. (San Francisco: Wiley, 2007, p. 62). 

Exponential NEXT Podcast Episode 120

Series: Urban Missions 101: Why America’s Cities Need Missionaries Too

Description:

In one of the most personal episodes of the series, Dhati and Angie Lewis open up about the emotional, relational, and spiritual costs of urban ministry and the unexpected gifts that come with it. Together, they reflect on what ministry in the city has cost them, what it has given them, and why healthy support systems are essential for long-term faithfulness. This honest conversation explores calling, sacrifice, enduring, and the deep joys that make the mission worth it.

This conversation is part of a collaboration between Exponential NEXT and MyBLVD, working together to equip and encourage leaders serving on mission in cities across the country.

Host:

Dhati Lewis – Urban Missions NEXT, Director

Guest:

Angie Lewis – MyBLVD, Missionary Care Director

Category: Urban Missions NEXT

Then one Wednesday evening in November 2022, the technology stopped waiting for us.

You know this already. If you are reading this, you’re most probably one of the 43.4% of church leaders who now use AI in ministry every single day. You have a favorite model. You have prompts you reuse. You have watched ChatGPT draft a decent devotional in 19 seconds. So this is not another article asking whether you should get started. You started a while ago.

The bigger question your people are asking

For three years, the church’s AI conversation has been an inside conversation. Should we use it for sermon prep? What goes in our church staff’s AI policy? Which AI tools should we use for our daily ministry work

Those are good questions. I have helped hundreds of churches answer them in our growing community with thousands of pastors. But these are the small questions.

The large question is the one your people are already asking, usually in private, usually without words for it.

What am I for now?

The lawyer in your third row watched an AI do in 20 minutes what used to take her three days of billable research.

The graphic designer in your youth ministry has seen her freelance income drop.

The financial advisor who tithes faithfully is doing the math on his own replacement.

The college freshman you baptized is wondering what he should even study and prepare for.

They are not asking whether to use AI in the church office, right? Of course, not, they are asking whether they still matter. Those are different questions, and one of them is a pastoral emergency. Let’s talk about that.

Why this is really a theological problem

When a machine can write the sermon, analyze the spreadsheet, generate the image, and hold the conversation, one belief gets exposed. Many of your people, and maybe you, have built their sense of human dignity on what they can produce.

AI removes that ground.

A crisis of work becomes a crisis of vocation. A crisis of vocation becomes a crisis of identity. A crisis of identity becomes a crisis of meaning. The chain runs all the way down to the soul.

This is a theological problem wearing the clothes of a technology problem. BUT, the church happens to hold the one answer the culture cannot manufacture.

Your worth was never in your output.

You were known before you were made.
Chosen before the creation of the world.

The image of God you carry is a status you were given, and it holds whether you ever produce anything again. A machine cannot bear that image, because an image requires an original to reflect, and a large language model reflects only the sum of its training data.

That is the most practical thing you can preach this year.

The 3 places AI presses on the image of God

The 2026 State of AI in the Church survey confirms what many of us feel on the ground.

Adoption is nearly universal. 93.5% of leaders are engaging with AI, and only 2.4% are avoiding it.

What is interesting and encouraging to me: familiarity with AI tools has not lowered the concern. It has sharpened it.

I have come to see AI pressing on human dignity in three specific ways. Today, my hope is to name them, so that you can pastor them.

Meaning. When your work can be automated, your sense of purpose gets shaky. Your people need a theology of calling that was true before their job existed and will be true after it changes.

Truth. When anything can be faked, trust erodes. 65% of leaders in the survey named misinformation as the top risk AI poses to their congregation. Your people need to know who and what to believe.

Belonging. When a chatbot is always available, always agreeable, and never busy, human relationship starts to feel like too much work. 67% of leaders cited the replacement of human connection as a top ethical concern. Your people need somewhere they are actually known.

Meaning, truth, belonging.
Each one is an opportunity for the gospel to become hyper relevant today.

What only humans can still do

Study after study of which capabilities resist automation points to the same short list: complex reasoning in ambiguity, creative synthesis, emotional attunement, ethical judgment, and sustained relational trust.

All of these research findings basically draw up descriptions of the irreplaceable human. But at the same time, it is also a description of the image of God at work.

The capacities that make a person hardest to automate are the same capacities that most fully express the Imago Dei. And as pastors, that convergence is a gift you get to champion, teach, lead, and share about.

So what are humans for? A few things a machine will never do:

• Be present in a hospital room with nothing useful to say.
• Carry decades of tacit wisdom that was never written down and can only be handed to a person.
• Enter a covenant and keep it when keeping it costs something.
• Repent, forgive, and mean it.
• Bear the image of a God who calls you by name.

The point is we must double down on being the incarnational person everyone needs in our relationships. That opportunity is now a clearer objective of your whole ministry.

Where to start this week

You do not need to solve AI theology by Sunday. But you can close the gap between how much your staff uses these tools and how little your church has thought about them out loud.

Three steps I would consider:

1. Preach the received self. Take one Sunday to teach that worth is a gift God gives. Your congregation is starving for it, whether they use AI or not.
   
2. Move your team from functional to fluent. If your staff is still guessing at what these tools do well and do poorly, a training resource like ChatGPTforChurches.com is the on-ramp. It covers what AI is good for, where it falls short, and how to prompt it using my F.A.S.T.E.R. framework. Get everyone on the same beginning page and out of the gate.
   
3. Don’t let things go too long without talking about the real issues out loud. Ask your leaders the real question. Move past which tool to buy, and ask what these tools are doing to your people. If you want a fuller version of that conversation, I wrote about it in Are You Outsourcing Too Much Thinking to ChatGPT? and in Pastors and AI: A Practical Way to Think About It Without Fear or Hype.
   

The tools are not going away. So you lead a community built on the one truth the culture is not addressing or bypassing intentionally in the pursuit of profit.

Your people have weight that no machine can add to and no machine can take away.

So the real work is showing your people what they were meant for.

Have you already had anyone in your congregation bring up questions around “what am I for now?”  I’d love to hear what you have been discussing and responding with on this topic.

Anchored firmly, its roots reach down for water and intertwine with the roots of other trees, giving the oak resilience through drought, wind, and time.

Shallow-rooted trees may grow quickly, but they are easily toppled. Deep roots make all the difference.

In a world that prizes mobility, productivity, visibility, and endless change, there is a quiet but powerful countercultural choice: putting down roots.

What might happen if ordinary followers of Jesus began planting themselves deeply within the places and relationships God has already given them? What if they learned to recognize their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, affinity groups, and third spaces not simply as places they happen to spend time, but as places of sentness?

Imagine a city where every network of relationships and every neighborhood had a deeply rooted person or family embodying the gospel through presence, demonstration, and proclamation.

Such a movement would bring the Kingdom of God from the grassroots up, creating something like a New Jerusalem within the very heart of Babylon.

At Kansas City Underground, this is our dream:

A disciple-maker on every street and a microchurch in every network of relationships.

That would place a gospel partner in every nook and cranny of our city, joining Jesus in filling that small part of the city with his beauty, justice, and good news.

It is an audacious dream.

A Gospel Presence

What do we mean by a gospel presence?

We mean disciple-makers and microchurches planted deeply within networks of relationships. They become a loving, reconciling, joyful, gracious, and healing presence throughout the city.

They put down roots.

They are not merely passing through a neighborhood or arriving to run a program. They learn people’s names. They listen to stories. They share meals. They show up consistently. They remain long enough to understand both the beauty and the brokenness of a particular place.

This kind of presence usually begins quietly. It is rarely spectacular at first. It may look like becoming a regular at the same coffee shop, sitting with the same parents at youth sporting events, spending time with neighbors around a firepit, or listening carefully to coworkers during lunch.

Rootedness creates relational credibility. Over time, people begin to trust that you are not treating them as a ministry project. You are becoming part of the fabric of their lives.

A Gospel Demonstration

A gospel demonstration makes the Kingdom of God tangible.

It means disciple-makers and microchurches offer selfless service, spiritual families to belong to, and a lived experience of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. They meet practical needs. They welcome people to the table. They pray for healing. They pursue reconciliation. They create communities in which people who have often been overlooked can discover that they are seen, loved, and invited into the life of Jesus.

When you put down roots, eventually the tree grows and fruit begins to appear.

The fruit may be a repaired relationship, a shared meal, a person discovering dignity, an answered prayer, a family finding community, or someone taking their first steps toward Jesus.

The gospel becomes something people can see and experience, not merely an idea they are asked to believe.

A Gospel Proclamation

A gospel presence and demonstration naturally create opportunities for gospel proclamation.

We boldly share the story of Jesus, the story of how Jesus is changing us, and the story of how the gospel changes everything. We do this in ways that are meaningful, contextual, relational, and understandable within each particular space.

Seeds from the tree take flight and land in new soil. By God’s grace, some of those seeds take root.

Inside every seed is the potential for a forest.

This is how a decentralized movement begins to grow. It does not begin primarily with buildings, budgets, branding, or large gatherings. It begins when ordinary disciples become deeply rooted in ordinary places and learn to make disciples there.

Rooted in a Cigar Shop

Jason and Karen Gardner live in Gardner, Kan. They are committed to building relationships and discipling people in the everyday spaces of their lives. One of those places was a local cigar shop.

They became regulars. They learned people’s names. They became friends with the other regulars. They began to put down roots.

They also began in prayer.

One practice we teach is called BLESS Five: Who are five people in your relational world whom God may be inviting you to bless intentionally through prayer, listening, eating, serving, and sharing your story?

Jason and Karen began praying for the people they were encountering. They listened to their stories and engaged them relationally. Small talk gradually became meaningful conversation. Meaningful conversation became spiritual conversation.

Eventually, they began a Discovery Bible Study, creating a space where spiritually curious people could encounter the Word of God and allow the Spirit of God to do what only the Spirit can do.

Two of the men, affectionately known as “the two dads,” surrendered their lives to Jesus. I have a video on my phone of one of them being baptized and another burning the occult objects with which he had been experimenting in a bonfire.

The gospel began to spread through their relationships.

Another couple whom Jason and Karen had welcomed into their lives, Zach and Sandy, were also baptized. Zach now leads a Discovery Bible Study with more than 10 men in his workplace.

Jason and Karen planted themselves in a third space. They listened, prayed, loved, and remained. Over time, seeds from that rooted presence spread into at least three other networks of relationships.

When I imagine that story multiplying throughout Kansas City, my heart explodes with joy.

This is how a city can begin to change through a ground game, a grassroots movement, and the patient fermentation of good things that eventually multiply and run wild.

The Church Becomes Present

Casey is a disciple-maker who is high-functioning on the autism spectrum. His older brother lives at Life Center, a residential home for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Casey spent a great deal of time there. Slowly, the Spirit began revealing something to him:

Casey, this is your place of sentness. Can you see where I am already at work here? Join me in what I am doing. Put down your roots here.

Over the next few years, Casey began praying, listening, and engaging. He built friendships with residents and staff. He shared meals, hosted dance parties, made crafts, and became a faithful presence.

Eventually, Casey and his disciple-making partner, Bre, began a Discovery Bible Study.

Discovery Bible Study is a simple, discovery-based approach to scripture in which people explore a biblical passage together. Rather than beginning with an expert providing all the answers, participants learn to listen to the Word, hear the voice of the Spirit, respond in personal obedience, and share what they are learning with others.

Discovery groups often become the womb in which new disciples are born and new microchurches emerge.

This distinction matters deeply.

We do not organize existing Christians into small groups and simply rename them microchurches.

We send ordinary people, often in pairs or small teams, and coach them along a disciple-maker pathway. They plant themselves among an unreached pocket of people. They begin in prayer. They live incarnationally. They love and serve. They plant the gospel. They make disciples.

We do not primarily plant microchurches.

We plant disciple-makers who plant the gospel and make disciples. Microchurches emerge from disciple-making.

Both staff members and residents at Life Center have encountered Jesus and begun following him alongside Casey and Bre. Over time, this new faith community developed regular rhythms of worship, community, and mission.

A microchurch family emerged.

A microchurch is not a miniaturized version of a traditional church. It is an extended spiritual family, led by ordinary people, living in everyday gospel community and owning the mission of Jesus in a particular network or neighborhood.

The Life Center microchurch receives ongoing support from a hub team composed of mature, elder-level equippers who coach, encourage, resource, and provide accountability to the leaders. Decentralization does not have to mean isolation. Healthy microchurches need relational support, spiritual oversight, and connection to a broader family.

Many of the people at Life Center cannot simply “go to church,” but the church is present there.

There are multiple such facilities across Kansas City. Casey and the team are already dreaming about multiplication. God has also raised up another team in a different part of the city with both a deep passion and professional experience among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

A more holistic vision for the IDD community of Kansas City is beginning to emerge.

Inside the seed is the potential for the forest.

Consistency in an Inconsistent World

Rick and Alice do not live on the street, but God has given them a deep love for people who do.

They began by helping distribute food, clothing, and other supplies to people experiencing homelessness in downtown Kansas City. But they sensed there was more.

Alice felt the Lord inviting them to prayer walk a particular park. As they prayed, they sensed that they were not only called to meet physical needs, but also to bring the Good News there, offering people an opportunity to see, hear, experience, and respond to Jesus.

They began a weekly Discovery Bible Study in the park.

Over time, Street Church emerged.

The people living in and around the park know they can count on Rick and Alice to be there every Friday afternoon with food, drinks, a listening ear, and some good news, and in-between. They gather weekly in the rain, cold, or heat because the members of this emerging spiritual family have very little consistency in their lives.  But, it’s more than a weekly meeting, Rick and Alice want to become that consistent presence in the name of Jesus.

They are putting down roots among people who are often treated as though they have no roots and no place to belong.

A Microchurch at the Rodeo

Chad grew up in rodeo culture. When his daughter wanted to participate in youth rodeo, Chad and Allison began spending their weekends traveling through Kansas on the youth rodeo circuit.

They soon found themselves among what Chad affectionately describes as a kind of gypsy tribe: approximately two hundred riders, parents, siblings, and families traveling from one rodeo to the next.

Chad and Allison began recognizing this community as their place of sentness.

They prayed. They listened to the stories of the families around them. They understood the culture because it was part of Chad’s own story. They opened their table, shared meals, served without strings attached, and became Jesus-shaped people within that relational network.

Eventually, Chad was invited to serve on the board of the youth rodeo association.

Their rooted presence created trust. Trust opened the door for spiritual conversations. Spiritual conversations led to people following Jesus. They have now baptized thirty-one people in horse troughs at rodeos, and a new microchurch family has emerged within the youth rodeo community.

They did not build a church and ask the rodeo community to come to it.

The church became present within the rodeo through an incarnational way of life, they planted the gosepl, made new disciples and a new extended spiritual family, under the Lordship of Jesus, grew and multiplied.

Every Nook and Cranny

We have seen microchurches emerge among people experiencing homelessness in encampments, single mothers, high school students, new suburban neighborhoods, urban neighborhoods, Algerian refugees, travel baseball leagues, artists, adults with intellectual disabilities, rodeo families, and people living inside a maximum-security prison.

These expressions may be geographically focused, taking root in a specific apartment complex, neighborhood, park, or housing development. Others are affinity-focused, growing among people connected through a workplace, shared interest, cultural identity, or common experience.

Both approaches begin with the same fundamental questions:

Where has God already placed us?

Among whom is the Spirit already at work?

What would it mean to become a faithful gospel presence there?

Microchurch planting creates opportunities to reach smaller relational pockets that centralized church structures may struggle to engage. Because microchurches are relatively simple and low-cost, ordinary people can integrate disciple-making into everyday life without first acquiring a building, raising a large budget, or becoming professional clergy.

But simplicity does not mean there are no challenges.

Families with young children may need help developing rhythms that allow everyone to participate meaningfully. New leaders need coaching, theological formation, encouragement, and accountability. As a decentralized movement grows, communication, coordination, and organizational support become increasingly important.

This is why healthy decentralized movements require both grassroots missionary activity and strong equipping systems. Microchurch leaders need spiritual families of their own. They need hubs, coaches, elders, and fellow practitioners who can help them remain rooted in Jesus, healthy in their relationships, and faithful to the mission. The goal is interdependence without unnecessary institutional weight.

The Patient Work of Rootedness

Microchurch planting is not primarily an event-driven strategy. It is relational, reproducible, and patient. Rather than gathering people into a centralized expression and then attempting to start a church, we begin with the people and the place. We discover where God is already at work and join him there.

We prioritize disciple-making and multiplication over gathering and accumulation.

Presence over programs.

Mission over models.

Over time, disciple-makers form spiritual families. Those spiritual families are supported by decentralized hub teams that equip, coach, convene, and provide accountability. What gradually emerges is a network of microchurches woven together into a citywide mission of gospel saturation.

Rather than see the church as one large congregation in one building, we see the church as a distributed network of God’s kids on mission in every street, every relational network, every neighborhood, and every people group having access to the beauty, justice, and good news of Jesus.

This kind of movement cannot be rushed.

It requires prayer, listening, presence, patience, and the willingness to remain. It requires people who will choose depth over visibility and rootedness over constant mobility.

Shallow roots may produce quick growth, but they rarely withstand the storm.

Deep roots make all the difference and inside every deeply rooted disciple-maker is the potential for another disciple, another spiritual family, another microchurch, and eventually an entire forest.

Exponential NEXT Podcast Episode 119

Series: Urban Missions 101: Why America’s Cities Need Missionaries Too

Description:

Why do we often think of missions as something that only happens overseas? In this episode, Dhati Lewis is joined by Missie Branch and Isaac Badaraco to help us rethink America’s cities as strategic mission fields and see urban missionaries through a new lens. Together, they explore the realities of staying rooted in difficult contexts, the calling and sacrifice required for long-term ministry, and the support urban missionaries need to faithfully serve where God has placed them.

This conversation is part of a collaboration between Exponential NEXT and MyBLVD, working together to equip and encourage leaders serving on mission in cities across the country.

Host:

Dhati Lewis – Urban Missions NEXT, Director

Guests:

Missie Branch – MyBLVD, CEO

Isaac Badaraco – One Life Christian Church (Long Island), Pastor

Category: Urban Missions NEXT