Church Multiplication Forwards the CCCC Way of Life
By Rob O’Neal, Director of Church Multiplication
Jim Bertoti understands church multiplication. The pastor of St. Peter’s Reformed Church in Zelienople, Pennsylvania and his congregation have started a “CPR” ministry which stands for “Church Plant and Rescue.” Their congregation invests money, expertise, and volunteer hours to help struggling churches and start new ones.
Jim is a member of the Church Development team and pastor of an established church, so it’s ironic that I present him as a champion of church multiplication, but he is! Jim understands how deeply integrated our values are. Our conference’s values imply that a climate of believing prayer produces healthy pastors, those pastors lead disciple-making churches, and healthy churches launch a church-multiplication movement.
Those same values also remind us that a healthy church-multiplication movement will produce a membership in the Conference that reflects the diversity we see around us. Jim owns our Conference’s values and understands that they point to Church Multiplication.
Jim isn’t the only champion of church multiplication at St. Peter’s Reformed Church, however. Their CPR ministry grew out of an experience one of their members, Bob Nolte, had while touring Europe. Bob stood in a beautiful cathedral with high stone walls and breath-taking stained glass windows whose light dances on the floor during the middle of the day. There was a time when those cathedrals would be filled with worshippers, but that time had passed, and they frequently sit empty these days. Worshippers are not attending, and disciples are not being made. Bob came home and vowed that such would not be the case here as long as we drew breath and could do something about it.
We are meeting this task head-on. As a Conference, we provide Church Development to help congregations that need to find new ways to make disciples. Our Conference Care ministry helps pastors continue to develop as disciplers. And Church Multiplication starts new congregations, because research has shown that new churches make more disciples quickly.
Make no mistake. The task is enormous. Yes, we mourn the people who are no longer in our congregations. The job grows when we add in the people who have never been part of a congregation. Of the roughly 320 million people who live in the United States, roughly 80% of us or 256 million people are unchurched. That means that a lot of people desperately need to become disciples of Jesus!
I share the burden that motivates St. Peter’s Reformed Church. The thought of standing in an empty building where God’s name was once praised breaks my heart. I want to do everything we can to keep pastors strong and churches focused on making disciples. And I share the passion that leads St. Peter’s Reformed Church to turn its attention to the future. I want to start new congregations, because those new congregations will gather new believers who will build new structures adorned by new people who will bring honor and glory to God.
Let’s do it together.
